Seriousness
Yesterday I was in the middle of editing a longish essay I’d tentatively titled “The Seriousness of Play”, when I had to stop working on it because I suddenly wasn’t in the mood for it any longer.
That’s not unusual – I’m always working on so many different things that I often toss some of them aside when I’m stuck, or just need to step back from something until it’s fresh again, rather than sit still and wait for it to work. Inertia is the writer’s worst enemy, after all. But it was the mood thing that struck me as ironic – here I was writing a piece about play, and had to push away from it simply because I was cranky.
I haven’t laughed a lot lately. And I’m always laughing. I don’t know whether it’s a sign of overwork1, a lack of leisure time and activities2, taking myself too seriously3, or some combination of the three.
In any case, something is feeding on my sense of humor and my playful nature, which is the engine of my creativity. If I don’t figure out what this ”succubus of seriousness” is and how to defeat it, it’s going to be a long winter.
