I wish I knew how to describe this feeling

I've tried to put it together in my mind, but nothing quite covers it. Here's a list of some things that go into the mix, but the quantities shift and roil like an ocean of sand:

• Infinity - a yawning gape at the centre of my chest that both sucks in and spews out all of the possibilities related to everything in my life. It's far far too much to look at closely. I don't really know what it contains.
• Constriction 1 - a physical pressing in of my body from the air around it; from the walls of the room; from the light; from the darkness.
• Constriction 2 - a feeling of inflexibility in my mind; dark tunnels railroad my thoughts down the same dead-ends over and over again.
• Inaction - I can see all of the things that I need to be doing right now. I know how easy it would be to do them. I do not do them.
• Weight - movements both in my body and in my mind are heavy beyond belief.

Don't worry, I am aware of what these things add up to. I am not ignoring them and hoping that they will go away. I am trying to seek out glimpses of a route away from this. Those flickers of light will come, they will. I can wait for them. I just wish I wasn't always waiting for them alone....though who could sit here with me through feelings like this?

I do not want to write

Usually I can get a few lines in my head that I think sound good. I write them down. And then I can carry that on for perhaps a page...all the while thinking 'ok, this is going ok.' Then if I lift my head up out of that immediate world, even just for a moment, and I realise that what I'm doing is just terrible and pointless. Even if I could perfectly capture a scene in some way, or convey a particular feeling...what's the point? What's the objective of the exercise?

I often have this feeling in me of wanting to write. But I know that it will spiral into that wondering about the essential pointlessness of the activity. And so it's easier not to start at all.

I know I'm not the first one to wonder about this. It's not even the first time I've wondered about this. But right now the feeling is so strong. It's entirely possible that the entire driving force behind my own persistence with writing is the worry that if I can't do it then my life really doesn't have anything in it. I don't want kids or a husband. I don't want a career. So what? I just drift aimlessly and accept that in all probability my writing isn't that good at all and even if it was good then I still wouldn't be able to come up with a reason why it would be useful to show it to other people.

It's easier to just go to the gym and watch TV and work and sleep and try to do anything but think about these things. And yet....while I do those things, some deeply burried nerves are plucked like taught violin strings. They itch, but there's no surface on my body that can be scratched to calm them. Do something. Do something. Do something. That's all the plucking brings in terms of tune. Do something.

But what?

One minute to midnight here, and I am neither asleep nor awake

Just feeling sort of aimlessly creative at the moment. Really, I want to reach over the side of my bed to get my writing folder out of my bag. But I feel fairly certain that anything as concrete as a piece of blank paper and a pen will shrivel this urge. I can't even bring myself to open Word.

Here, things feel sort of temporary. Well, not quite that, but there's no pressure here to fit into any particular format. It doesn't matter if something is fact, fiction, letter, diary....in fact, most of the time I'm writing this with just my own self and the Beautiful Girl in mind as possible readers.

I just want to write, or to express something. I keep feeling snippets of something forming in the back of my mind. I can't catch onto anything, but there's something there. I'm sort of sad when I think about the fact that it's been years since I last woke up in the night and HAD to write something down. I used to sleep with a pen and paper in my bed just for that reason. These days, if I wake up in the night, I'm usually worrying about work, or remembering some errand that needs doing.

I'm more sensible that I think I'd like to be right now. Really, I'm in a mood to stay up all night, but I won't. I have a long day tomorrow. I need to be up early and have my brain in gear. But, oh how I long for that 4am feeling! It's both wonderful and terrible. It's bleak and lonely, but empowering. I alone would be awake then (or so it would feel), and my mind would be stretched thin: tight like a hair about to snap between fingertips. There is a feeling then of being right at the edge of something. Of pressing up against another way of existing and understanding.

When I was travelling just last year, I stayed up late sometimes reading and writing. It was wonderful. There's no real reason why I couldn't still do it. But I am feeling old, and hating the idea of being tired all tomorrow. Of coming back from work and crashing instead of doing something productive. Is this sensible or sad? My eyes are feeling heavy now, even though my brain is wiry and darting between ideas 'like a puppy loosed from its leash'.

You went into the kitchen cupboard, got yourself another hour, and you gave half of it to me

That's exactly what I'm listening to right now. My mouth is still sticky with peanut butter, and the crumbs of rice cakes are spread through my bed. My hands are cold right up to the wrist, and I can feel a draft seeping in to the room and over my shoulder. I wish there was heating here...anywhere here in this whole town. The air smells of woodsmoke from the pot of lapsang on my bedside table, and I can almost believe that there's a fire in another room nearby.

I opened up this page about an hour ago, feeling that I'd write something big. Some sort of overview or evaluation of the state of things. But I've just wasted today by pottering online, and everything feels so very small now. And anyway, the big things in my life are just a bit too big to look at without the bottom of my stomach falling away in fear at the immensity of it all.

Mostly though, I'm just feeling ok. I've spent some time on various blog posts about body image related things, and I realise that I probably feel better about myself than I've ever managed to in the past. That's nice....not in an earth-shattering way. It's just crept upon me as a nice thing that exists in my mind.

I also think I feel more secure about most things. My friends at work are 22 and 23, and every time I talk with them, I know for sure that I'd rather be 29 than go back to all of that uncertainty, and that sense of barely being able to grasp at a sense of your own wants and needs.

I'm reading the Beautiful Girl's blog, and wishing there was more. Wishing I could spend a day burried inside her thoughts and ideas. But that understatement is so her that I still feel strongly connected even by those few scraps of sentences.

One admission: this week, I have become afraid of writing again. I am back in the place where I prefer to dream of my untapped potential than sit for hours on end and look at the rubbish that comes out of my pen. I am using any excuse to avoid putting that pen to paper.

I deleted the first version of this post...

...I worry that I recognise too much of myself in Hannah in Girls.....but mostly that's when I'm watching it....the rest of the time I can put that out of my mind....but when I'm faced with her I get this awful sense of connection with her.

I'm just rambling, but only to distract myself from the idea that my life being is wasted....in some sort of horribly intangible way.

I think I'm ready to start planning to move on....I've not been here long, but I feel uncomfortable with the settled-feeling here.

Can't move forever though....so then what?

This is an annoying post....I thought it would help to write, but I'm too unfocussed.