Homecoming
It's good to be home again. Settling back in was a blur of grocery runs, laundry, and oddly timed naps as my body slowly came into sync with Pacific Time. Seattle is still Seattle. Yesterday we went to the waterfront park and after picking around the slippery rocks at low tide I spotted some tiny crabs and a long-abandoned limpet shell. On our way home, a guy on a double-height unicycle pedaled up the gravel incline toward the sculpture park before hopping over onto a thin concrete rail, arms out, calves churning madly like he might die if he slowed for a single second. This morning, during our morning walk a not-quite-all-there fellow stood on a street corner, jamming to music and wearing a three-foot orange traffic cone on his head. Seattle is still Seattle, and this cheers me up. The trees along Second Ave are leafy and getting greener by the day.
Getting Settled
Work is so much more comfortable with a desk and a proper chair! As much as I love our long 'snowbird' trips overseas, my writing definitely came in fits and starts these last few months. I had some mega-productive days, but plenty of zero days too. At home, it's easier to slide into a groove, and that groove exists with my butt in the same chair, and with a computer monitor I don't have to squint down at. My spirit may be seventeen but my eyeballs are every second of forty-five and getting fussier by the day.
Analog Dreams
This morning, I took my battered travelers journal and treated the leather. I pulled the shaggy, well-used pages out and replaced them with empty inserts, ready to be filled. I emptied out my sticker pouch, sharpened my pencils, and refilled my fountain pen. After two years of dithering, weighing the pros and cons, I ordered myself a dumb phone, taking one more step away from distraction in my daily routine. A smartphone is pretty much compulsory during overseas travel, but now that my world is getting small again, I have the freedom to be my weird self. Give me a paper journal, and a flip phone, and a wristwatch, and I'll be the happiest of campers.
Well, I'll see how it goes.
At risk of sounding hipster, I think it's important for artistic people to disconnect from the zeitgeist and develop a unique perspective and inner world. We need to cultivate our own minds, not live within a set of reactions to whatever happens to be trending today. Boredom is so frigging helpful, and I need to get in the habit of being bored more often. Hence, the dumb phone.
Oh, I'll still be an internet user, watching movies, reserving books from the library, and hopping online for chit-chat and buffoonery with my IRL friends and buddies on Mastodon. But at the same time, I want to shift the bulk of my day into the pre-internet, offline world, if that makes any sense. When I'm home, I like to use my physical dictionary and and offline copy of Wikipedia while I work. There's something oddly satisfying about unplugging. I can't quite put my finger on it, for in a way, it feels like a very silly idea. Yet if it works for me, why not?
Okay. It's time to slap this puppy on the blog and get back to work. Have a good one!
Into the book, I go.