It was bound to happen one day, but it’s finally occurred: the infamous writer’s block. For the past two hours, I’ve been sitting at my desk feeling as though I’ve lost the ability to write. It’s not that I’ve run out of ideas – I have a notebook with ideas for posts – but as soon as I sit down to type, my mind just blanks. Since it’s a Sunday and I need to post something, I’ve decided rambling and jotting this experience down is one of the few things I can still manage, so here goes.

In the anime Haikyuu!!, there’s a volleyball player called Bokuto who’s regarded as a top 5 ace in Japan. Meaning he’s the player that his team relies on to score when the going gets tough and is the player who the other team is most focused on shutting down. In one important match, Bokuto goes up to hit a cross shot – a fairly basic spike where the ball goes across the court diagonally as opposed to parallel – and somehow forgets how to. It’s an absolutely ridiculous scene, something akin to Gordon Ramsay forgetting how to chop an onion.

However, I’m kind of feeling this now. I’m not claiming to be a good writer by any means, but writing is something that’s always felt pretty natural to me, whether it’s journaling, writing essays or making these posts. But right now, it’s like some force has taken the neural network wired for writing and severed it. And the remaining neurons are desperately trying to form new synapses to fix this broken circuit. But failing.

Is there such thing as a writing fast? Fasting seems to be the new trend these days – whether it’s intermittent fasting, the ketogenic diet or good old week-long fasts, there seems to be some paradoxical benefit in restricting nutritional intake. The concept of fasting applies to domains outside of nutrition too, such as with the digital detox (social media) or taking a break from dating and enjoying the single life. I’ve even heard of productive breaks from religion. Are writers taking a break from writing a thing?

Perhaps God’s giving me a message – but of what? Is this a rite of passage like a runner getting injured? What a cruel rite of passage. Or more likely, I might just be fatigued and just need to sleep. Whatever the case, I’m just going to end this ramble here. I guess we’ll see what happens.