I don't enjoy being home. It just isn't my venue. I know most people get all dewy-eyed about childhood memories, and sigh about how great it would be to be a kid again- not me. Go back to letting someone else make all my decisions? No, thanks just the same.
I spent most of my childhood in other worlds, which is to say, deep inside my head. Well, mine and my sister's. Since we shared a lot of games, it's fair to say we spent a good deal of time in each other's heads. Being back in Skunk Hollow (yes, we named our house- get over it) has a tendency to bring back that general feeling and mindset. It feels like this (A) I have no control over what happens to me (B) Why bother trying at anything? (C) This is boring. You can imagine up a life way better than this.---It starts with a sort of catatonia, where I spend all my time reading and watching movies, and the next thing I know, I'm hearing voices- it's called writing. I start writing in every spare moment, chapters come flying from my fingers, and I've got characters prancing around in my dreams. That would all be very well, except that it also means I stop communicating with the outside world. My college friends call it Irene's Dark Place. In extreme situations, I stop answering my phone or going online at all.
So where do featherduster bugs come into this? Patience, my friends.
I don't know the proper name for these tiny beasties, and I've never seen them outside of New England in the autumn, which suggests that in other seasons, they're probably not so flamboyant. But in autumn, they are a vibrant blue-purple that stands out dramatically against our famous red and yellow foliage, despite the fact that these bugs are about the size of a pin head. They have diamond-shaped, translucent wings that sit at the same angle as a butterfly's, and my favorite characteristic, they have a tuft of feathery white stuff that puffs out from their backsides as though they were wearing tutus. They float complacently on the air currents, and are extremely easy to catch, with a slow swipe of one hand. From there, they will crawl to the highest point of your hand, just like a lightning bug, and take off again.
I like them. That was probably becoming obvious. To me, featherduster bugs are a reminder of the ridiculous in the midst of the mundane. They also remind me of all the things I haven't seen. After releasing a featherduster bug, my feet are that much itchier to leave Massachusetts (and it isn't athlete's foot- I checked). But you can't completely trust the featherdusters to get my butt in gear. They also bring out the chatty side in my characters. See, I write for the same reason I travel- to meet new people, see new places, and do things I've never done. Sometimes the featherdusters just drive me further into my head.
In conclusion, for those of you who haven't read between the lines, I'm having a bit of trouble with Liftoff. Mostly, it's decision-making that stumps me. And not wanting to see my money go away... I need to make sure that after my adventure, I still have the funds to come back and survive until my next paycheck. Not as easy to achieve as it is to type.
So this isn't so much an update of my activities as it is a bit of insight into my mindset. Because this is what happens when I come back- I start thinking, instead of doing, which is a maddening cycle to get into. Grrargh.
This is the dog who sits in my lap and gives me the "Rubbing my belly is more important than going away and leaving me" look. Hard
to withstand sometimes.
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