Day Sixty-Five, Sixty-Six, Sixty-Seven: Down the Crisis Hole

I will confess: I did not write the day before or yesterday.

I did not look at anyone's work. I did not edit anything. I scribbled a lesson plan together that I'm still working on for this upcoming week. That's all I wrote. I wrote nothing else. I didn't read anything. Nothing.

On Friday, I felt drained. That's not the reason why  I didn't write, stay with me. On Friday, I felt drained. But Alex had a company picnic, so I donned our matching shirts and got in the car and went and walked around in the sun for four hours.

Then it was time to meet my family member for a requested dinner.

I'm not going to get into what happened, because as much as I'd like to believe that because I'm a writer, everything that happens in the lives of those around me is fair game, I just can't. The respect I have for living, breathing people outweighs the need to write a compelling blog entry.

But I will say that Alex and I didn't say goodbye to my family until 8:30 last night. That's about 26 hours.

Crisis mode means that time falls away, like when you're traveling. What day is it? What time is it? What was I supposed to be doing that I am not going to do right now? Oh forget it.

This happens when you're traveling, too. But when you're traveling, schedules slip away because you're having a good time, you're crossing into different time zones, you're being productive.

Giving of yourself to an emergency is different. It's draining. It's guilt-ridden, because you shouldn't feel drained and you should be able to do more than 26 hours.

And on top of being the one that has to be strong, you yourself are hurt, are confused, are sad.

So in these moments, we can't write.

There are a lot of things that we can write through if we absolutely must. I've even written through deaths. But when it comes to someone or a group of someones needing you and all of you, you have to step away from the imaginary, the magic, in order to be a decent human being in the Muggle world.

I will say that our Europe stuff is still packed up. Our photos are still unseen. Our souvenir gifts are still not parsed out to people. Our stories are still untold. And the last month that I've lived means nothing right now.

"We can do it later," people say, and I agree, and then there's a sick, selfish part of me that is angry. I wouldn't be angry if someone was sick. I wouldn't be angry if someone had died. But I am angry because this was human-made by a person I didn't even like nor trust, and they have thrown tar on all of our roads.

But I start a gig tomorrow. And I have to be ready for that. I still need to write. I have to get back into the swing of things today. I've got to pay bills, I've got to clean, I've got to get groceries, I've got to budget, and I've got about 25 guests and three days' worth of festivities in 40 days that need to be ready to pack up and take to Colorado.

I'm not going to get down on myself for taking a moment to help someone who wasn't a character or my career.

But today, I pick it up again.