And now, a return to your regular viewing

I can safely say from August 9th through until today (September 5th, I note), I have done next to nothing productive. I actually went away during that time, and should have had normal internet to retain contact and updates, but just a fluke of location made the connection non-viable. Aside from that, with my cat dying, and being hit by the most god-awful case of influenza, I just lost a lot of time in the past month.

I have glimmers of awareness that I am, in fact, rejoining the land of the living. I can stay awake for most of the day! For a while there, I was actually sleeping some obscene amount, over 20 hours a day. That is unheard of in my life, so there’s some gauge for the severity of my illness and despair. I’m also hungry. You can always tell that I’m on my way back to good health when eating becomes a priority again.

With my experiences to reflect upon, I have come to terms with the fact that I have absolutely no way to focus on my writing whenever I go away. I take my equipment, I intend on using spare time to keep working, and it NEVER happens. Ever. So I accept that I am not an out-of-house writer.

It was a surreal feeling to truly quantify how long it had been since I was even mentally in my story world. I considered this while I was still pretty ill and prone to sleeping all day, so the thoughts were kind of hazy. I was actually wondering what I used to do, before all this, before the month. Who was I? What was important? It was like my characters were under an invisibility cloak, and I had suddenly realised the room was very empty. So I searched, and I came across an anomaly in all that blankness, something from a half-remembered dream. I used to write. I have people waiting for me, stories not fully told.

It didn’t all come rushing back in some blaze of creative glory. I was probably in the middle of drifting back to sleep, but the knowledge had been released, freed from the cone of silence. I thought of names and faces I hadn’t considered for almost an entire month, of their plans and conflicts, and it was weird. Weird that I hadn’t thought of them, when they had consumed so much of my mind previously. Weird to think about them again, and not have the clarity of the constant, immediate work on their story, but also weird because there was that secret little passion tucked away with them. The one that makes me a writer. I remembered their story, and it began niggling in the back of my head. I want to read what I’ve already written, and throw myself back in. I need to.

So maybe to say I’ve rejoined the land of the living isn’t entirely honest. I’ve woken up, though. I’m here. The part of me that doesn’t just lay around and feel sad and lost is gaining ground, gently soothing back the parts which are still tired and raw. And I missed you guys. I like my collection of internet peoples, you’re all so bright and interesting! It’s nice to be aware again. I hope your month hasn’t been anything like mine.

~A