Way (way, way) back in the day I used to play a lot of sports. I liked playing sports for two reasons: 1) Girls would talk to me, and 2) The “zone.” In sports, the “zone” is where you’re tuned in with (not “to,” “with”) everything around you, it’s something that expands far beyond consciousness where there’s an awareness and exquisite focus of everything happening in the moment along with a fluid, effortless grace and power of physical and mental ability.

For a boy growing up in a Catholic family at a Catholic school it was, simply, transcendence – a kind of partaking in communion with God (and as close to Godly as a human being – well, at least this 16-year-old kid – could get).

That “zone” feeling was addictive.

I’ve found a very similar “zone” in writing, but it’s one I find very disturbing. I’m still connected with a world in the same way I was when I played sports, but with writing it’s a world of my own creation – a world that I am both physically and mentally connected with, but one that is, in this world – the real world – purely mental.

This has two very troubling consequences.

The first isn’t so horrible – I spend a lot of time by myself, and when I’m by myself I can sit, hour upon hour, engaged with people and places and objects (while trying to get it down on pixels) without realizing that any time has, in the real world, passed. When I have no pressing issues in this world I find losing those hours (and, sometimes, days) not entirely unpleasant (and still most definitely as addictive as that other “zone”). It’s a little freaky when it happens, but most definitely nifty, and since no one gets hurt, well, no harm no foul.

It’s when I’m not actively trying to write – when I’m out for a walk with Her, or at dinner with family, or at a hockey game with friends – and the world I created keeps popping into my head, inexorably pulling at my attention (demanding that I partake of it, if you will) that it gets downright unsettling. Not only is that world dragging me – not exactly kicking and screaming, mind you – into it, but it’s dragging me away from all the wonderful people and experiences that I have the good fortune to be surrounded by.

I once got to ask one of my favorite authors what it was like to be a writer, he responded with, “Lonely.” At the time I thought it was a horribly unfair and just-plain-mean answer – here was a talented, rich and famous man surrounded by people who adored him and his creativity. A man who created and populated entire worlds – entire universes! – with interesting, fun characters. A man who got to visit these worlds in his head whenever he wanted. How could he be lonely?

It’s because those fucking worlds drew him away from the amazing fantastic stupendous people and places around him.

I’ve got this little, niggling itch of an idea about how football is so much like religion and why so many churches seem to embrace the concept of the Super Bowl party, but this itch, it’s one of those itches. If I start paying too much attention to it I won’t be back until 11pm with a rumbling tummy, blinking distractedly into Her eyes, trying to figure out why I’d spent the last hours of my life with quarterbacks and priests at a kegger instead of going with Her to see one of those free French films at the Student Union.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for not writing, what’s yours?

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This blog powered by a splitting headache caused by too many hours staring at a computer screen pushing pixels about instead of doing something productive, or, failing that, just going outside and getting some fresh air.

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