Big Fractal Tangle: not writing

There's three reasons I write: 1) because it's fun, 2) because I want to impress people, 3) because I need to.

The last one's the kicker. I don't mean "need" in the normal logistical requirement sense ... I mean it in the way Rilke described:

There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?

For more than twenty years, the sense-making writer's reflex has been a part of my makeup, yet the discipline wanes as life gets large, which is exactly the wrong time. Life stress is playing me like a piano these days, and I'm neglecting the one gift I've been given to cope with and transcend it: the written word. In earlier times, in a quiet hour, I'd let the words flow, and there'd be resolve. Now ... it's just too much.

Yes, I know, everyone complains about their life, and everyone thinks their problems are impressive. All I can say is that I've been given a formidable array of thing to accept in recent months, and something's gotta give.

I'm brimming, and tonight can only offer another favorite Rilke quote:

Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.