Sanity

Writing keeps me sane.

My usual tradition is to read a book after finishing a first draft, before beginning on the second. This time, circumstances aren’t quite usual.

In one sense, I’m barely aware of the world. Truth is, ten years ago I saw too much, and turned my back on society in disgust. I don’t like being a negative person, but there’s really no other way for me to describe why I live like a hermit in the middle of suburbia. Heck, we even tried going off grid several years ago, but that proved to be too difficult with the resources we had.

And yet, there’s a great deal that even I can’t hide from. I feel it every time I see a face mask littering the sidewalk. I know it’s out there, lurking just outside our fence line.

It’s seemingly taken away my ability to focus on reading. I can do everything else, but whenever I sit down with a book, I can’t follow what’s happening on the pages or remember who’s who. I can only finish short novellas if I read them out loud to my children (We’re currently reading The Fairy Rebel). I end up doing some sort of fiddly craft with my hands instead.

I can’t follow my usual ritual this time around. When I don’t spend my evenings re-centering my balance and exploring my fictional world, the noise from the children during the day gets inside my head too much.

So it looks like I’ll be plowing through the second draft of Alice and the Warden without “cleansing my mental palate” first. I have to work with what I’ve got.