Life block

Well, I put my mouth on it. That's Bajan for "to jinx something by speaking about it." A couple weeks ago, I posted about writers block. And I said, that I believed it was like pain. It existed if you said it did. But for me, personally, I was unlikely to have writers block. I was more likely to get a life block.

Hello, self-fulfilling prophecy.

What's life block? Well, seeing as I just invented the term, the definition is still a little un-refined. But it is to life what writers block is to writing. I'm back to having little or no desire to do things. The weird thing is I know somewhere in myself that I do want things. I just don't actively want them now.

That's confusing, huh? I guess it's like watching a movie about a character you don't care about. You know with your brain that things are important. And maybe you even feel that they are. But you don't really care about them.

I haven't written in quite a while. I don't go anywhere, other than to the reggae events that I'm invited to. I'm not studying my Japanese. I'm not working towards my TEFL certificate. But the bit that really scares me is that I've stopped reading. I mean, I am reading. The Old Testament (started as a Lent project, but going to stretch far beyond) and the occasional writing craft book. But I have only read like 2 fiction books this year. This from someone who read 100+ last year. And the worst part is that, right now, I have no desire to read them.

As usual, I'm trying to dig my way out on my own. (As opposed to pestering the psychiatrist.) It may just be a simple matter of stagnation. I've been at this job, in this house, in this country for almost 4 years. And that's about a year longer than I tend to do anything. I think it might just be time to shake it up with some change. Right now, the temptation is to learn Portuguese. It's actually a 10 year-old temptation, which I usually ignore due to the fact that I "made friends" in Portugal with 1 word of actual Portuguese and an entire arsenal of Spanish. But Brazil and Portuguese came up 5 or 6 times in one day, and I feel like that's some sort of omen or cosmic hint.

Anyway, I hope it's just stagnation. Because that's an easy fix. Plus, my last year in Japan starts in August. I think I'll be too busy cataloguing all my "lasts" to be bothered about the fact that I'm doing the same thing for the 5th year in a row.

How about you guys? Anybody else ever suffer from "life block?"