stamina

I learned something about myself last week. After five full days presenting in AR, an unexpected overnight flight delay, and a longer than normal teaching day on Saturday, I came home and crashed on the couch. On Sunday I woke up and realized that I didn’t get a single migraine while I was away, despite the fact that I was socializing more than usual AND having cake every single day. Since quitting my job last year, I’ve averaged just one migraine per month and I attribute that to the fact that I protect my introvert self. I generally try to space my events so that I can fit in a day or two of silence and solitude. I don’t sign up for things that are too taxing, but avoidance has its drawbacks. I’m sure I’ve missed out on key opportunities because I was trying to preserve my “dream time.” And that was the lesson I learned last week—I had a great time in AR and met so many wonderful people; I made important connections and pushed myself to go on when I really wanted to run away and hide. And I did it! I fulfilled my obligations and even enjoyed being out of my comfort zone at times. But I didn’t write. At all. Not on Facebook, not here in the blog. I came home from London with 3000 words of a new novel, but I haven’t written a word since—and don’t ask me about the sequel to Wish. I’ve been home almost a week and I still haven’t got back into my writing routine, and THAT is the price I pay for living a “normal” life. I tell people that I don’t have the stamina to teach full-time like my parents did but the truth is, I simply don’t want to pay that price. I don’t want to surrender the dreamworld that feeds my writing life, and that dreamworld can’t be sustained when I’m out in the real world all the time. Yesterday I spent close to five hours on the subway and instead of grading my students’ homework I immersed myself in Sorcerer to the Crown. A very earnest boy in Conway, AR asked me how I keep coming up with ideas because he found he ran out of ideas before finishing a story. I told him that my imagination was like a sponge that needed to be soaked and wrung dry over and over again. I’m not fond of inscribing books, but I often write: “Feed your imagination, read every day.” I would run out of ideas if I didn’t walk in the garden and run in the park and head up to the Schomburg to see afrofuturistic art. I’m going to try to finish reading this novel in the next couple of days, and then I’m going to go see The Last Witch Hunter with a friend who loves Vin Diesel. I’m going to fill myself with images and ideas (and probably some scones now that it’s cold enough for tea), and then hopefully I’ll sit down and start to write…