August 5 | The Well Is Dry

Maybe there comes a day when the source dries up—the place you’ve gone for inspiration, or the secret method you use to get going, or the previously reliable instinct that arose in the place of any kind of formal method.

You sit down to the write, but words refuse to play nicely, going anywhere and everywhere but the page in front of you.

You sit down to play and find yourself hammering against the walls of the familiar, half-assed patterns lacking any kind of inspiration.

You sit down to sort things out with the people around you, but can’t find the spark of anything generous enough within yourself to set aside your own perspective.

The well, whatever it is, has run dry.

You can shake your fist against the sky, slamming the bucket down to the all-too-dry earth. You can take it as an invitation to patience. Or maybe it’s an opportunity to dig a new well—something for future generations to enjoy, a new method, a new source.… Read the rest