Reaching for the Safety Net

January 15, 2013 by Cassidy Frazee | 6 Comments

The cold is here.  I’ve been up since about 3:30 with the chilled and slight fever, and the body feels as if someone has been hitting me, over and over, with a pool cue.  Good times not, I can attest.

Last night was the first in a very long time that I didn’t write.  I didn’t even bring up Scrivener, which I will do even if I’m not feeling good, because there is always the inclination to write something.  That’s how dead I was feeling last night:  no energy last night at all.

It was a good night to just play with things, to try and think my way out of situations in stories, or figure out where some stuff might go if I were to follow other story lines.

Still, the brain didn’t want to function.  I would get into a thought, then lose my track at some point, and be completely lost. Then I would start over . . .

It feels as if my mind has lost all it’s forward drive.  Part of this comes from an argument I had with someone on Sunday, an discussion that allowed the other person to suck energy from me like a sponge sucks up water.  It was something I shouldn’t have done, because said person has always had the ability to suck energy.  We learn by our mistakes, right?  I could play this cold at their feet, too, but that would be pushing things too far–unless, of course, they did some work on Captain Trips a few decades before.

I learned a while back not to dwell on things that don’t bring me peace, that don’t allow me to grow as a person.  Where my writing is concerned I usually blow off comments, because, as I’ve mentioned before, non-creative people don’t get us.  We’re viewed as something almost freakish, driven to do things that others see as frivolous, or worse, time wasting.

We need something to fall back on now and then.  Some people turn to friends; others turn to reading; others go off and do something that still allows them to engage their brains while slipping away from the things that maybe be bringing them down in just the slightest way.

I used to go out at night and drive when I needed to get away.  I’d roll down the windows and get on a highway at eleven o’clock at night, and start driving, just me and the stars, and what few cars were on the highway with me.  I’d drive and I’d think.  Sometimes it was about stories, sometimes it was about other things in my life.  Sometimes I’d let my fantasies play out in my head, let them run wild like kittens looking for food.

Even when things were at their worse, it was always a good time to get out and do some night roaming.  It was my safety net, my way of decompressing.

I don’t get out that much any more.  The only driving I do these days is to and from work these days, with an occasional midnight drive.  I miss being out on the road late at night–

Doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the night.

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