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I’m still thinking about immersion. Mainly because it feels so monumentally difficult, these days. Not that it’s so hard to be swept up in someone’s story. (It can be challenging, making time to read, but I do it, and I’ve gotten better at it now that my daughter’s older.) I mean another kind of immersion: the immersion I have to achieve in my own head, if I’m going to make the writing happen.
Some days – many days – that kind of immersion feels impossible.
Would it be easier, if I couldn’t remember what it used to be like? How it felt to have this power, to be somewhere else, right in the middle of an adventure, at a moment’s notice? I used to carry my writing everywhere, always working on the latest project, always one foot in the door, ducking in, ducking out – ducking back in, then diving in, wholehearted, whenever I could.
Now it’s like . . . every time I turn around, the door’s closed again. And it’s locked. And I’m stuck turning all my pockets inside out, swearing the key has to be here somewhere.
I never needed a key before.
But then, I’ve never had a child before. There are . . . a thousand really good reasons not to get lost in another world, right now. It’s hard to run off on an adventure when so much of your brain is going, But what about your kid?!
I can forget the dishes, the laundry, the hedges, the garden, the bathroom mirrors, and my own lunch. But my daughter? She makes me forget about the stories, in a way I didn’t think possible until she existed.
[Pauses blog post to get child dressed, comes up from retrieving clean clothes out of the dryer to find child on top of the desk, asking questions about what she finds on the shelves and kicking over the coffee cup on her way down.]
Point being, writing is a struggle where it used to be a joy, and sinking into the words no longer feels like a fantastical journey; it’s more like . . . running away. Shirking responsibility. And I want to believe this will change, over time, but I don’t know, anymore. Maybe this is just the way it is, now. The way I am.
I guess we’ll see. Maybe I’ll find that key – maybe someday I won’t need it. Until then . . .
Onward.