Hurdles

If you had told me five years ago, while I was buried deep in a high school life I hated, that I would someday be delivering a three hour lecture, I would have probably run in terror. Nonetheless, that’s what I did last week and, in my opinion, I think I did a pretty decent job of it. True, I had been prepping for weeks. I read multiple books on the subject, sifted through a stack of articles, watched tapes, consulted professors. In the end, though, it all came together and if I stuttered through parts of it, my speech was mostly unobstructed.

Great, you may say, but what does this have to do with writing? Well see, for the past month of so, this lecture has been my life (not entirely true: I did have a couple of midterms in there to jazz things up a bit). Every spare moment I had was devoted to highlighting and post-it notes and scrapped outlines. I put in twelve-hour days at school, which I hadn’t done since the beloved tech weeks back in drama. I talked about Salvador Minuchin to anyone who would listen. And now it’s done.

I came home last Thursday night after a celebratory dinner with my boyfriend and collapsed in front of my desk, staring at the computer screen. My desktop was littered with versions of the powerpoint, stray articles, an occasional client write up. I cleared these away and stared at the aurora borealis image. It was only nine o’clock and I had no idea what to do with the next hour before I went to bed. What did I used to do with free time? Oh yeah, I would work on this story thing…

That settled it, to youtube I went. After a few minutes, I started twitching. There was a textbook next to me; surely I should be reading it. But no, I had already read the chapter for our next class. I had completed my observations for the week, prepared for the upcoming role play, and now the monstrous presentation was over. Around this point it occurred to me that I no longer know how to waste time.

I opened up my file hesitantly, the one called Aya’s Wings. I had left off in such an inconvenient place: Amarinne fighting against Karied’s flattery as Emins and Najerie return from their disastrous bout of equestrianism. Well, what happens next? Of course I knew; I knew all along. I began to write, a word or two at a time, as though afraid of picking up speed and not being able to stop. After about a page, I was drained, but I had written for the first time in weeks. I closed the file, fell into bed, and slept until the alarm went off at 5:30 to wake me up for work.

It was a little victory, but a victory all the same.

-Melissa

Posted in: life,writing