A long time ago, before the days of Trump and all that has come after, I started writing. It was not a good start. My first story was literally a woman waking up from a dream sequence in the middle of act 2 of a story that wasn't really so much a story as it was an extended 'fun with the premise' bit.
Things have come a long way since then, but one thing has remained consistent for me: Writing requires both time and space. Space in my head for me to think, which means I need to make sure I am taking care of my mental well being. And physical space for me to write, which means I need to have some quiet and some gentle background music.
Some writers thrive in a noisy environment, letting the background of people living function as the white noise upon which they project the pictures of their imagination. Not me. I want stillness, where speech is not required, where thinking of anything but the story or the situation about the story is verboten. I have done my best to get that with our current living arrangements, but it has mostly not come to pass in the way I would like. Writing has almost been something that occurs despite all the difficulties surrounding it, not because I have fostered the environment for it.
Two weeks ago, my wife decided to be a complete badass and flip the script on every aspect of our lives (laudatory). I love my wife for many, many reasons but one of the biggest is how she responds to both crisis and trauma. I tend to seek solace within, either crawling within my own head and imagination or crawling within a good book / video game. I turtle, and I turtle well. It's not a bad turtling, either. I do not wallow or fester within my own ills. But it is a hunkering down, which does have a price tag all its own I know.
Enter my wife, who ties a bandana around her head and then karate chops her problems with a zealous tenacity that would shame Bruce Lee. "Oh, a problem you say?!" as she reaches for mental nun-chucks and proceeds to kiai at the whole universe. It's one of the most beautiful things about a very beautiful person, and each time she kicks it into overdrive I am smitten anew.
This latest round of butt-kickery has nearly finished and the spoils of it shall be a new home with attendant lower bills alongside a host of community perks. More space, less cost, more opportunity, less burdens, and above it all it gives us a future to work towards. I have felt more hope about what I will leave my children in the last 24 hours than I've felt in the last 24 months. She has, by all accounts, outdone even herself.
What has settled within me as the days have become weeks and the contracts have been signed and each new round of requested repairs has been approved (despite my well-meaning thoughts it wouldn't be), I have come to understand that yes, this will indeed be happening. I will once more enter a period of home stewardship. With that thought has come a host of realizations. This time I'm much older, my motivations are more clear, my desires are sharper, and my financial situation has never been more secure. I have both the means and the motivation to make things work in a way I have literally never had despite this being the third house I will own.
One word has reverberated in my head this whole time as well, and it's one I haven't even voiced to my wife despite all the benefits we have listed for this latest gambit. Space. I will have space in a way that I have never had in the whole of my life. Even with all the souls that will be packed into our home, there will be a space that I can carve out as mine. Not as a shared office, or a shared bedroom, or a shared living room. My own space. For me. Specifically. It won't be much space; a small slice of a converted attic is not exactly an office suite of my own, but it will be mine to do with as I please.
This last month has seen an outburst of writing the likes of which I have never known. Not even in the heydays of The Quill as it's own entity have I written with such abandon. And, as I always seem to do these days, I owe it all to the woman shouting 'RAWR' at the universe as loud as she can. I can't wait to see what we make of our lives in this newest adventure.
I can't wait to see what I can do with a little space and a little time.
Kiaifully,
The Unsheathed Quill