Inoculation
I don't know what the subject of this blog will be. Like every writer, I want to tell the world something, but what?
Everything I want to say is forbidden, taboo: I want to whine and wail about things great and small. I want people to be kind and wish me well, to be honest and sincere. I want to see karma descend on some people like a psychotic buzzard. I want to stop replaying the tape of awful days I can't change and lives I can't lead. I want to practice what I preach. I want to live happy and grateful.
But I find myself unable to do any of that some days, make anything happen in the real world or the virtual one.
So I create a new world.
When I was a young child, I learned you could go wherever you wanted in a book, and if you didn't like where you were, all you had to do is close the book and open another. As an adult, I found out I could create those new worlds, those alternate realities. I didn't have to search and try somebody else's life on for size; I could be anywhere my mind could take me. On paper, life could be any way I wanted.
In recent years, I've somehow lived through the most awful times of my life; some of the pain was the universal variety--illness and care-giving and losing people. But some of the other stuff, while it may be just as universal, isn't something you share with others, and certainly not in a public way. There are problems and heartbreaks and mistakes and struggles that must be yours and yours alone.
We hear about the famous mid-life crisis: if I had one, I was too busy and stressed to notice. I think I just skipped that and went straight to a nearing-the-end-of-life crisis.
So I'm writing/running for my life. I've almost finished the third book in three years--a creative frenzy unlike anything I've ever experienced in the 30+ years I've been writing and publishing. Maybe if I can put enough words on the page, if I can write enough words to fully "unpack my heart" as Shakespeare famously put it, I can lift this burden and dream happier dreams. I suspect that none of the things that would need to happen to make me feel truly better and relieved and at peace are ever going to happen. But writing can be my spiritual and psychological EpiPen and stop the negative reaction!
If you need a balm for your spirit and you can't find it anywhere else, there's always a book in need of a reader. Or a blog that needs a writer.
Everything I want to say is forbidden, taboo: I want to whine and wail about things great and small. I want people to be kind and wish me well, to be honest and sincere. I want to see karma descend on some people like a psychotic buzzard. I want to stop replaying the tape of awful days I can't change and lives I can't lead. I want to practice what I preach. I want to live happy and grateful.
But I find myself unable to do any of that some days, make anything happen in the real world or the virtual one.
So I create a new world.
When I was a young child, I learned you could go wherever you wanted in a book, and if you didn't like where you were, all you had to do is close the book and open another. As an adult, I found out I could create those new worlds, those alternate realities. I didn't have to search and try somebody else's life on for size; I could be anywhere my mind could take me. On paper, life could be any way I wanted.
In recent years, I've somehow lived through the most awful times of my life; some of the pain was the universal variety--illness and care-giving and losing people. But some of the other stuff, while it may be just as universal, isn't something you share with others, and certainly not in a public way. There are problems and heartbreaks and mistakes and struggles that must be yours and yours alone.
We hear about the famous mid-life crisis: if I had one, I was too busy and stressed to notice. I think I just skipped that and went straight to a nearing-the-end-of-life crisis.
So I'm writing/running for my life. I've almost finished the third book in three years--a creative frenzy unlike anything I've ever experienced in the 30+ years I've been writing and publishing. Maybe if I can put enough words on the page, if I can write enough words to fully "unpack my heart" as Shakespeare famously put it, I can lift this burden and dream happier dreams. I suspect that none of the things that would need to happen to make me feel truly better and relieved and at peace are ever going to happen. But writing can be my spiritual and psychological EpiPen and stop the negative reaction!
If you need a balm for your spirit and you can't find it anywhere else, there's always a book in need of a reader. Or a blog that needs a writer.
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