Jackhammer

Not because I can’t, I haven’t been writing because I can’t stop. Maybe it’s that work-life balance I’ve read about, or the new garden I’m building, or my daughter’s summer classes – or the new puppy, but I haven’t sharpened my pencil for weeks now. Or run on any sentences. Or started with a conjunction.

I think I’ve just experienced a “vacation.” Not sure digging in 6x6s and driving posts, cutting sod and stretching fence is analogous to a Tahitian beach, but I’ve sat down at my desk today with a new perspective. While sweltering under the heat dome, a black sludge seemed to melt and drip off of me (likely poisoning the soil).

I had become cemented in the whole “you have to market, network, peddle, bark, cater, cower, bow” spittle of those on the outside spewing advice. I didn’t so much as try to put down my pencil as my fingers hardened around it in the chaos and confusion, and while my feet could still carry me, I walked outside and used that pencil to dig in tomatoes.

A mind in chaos is not a productive state. An artist under the whip does not create so much as they “perform,” and still, they can make magic. Imagine their potential if they are supported instead of preyed upon. Not me. I’m not preyed upon. I’m just prone to hyperbole. I am a writer after all.

So, that’s what I decided, or rather, was decided for me as an artist cannot be anything else. I simple resolved to write for myself, then polish it up for my circle of friends, publish, and move onto the next story. They never stop, the stories that is, until they are completed on paper. It’s self defense really, because when life’s accretions fall away, the muses rise up and damn, they are noisy.