Dead inside
Last week was a bad week for writing.
It started off well enough. I wrote a bit of a short piece and I felt electric afterwards. Like, hair-standing-on-end-but-thrilled electric. It was a great feeling, to spend an hour or so putting something rough and definitely first draft together. First drafts have all sorts of loose ends and possibilities. They're so raw, with countless avenues to all sorts of subplots, intrigues, and tangents that beg for resolution. See? I'm getting worked up just thinking about the fun of exploring a world that came from 60 minutes of pounding keys.
So cool and so distracting to the day job.
There was much doodling in the margins of architectural diagrams, and work got done, but it took so much effort to stay focused. Let's face it. Once she's created, how hard is it to ignore the snarky but responsible girl (who doesn't even have a name yet), but who will risk her comfortable, sheltered life, her identity, her self-respect, and possibly even her sanity, to find her impulsive and headstrong sister? Impossible. She's there on the page. She has all of this stuff ahead of her. And did I mention that SHE HAS TO FIND HER SISTER?!
<deep breaths>
These kinds of distractions remind me that I'm not an automaton. (Or, confirms at least, that I'm a pretty sentient one.)
It's the good kind of hard to have an afternoon like that. We have too few of these. When I get an idea, I just want to let my mind wander. But who has time for that?! And I'm a mom. So, it's even more rare and precious for me to be struck by inspiration. It's not exactly controversial to say that moms don't really get the luxury to sit and think... at least not about stuff that isn't a mental grocery list. Why do you think we all go to Target so often? It's probably because we're out of paper towels again. (Are we? We might be.) But it's also because its the prime place for moms to go have a bit of headspace and not feel guilty.
But let's just put this out there... It's a truth universally acknowledged that damn fine thinking is done behind the wheel. And on the toilet. But mostly behind the wheel or cart. So much so that I wonder how many books have been written by truck drivers.
After fab writing Monday, the week kind of fell apart, until it didn't. That perfect storm of inspiration was shattered by all kinds of unnecessary interpersonal drama and strategy pivots that had pivots (which had tertiary pivots of their own). It's impossible to think when your 9-5 is taxing. The mental load on all that crap is tiring.
It's also hard to think when your skin goes bonkers. Greasy face is not cool.
But then, on Friday night, there was a breakthrough. Camping in the pod with our sugar skull lights and our buds.
Behold the sugar skulls
And friends who buy you awesome snarky t-shirts about being dead inside right after you spent several days actually feeling pretty fucking close to dead inside. (See featured photo for proof.)
There was champagne and bad beer drunk in pools with flamingo coozies. There was glow in the dark bean bag toss. There was kayaking on a warm afternoon, my feet in the freezing water, and my kid actually doing a damn fine job manning the paddles.
Doing the work so mama can chill...
There was a big old reset. And reading last night. And my skin is acting reasonably once again. And now this. I just finished reviewing the latest rev of complex JSON representations in XML, so I can take a big old sigh of relief for a moment and hit send on this very post I started ages ago.
