Doing the Write Thing

I'm sitting here in a Caribou on Wabash and 8th street and trying to think of what to do, what to write. There are escapee writers from the annual AWP conference crawling all over the coffee shop and everyone is networking and strategizing and planning and selling and schmoozing and handing out business cards all over the place, all of this while buzzing on caffeine and the intoxication that washes over a group of nerds who usually work in solitary spaces when they suddenly encounter thousands of their own kind in the marble and carpeted Hilton in downtown Chicago. There are a lot of fragile egos all over the place.

Including mine, of course. Fragile ego, fragile sense of stability, fragile first foot-hold in this new world I want to become my life. 

And I want to throw up a little. 

Perhaps it is just the overstimulation and overcaffeination, but suddenly I feel like everything must happen now--my writing needs to hit the pages now--I need to find ways to fund my life through grants now--I need to make all of these connections with people now. Not tomorrow. Not next year. It must all occur now.

And yet, much as I compelled to figure it all out now, I find my wheels are spinning. Do I get my stories in shape to send out? Do I search for viable grant sources? Do I start adding bunches of people to my facebook account? Do I update my resume? Start a website? Update my blog?

The process overwhelms me. 

And yet--what I have chosen to do, with this list before me and only 40% of my battery available on my laptop, what I have chosen to do with my precious time is write on my blog. My shoulders are dropping back into their normal place. My breathing is slowing. My stomach is unclenching. 

And suddenly, now, as I am writing this, ignoring the tweeded-out writers that are chatting and scribbling around me, watching my fingers click over the keyboard, and watching letters form on the screen, I am understanding that this is a good sign. I am meant to write. Writing brings me clarity and relief and release from the insanity that is my life--my lack of routine, funding, constant companion, stable career, and on and on. I can come back to the writing for sanity. I can come back to the screen and find solace. 

Here, now, in the Caribou on 8th and Wabash, I am starting to feel like myself again. I am starting to calm down. I no longer want to throw up. I have no idea how I will go from wannabe-writer to Writer with a capital W, but I think I must be on the write track.