Different Roads

The hardest part about writing for me is always starting. I’ve been an editor for so long and I’ve spent so many hours obsessing over story ledes that I’m often mentally paralyzed trying to find that first line. There will be a whole jumble of sentences in my head waiting to spill out, but the gate is closed and no how much those words press against it, it’s not going to open.

My solution for that is usually to just put any words down on paper and see how it flows. All those other sentences trying to get out will make their way out and once they do, I can move them around into some semblance of order. But for the last few days I’ve been stuck on a post, and it’s the complete opposite problem. When I moved over to Substack with the goal of writing on a more regular cadence, I did an inventory of all my half started posts and post ideas, figuring that those would make for good fodder.

And so I found an old idea and wrote what I thought was a nice opening line, but nothing much came after it. To be honest, I was a little stumped, because I usually can make something out of a decent lede but here we were with the gate wide open but no words tumbling through. And no matter how I tried, I couldn’t change that.

If you’re wondering what the heck this has do with cancer, my stem cell transplant or anything of the sort, I’m getting there. See, almost all the ideas and half-done posts I identified as possible posts were written pre-transplant. Most of them were when I was still dealing with my slow-growing, follicular lymphoma. Over the years, I had settled on a way to deal with it - some times it was a good way, some times not, but I knew the roads and all the ideas from that time were sprinkled along like signposts on that road - glimpses into how I was thinking.

Let me try to give a non-metaphorical example. When I was dealing with follicular lymphoma for 10+ years, I never had a symptom of the disease; I never spent a night in the hospital; I rarely needed to miss work; I didn’t have to isolate; think twice about hugging people; or seriously think about dying.

All that changed two-plus years ago. And while physically I’m pretty much back to where I was, save a few hair follicles, mentally, I’m not. And I’m not sure I ever will be. It’s not a worse place, but it’s a different place and I think I’m only realizing that now, as I write these words. See, we call it Thinking Out Loud for a reason. So I look at all the ideas and I can understand the words, but I can’t get to the depth of the thought. I wonder as I move further away from transplant f some of those older thoughts will start to make sense, or if they will always be shadowy remnants of a different time.