Life beyond the windows and walls

This week, my thoughts are bursting with creative ideas, especially desires to write prose or compose songs. These thoughts are interspersed with the need to go outside and see nature away from the city. These count as three different things, to me: writing, music, and fresh air. I can’t report much from any of these urges yet, though, because I’ve been busy, first in recovering from last weekend’s illness, and then in just catching up on what was dropped or on the usual everyday chores. It looks like this weekend will also be full, as I’m hosting family dinner again on Sunday and will need to clean house before that, plus taxes are rapidly becoming due. I know the key is to make time for what one really wants to do. That’s always been difficult for me, though

The writing urges aren’t very focused yet. I’m trying to figure out what sort of story I would want to write or what plot or message interests me. I must admit that I don’t read much fiction, and haven’t in years, though that’s what I’d like to write. This kind of shames me. What sort of writer could I be if I don’t read much? But I have read. And I could read. I certainly see a lot of fiction in my day job, and though I can’t read much of it I do read bits and pieces. (It’s not my job to read, just crank out composed pages—you’d be surprised how well and how fast that can go if the layout is simple). It’s a self-imposed shame that is no help, of course.

As for music, the easiest thing would be to dive back into the piles of half-written songs and finish some songs. Just throw the piles on the kitchen table and sort through them with the guitar on my lap and start dinking around till something happens. I don’t think they’re unfinished because they suck. More likely it was other, non-musical reasons they were left undone. In the process of doing that, it would be very possible that a completely new song would spring up. It just needs the time set aside.

The outdoorsy urges are a different sort of thing, maybe not creative in one way but possibly so in the sense of opening myself up to something that doesn’t exist in my day-to-day life at the moment. I alluded to it recently, though it wouldn’t take a full-fledged wilderness sojourn to begin to satisfy that need. A hike in one of the metroparks or recreation areas in metro Detroit/Ann Arbor could be cool. It might not be quite as stunning as some of the photos I’ve been seeing in outdoorsy Tumblrs* I’ve seen lately, but … well, I’m from Michigan and smaller vistas have their appeal.

Ultimately, one has to make time for the things one wants to do. If it means actually getting up from the computer for once, as radical as that sounds…..

* I should do a list of these when I get home. They’re pretty cool, and for some reason I never saw many blogs with photos of wild places till I stumbled into Tumblr’s users who do this.