Kayaking Block by Ender Guthrie

We’ve all heard the keener horror stories like foot rot, ear infections, and even flesh-eating bacteria. But probably the most underrated horror story of all is the horrible writer’s block the night before your blog is due. You sit in front of your screen for what feels like forever hoping an idea will come. Then, right before lights out, you start grabbing at any idea you can think of, small thoughts, half written sentences, hoping something will get typed out before lights out. Then I realized. This isn’t just a writing thing. That stuck, frustrated feeling? It shows up in kayaking too. When you’re learning to kayak, especially at the start, it feels exactly like writer’s block. You’re out there trying to figure everything out at once like how to ferry, how to roll, how not to look at a barely class 2 rapid and panic, and nothing is clicking. You watch other paddlers run huge rapids like it’s nothing, and meanwhile, you’re flipping over on eddy lines and questioning every decision that led you here. It’s like staring at a blank page, trying to find a way to start writing on the page rather than just staring at it. But here’s the thing. Just like writing, you keep trying. You show up even when you don’t want to, you mess up more than you’d like to, but yet you try again. And eventually, something clicks. Your strokes get cleaner. You hit that one eddy line you’ve flipped on a dozen times and somehow you make it in. You start to go with the flow of the river rather than fighting it. The same way the words eventually come when you stop overthinking, the boat starts to move with you when you stop fighting it. Writer’s block and kayaking are both about getting through the uncomfortable part, when it feels like nothing’s working. And once you’re past that, once you start getting your rolls and catching those eddy’s, you find your flow rather than just following the rivers, and it all starts to feel a bit less scary.