As per usual, it’s been a hot minute, and I have all sorts of feelings about that. Let’s shelve those for a sec and plink out an update on the keys, shall we?

The big, hulking mountain of a reason I haven’t posted here in literal years is that I haven’t had much to say about my creative life, and that sucks. I’ve been wanting to write, I’ve made starts here and there, jumped into a writing challenge or two, but I have not made significant progress on a project. There’s a draft of a zine, there’s a Scrivener project for my fantasy novel, but nothing consistent enough to get either of those to a shareable state.

That isn’t to say that I’ve done nothing. I told another story at Confabulation after more than a year away, which presented its own challenge. Food Fights took place at the Mainline Theatre, which honestly feels like home at this point, and yet I was almost bursting with nervous energy the day of the show. I decided to take an electric bixi to the venue to help burn off some of that anxiety; I arrived, changed into my performance outfit (including my traditional purple Chucks), and sipped a beer in the green room while waiting for Matt to announce the show order.

I would be going first. Holy fuck, okay. First? I was already starting to feel a little tipsy and uncertain, but I had done this before, it would be fine. I tried to listen to Matt’s story, but I established with myself a while back that there is no appreciating the story before it’s my turn. It’s just impossible. Then he introduced me, called my name, and I walked up to the mic with a practiced smile. I planted my feet, and time slowed to a crawl.

I felt this moment stretch out in a way I had never experienced before; it was a second, but my racing thoughts roared loud and threatened to overwhelm me entirely. One rang clear: if you hesitate now, you’re fucked.

So I took a breath and started my story. I went into that weird performance space where only the story exists, and everything about the experience is gone the moment it ends. I have zero cognizance of how I felt, I have no memory of anything but laughter and applause, I just know that I was in my story for the ten or so minutes it took to tell. It was amazing, and a fantastic reminder of why I do this.

Now, since my last post here, I’ve also coached a few storytellers and got to see them bring their tales to life onstage (which is also an incredible and humbling feeling). I’ve been to a few book clubs and shared a thought or two on the things we’ve read. And finally, despite my attempts to downplay it in my mind, I have posted pretty regularly on my massage blog.

Why do I downplay this? Well, because at some point I made up a rule in my head that goes something like “writing doesn’t count if it’s not creative writing.” Which is frankly ridiculous. I cannot tell you how many therapy sessions I have been in where I’ve been invited to find ways to use creative writing in my work life. It was generally pretty difficult as a call centre grunt, but in my last such job I was able to write weekly updates (en français même!) until my very last month.

Now I have a job where I am my own boss, and my primary means of letting people know that I am available for massages is by writing about my experiences and reflections. I’ve been a massage therapist for just shy of two years and I have 30 published posts. Thirty! I say to myself, “My dude, that’s WRITING!”

I still want to get moving on the creative front, and I’m seeing an art therapist to help with that. Actually, our focus is ADHD, but that’s another story for another time. I am coming up with my own writing challenges, I am working to move forward in a slow and steady fashion, and I am reminding myself that if I keep putting in the effort, I will someday be able to look back and be astounded by how much writing I have actually (accidentally?) done.