Usually when I retreat to the employee lounge at work to eat my lunch I try to read but more often than not end up taking a nap. It’s not a deep sleep but rather more of a half-waking slumber. In the past it has been a time for me to work on writing. Behind my eyes I would envision a piece of fiction that I’d been working on and imagine myself tapping out a new bit of it on the computer screen in my head.
However, this past week that hasn’t been the case. I’ve simply been napping. I’m still in my half-waking state but my mind does not conjure up any writing to be worked on. Does this mean I’ve given up on my fiction writing? Or perhaps I’m just taking a break from it? Or perhaps I’m simply too tired these days to do it? I have to say I don’t know.
But how could I not know? You ask. Excellent query. After all isn’t writing a decision that is conscious? One would think. That’s what I’ve always thought. But I’ve tried to stop writing several times in my life. Just give it up. But I’ve always returned for one reason or another. This time was not a deliberate action. I just sort of stopped one day and did not pick it up the next. Maybe I’ve just run out of fiction writing gas.
Or maybe I’m simply switching gears because I’m starting a class at the community college in a couple of weeks. Maybe I can no longer divide my time between a class and writing along with everything else that I need to do. I need to focus on one or the other, and that’s what I’ve been doing. Class hasn’t even started yet and I’m already 2 chapters deep into both of the texts that go along with the class.
I feel a sense of urgency about school these days that I did not when I was in my late teens and twenties, not long out of high school. Then there was a certain excitement about being in college. Now, there’s more a certain weight to it. It feels more like work. It’s more of a necessity than a choice.
Perhaps that was a mistake, not seeing college as a necessity back when I first went. Maybe had I viewed it that way I would have majored in something more practical, like business or computers or engineering. Who knows?
All I do know is that beginning on January 15th, every Saturday for the next sixteen weeks I have four hours of computer class. There go my Friday nights, and perhaps along with it my fiction writing, once and for all.
Aren’t I the gloomy Gus.
junkdrawer67 