Words were never the problem in 2020

From Open Diary to now, I’ve complained over and over that I didn’t have enough words. The words won’t come, and the like. Constant complaints in this regard. Meanwhile my throat is exhausted. I’ve got to give a one hour lecture on Friday. I’m planning on doing zero prep work for it. I’m certain that it’ll be a massive success. I taught two and a half hours today with a few props and some background knowledge, and I did the same thing for two and a half hours the day before. I strike up conversations with strangers constantly. My conversation skills quite literally provide me with my food. It was my ability to make friends and to influence people through my words that lead to me being able to continue my existence in Japan. My command of language is my most defining characteristic, and my ability to please at an instant with whatever I happen to say is why I’ve had the life that I’ve had.
I’m going to graduate school to study Haiku. I imagine that I’ll pass easily and with flying colors. I can wax eloquent on haiku for ages, but I barely read any, and I write even fewer. Good haiku forces people to dig into the center of their feelings to find their essence, and then to express this by the use of concentrated units of meaning. I’ve written, to the best of my knowledge, one poem that actually holds up. I’ve never written a story that seemed to be any good after its initial writing. At least, nothing was ever readable a year after I finished it, and I finished even less. I remember a time with the old friends from Southfield Christian. I said that one of them, should I die, should compile and publish my Complete Unfinished Works.
I can interpret data. I can form educated opinions, and I can elucidate them quite well. I can write essays and papers and arguments with no preparation. I made up new lyrics to Hotel California live, onstage, in front of a thousand Chinese club goers when I got pulled up onstage. But I can’t manage to produce seventeen valid syllables. The problem isn’t words. The problem is that within me, there’s not enough to distill into seventeen syllables. And I’m coming to terms with that. This isn’t to say that there wasn’t. This isn’t to say that there couldn’t be. But there isn’t. And whether or not there will be, I really don’t know.