The True Function of Glasses

Sometimes, the hardest part about writing for me is feeling like a writer.

I work in an office doing whatever it is I do, then I drive 45+ minutes to get home at the end of the day. Sometimes I’m too tired to want to do anything when I get there, and I usually have other obligations that continue my day well past an appropriate time for falling asleep on a weeknight. I hit the sack and wake up at 5am, same as any other day, and continue the cycle.

I’ll give you a hint about what I do at my job: there is zero creative thinking involved. This is less of a hint and more of an explanation as to why I usually write when I’m at work, and why it’s hard for me to write when I get home, whether I’ve written at work or not. For eight hours per day, I sit here doing what I do without thinking creatively, or thinking at all, and when I am done here, I drive around the general Phoenix, AZ area trying to be a good friend, decent musician, caring son, and a reasonable human. There’s hardly enough time for writing when I’m too busy living.

So there are moments like earlier today when I looked at the one-word prompt for the day and all I can think about how it pertains to work or real life, and that’s the last thing I want. I have several fantasy books hidden somewhere behind the cobwebs and dust in my head, and I want nothing more than to write about a gryphon named Alastair, the Children, Old Man Ivory and his history lessons, and The Tree of Life, but when the only things that surround you are realistic, and your struggles even more so, it’s hard to imagine the sorts of things gryphon cubs think of.

I would love to describe to you the reasons why I imagine there are droughts on the earth and why the stars twinkle. Hell, I’d really love to take some time to explain what a metanoctiluca or keranuwhisp is, but by the time my mind has wrapped around them and all their implications and complications, my boss comes by and checks on my progress. Some days I don’t get to do any writing at all, and when eight hours are shot with work, the hardest thing is to transition my mind from work mode to play mode and be silly in the head.

So, in my life of everything-but-writing, it’s a wonder I can even recall a memory related to the word critical. Sometimes I feel like a weak writer or non-imaginative, but the truth is I’m trying to juggle so much in life that something needs to take the backburner. For those of you who have been so supportive of me and my writing, thank you, and I’m sorry I allow writing to fall to the wayside.

Some would say I do “too much,” but I like my life with a dash of crazy, and I get bored with my thoughts if my head is not spinning. Today, to become a writer, I put on a pair of glasses. Truth is, I don’t need my glasses, they’re just for the occasions I get tired and can’t focus my eyes, or when I know I’m going to be staring at a computer screen for the entire day. But I look sexy when I wear them, and they make me feel like I’m a step closer to being a writer. Am I developing a multiple-personality disorder by conditioning myself with glasses? Perhaps.

Hey, sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do to become the writer you want to be.