Some days, the writing sucks.

Like today. The kids were up way too early. The sun hasn’t come out all day, so it’s like the world never really woke up. It’s literally obscured by smoke that has blown in across the country from wildfires in Alaska. The house is a wreck and I have no drive to clean it.

In short, I feel like crap, though there’s nothing physically wrong with me.

When I got the kids down for a nap, all I wanted was to close the light-filtering curtains, crank up the white noise machine to drown out the noise of the cats crashing around in their midday shenanigans, and join them in dreamland for a blissful hour or so. I was feeling completely exhausted, bone-crushingly uninspired, will-sappingly unmotivated, and in short like a total waste of space. (I won’t call it Writer’s Block, because I firmly believe that Writer’s Block is just a fancy way of saying that I am not responsible for my creative ability. Writer’s Block can last for years. It’s a crutch. It’s a way of hiding from the work you really want to be doing. Fargo Writer’s Block.)

But I wrote anyway.

And I felt better.

It damn sure wasn’t my best work, but upon reflection, it probably wasn’t my worst, either. And the house is still a mess, and my son is cranky because he peed the bed, and my daughter is clinging to me like a tick to the underside of a particularly furry dog because she fell asleep way too late. And there are dishes to do and toys to pick up, and the world still feels kinda sharknado-ey today.

But there are always these days. The kids are always going to find reasons to be cranky or jittery or whiny or loud or awful. The house is always going to be messy or in need of repair or stinky from last night’s dishes I didn’t wash or the trash I didn’t take out. There will always be days when the weather sucks, when my mood sucks, when the world itself seems to want you not to write. Or, you know, whatever your thing is. Life and the world will get in the way of your thing.

But today I wrote anyway, and I feel a little better.

Because I really want to be a writer. And if I’m not writing, then I’m not a writer.

Photo by Ramiro Ramirez @ Flickr.