Fffffffuck.
Here it is, the sudden and unlooked-for return of my restless wind.
Two weeks to the day after moving to my new home in Madison, sitting in a cafe trying and failing to concentrate on my statistics homework, I find myself staring at photographs of far-away places on Tumblr and trying to find words for the abrupt, unreachable itch located somewhere in the high-windowed house of my brain.
It's the same itch that caused my grandmother to leave house and home, all her family and friends, and set to sea in a 24-foot sailboat alone, and spend more than 15 years away from the country of her birth, seeing the world. It's the same itch that dragged me from my 10 years in Ohio and found me in San Francisco, and then took me out my front door to wind up in New Zealand and Australia for 4 months, a length of time that felt both endless and not nearly long enough. And it's the same itch that makes me write stories about people who find themselves in strange, unknowable places, so perhaps it's not entirely unfortunate that it has come back. I am firm in the belief that people who are 100% comfortable with their lives have no stories to tell and no itches to scratch, and I never want to feel "done" or like I have nothing left to say.
Still, it's goddamn obnoxious when I'm sitting here trying to concentrate on absolute deviations and data analysis, only to be struck with the sudden and near-irresistable urge to either get in the car and drive, or find an unfamiliar part of town or countryside to walk until I exhaust myself. I think tomorrow I'll get up early and drive out to the arboretum or the botanical gardens, or find some nearby park that I can stomp around in for a few hours and think. Maybe that will help kick-start all the ideas that have been brewing in my head for what feels like months now, while I sit here and can't for the life of me find a single word to put to the page.
And there, kids, is also the first piece of writing in 4 months that I was able to open up the word doc and just barf onto the page, without having it feel like I'm pulling out my own teeth.
Two weeks to the day after moving to my new home in Madison, sitting in a cafe trying and failing to concentrate on my statistics homework, I find myself staring at photographs of far-away places on Tumblr and trying to find words for the abrupt, unreachable itch located somewhere in the high-windowed house of my brain.
It's the same itch that caused my grandmother to leave house and home, all her family and friends, and set to sea in a 24-foot sailboat alone, and spend more than 15 years away from the country of her birth, seeing the world. It's the same itch that dragged me from my 10 years in Ohio and found me in San Francisco, and then took me out my front door to wind up in New Zealand and Australia for 4 months, a length of time that felt both endless and not nearly long enough. And it's the same itch that makes me write stories about people who find themselves in strange, unknowable places, so perhaps it's not entirely unfortunate that it has come back. I am firm in the belief that people who are 100% comfortable with their lives have no stories to tell and no itches to scratch, and I never want to feel "done" or like I have nothing left to say.
Still, it's goddamn obnoxious when I'm sitting here trying to concentrate on absolute deviations and data analysis, only to be struck with the sudden and near-irresistable urge to either get in the car and drive, or find an unfamiliar part of town or countryside to walk until I exhaust myself. I think tomorrow I'll get up early and drive out to the arboretum or the botanical gardens, or find some nearby park that I can stomp around in for a few hours and think. Maybe that will help kick-start all the ideas that have been brewing in my head for what feels like months now, while I sit here and can't for the life of me find a single word to put to the page.
And there, kids, is also the first piece of writing in 4 months that I was able to open up the word doc and just barf onto the page, without having it feel like I'm pulling out my own teeth.