We’ve all encountered the icon — the spinning wheel notifying us that what we’d like to be doing on our computer cannot be done quite yet. In a world where we’ve come to expect technology to be instantly available to us, this can be a frustrating experience.

According to PC Magazine, “In streaming audio or video from the Internet, buffering refers to downloading a certain amount of data before starting to play the music or movie.” It is an all-too-common experience. 

Since I began blogging in December 2006, it has been relatively easy for me to come up with ideas for my writing. Such has not been the case, however, in the past few months. I certainly have the time to write. I always have the desire to write. But I don’t want to write just for the sake of writing. It’s important to me that my words have meaning for myself and for those who take the time to read what I’ve written. 

I still set aside time to write on most days, and I continue to collect quotes, images, and ideas to share. When I’m out walking each day, I’m constantly reflecting on possible topics for my writing. Despite these things, however, the motivation to actually sit down and put the words on paper has been conspicuously absent. I’ve come to the realization that, perhaps, what’s happening is that my brain is buffering.

In her book, Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded, author Hannah Hart writes, “Buffering is that time you spend waiting for the pixels of your life to crystallize into a clearer picture; it’s a time of reflection, a time of pause, a time for regaining your composure or readjusting your course. We all have a limited amount of mental and emotional bandwidth, and some of life’s episodes take a long time to fully load.”

That’s it! That’s exactly what’s been happening. 

I’m not losing it. It’s definitely not writer’s block. I’m simply waiting patiently for those pixels to crystallize, and when they do, I fully expect to get back into the flow of sharing my thoughts, observations, and feelings, with both insight and clarity, on a more regular basis.