Saying Goodbye to Sadness

Having not written a blog post since November due to writers block, I consider why the block may be there. I know one big reason why its there - its because I'm happy! So with this in mind I turn my thoughts towards why it seems so much easier to write when you're sad, than it is when you're happy. This may not be the same for everyone but I know it is for a lot of people, including myself. When I'm in a low mood, the writing flows but apparently is much harder work when my mood is pleasant!

When you're sad, low or riddles with angst, you have so many feelings coursing through your mind that you're consumed by a maddening confusion and overflowing with emotional things to say. The best way to calm your mind is to empty all these feelings and emotions out of your head and down onto paper. When you're sad one of your first human instincts is to analyse why you feel this way - what is happening to make me feel like this? What can I do to make it feel better? You turn these things over and over in your mind until your thoughts become your fingers flying across the keyboard or your pen zooming across the page.

Writing about your bad feelings and sadness is cathartic, it helps to get things off your chest and is really very therapeutic - this is why I keep a daily journal too. Moreover, you are likely to be very passionate in these moments, full of fire and emotion, and as a result are powerful and poetic in your writing. The words that flow from you are full of reckless abandonment and are likely to be very poignant. My best stuff definitely comes from times of darkness and I know this is the case with other songwriters and poets etc.

So, although is great to be happy, its not always easy to write when your mood is in a good place - not particularly profoundly anyway! This is not because you have any less feelings, or because your happy feelings are any less worthy of being written about, but simply because being happy makes you want to 'do' rather than respond to emotions. I don't know about you, but I certainly don't like to wax lyrical about my happiness as I find it slightly cringeworthy and also because I want to be sensitive to those who may still be sad or are struggling in some way. Being happy makes you want to go out and enjoy your happiness - theres just not as much incentive for you to be crouching over your laptop or notepad pouring your heart out into some poignant prose or another. Its fabulous being happy and whatever it is thats making you so, you just want to enjoy it, not continuously ponder over it or analyse it over and over again. You certainly don't want to hole yourself up in a dark room writing about our feelings - you want to be out actually feeling them! You don't necessarily want to talk about it or reflect on it, you just want to 'do' and 'be'. So its harder, much harder to write when you're happy.

I was chatting to a friend about my 'happiness writers block' and she suggested writing about 'Saying Goodbye to my Sadness'. I liked that idea so, whether this is a permanent or temporary - I bid you goodbye, adios, bon voyage my depression, we may hook up again, we may not, only time will tell. But either way, I will need to learn a new way to put pen to paper with my new positive and happy mind. Here's hoping ;-)