Too many writers write for the wrong reasons. They want to get famous or they want to get rich or they want to get laid by the girls with bluebells in their hair…
…When everything works best it’s not because you chose writing but because writing chose you. It’s when you’re mad with it, it’s when it’s stuffed in your ears, your nostrils, under your fingernails. It’s when there’s no hope but that…
…We work too hard. We try too hard.

wrote Charles Bukowski in one of his letters.

The more I try (sic!) to balance all the inputs with my creative and non-creative outputs, the more I see that Bukowski was right, and that the best things come when they choose you, not the other way around.

I’ve been trying to maintain the habit of writing. But writing, like other things one cares about, cannot come from habit. After a few weeks of pushing sentences through the viscous sludge of my pre-occupied brain, I decided to let go. Sometimes an idea for an unfinished draft or a new piece starts to crystallize, but it dissipates quickly, like things do in a viscous medium. That’s fine. There will be time for writing again.

For now, there is time for other things. To quote Bukowski:

Go to Tibet.
Ride a camel.
Read the Bible.
Dye your shoes blue.
Grow a Beard.
Circle the world in a paper canoe.
Subscribe to “The Saturday Evening Post.”
Chew on the left side of your mouth only.
Marry a woman with one leg and shave with a straight razor.
And carve your name in her arm.

Brush your teeth with gasoline.
Sleep all day and climb trees at night.
Be a monk and drink buckshot and beer.
Hold your head under water and play the violin.
Do a belly dance before pink candles.
Kill your dog.
Run for Mayor.
Live in a barrel.
Break your head with a hatchet.
Plant tulips in the rain.

But don’t write poetry.