Hittin' the Road

I'm getting up at the crack of dawn Sunday morning and hitting the road, heading out to AZ to visit the fam. I'll be there all week.

This'll be my first big ride since getting the motorcycle, about 300 miles. My parents are nervous - as parents will be - but I'm fine. It's about the same distance from Chicago to SIU. The first time I drove down to Carbondale, it was an epic journey, like I was taking the Ring to Mount Doom. But by my senior year, I was cracking that drive out whenever I felt like it, no big deal. I have a feeling it'll be the same with LA-Phoenix... tomorrow's gonna be something huge, and after that it'll just be a drive.

I'm looking forward to this trip for more reasons than one. It's been very busy at the day job... all good stuff, but still. And concurrently I've been slamming between two big writing projects, jumping from one to the next as notes came in. Again, I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it, and I'm really excited about both projects, but I was red-lining myself for a while there.

With both titles turned in, I tried to do what I usually do... jump straight into something else. Nothing came... or, at least, nothing I liked. I was hating everything I wrote, which just made me more pissed, and more unable to get anything going. I finally just threw the project on the roof; I'll climb up and get it down if anything cool comes to mind. But I ain't gonna force it.

Because... y'know how green types will say the first sign of a bad environment is how it affects frogs? I guess because they breathe through their skin, and they're the most sensitive to pollution. Point is: the writing is the closest thing to my soul, scripts are the frogs in my swamp, and when I start having trouble in that arena, I know something's chewing on the back of my head.

It's likely I just need to plug myself back in the wall and recharge. I usually keep myself even by scheduling in down time... a few hours playing Left 4 Dead here, grabbing a few beers there, etc. Though - I've been slamming so hard since '09 started, I'm feeling like I have to throw a switch and just shut the whole damn machine down for a while, let it cool off. I'm shipping my laptop out so I can write in AZ, but I'm not gonna pressure myself for results. I'll likely hit some rewrites I've been meaning to get to for a while: PAR FOR COURSE, DEMON, etc.

A week with the fam couldn't have come at a better time. And there's no better way to get there than six hours riding across the desert, with nothing but sand, wind, speed and my thoughts.