I keep trying to write.
So many thoughts.
So many things I want to express. Ideas and conversations and pictures painted with words.
But I'm out of practice.
Everything I write is forced
Is prattle.
The tone is wrong.
The words aren't strong enough.
The picture not clear.
So it all stays locked in my head, pushing and shoving for space.
I want to write about the way the city looks covered in fog.
And how it has forced my inner noir romantic to the surface.
I want to express how I've been feverishly reading James Ellroy and Dennis Lehane
I want to explain how their writing is so exquisite
so painfully sharp that I bleed with emotion all over their pages.
How to explain the need to sit in a dimly lit bar and discuss all the books that shaped, formed, made our character. Or talk about movies, the ones that were real. That broke us. That shattered our walls with a glance. The ones that gave us the courage to do things previously thought beyond us. Or the music that soothes us, that carries our dreams and wishes onto the breeze. The fog makes me romantic, wild, with hints melancholy.

See?
Contrived.
Forced.
But not any less true

I want to write about surfing.
About the hours spent in the freezing water, only going in when my hands and feet are swollen from the cold.
About the culture and camaraderie that can't be captured with words. 
The way the sun and the waves heal things in me I had never acknoweledged were broken.
The burning desire to get better, to abandoned everything except the sea.

 I want to write about the ghosts of friendships past.
Or write about future dreams that I'm trying to give shape and substance.
Hell, I could write how I almost gave up on music and then fell wildly passionately in love with it again.

But every time I pick a topic
Every time I start to write
it falls flat.
I can't find my voice
And worse, I don't know where I lost it.
It's not under the bed. I already checked.
I'm not sure where else to look. My closet by the sea isn't big enough to hide secrets
let alone something as big as my need to write. To document.

Stay with me people.
I'll find the words eventually.