Losing the plot

I am asking myself how hard can it be just to blog every day for a month. It's BLOGGING. THERE ARE NO RULES. I could theoretically show up every day for thirty days, type "Hi", pat myself on the back and call myself a NaBloPoMo success story.

When I woke up in Seattle this morning, I started to feel bad about how hard it is for me to write when: 1. My brain filled back up with preoccupations like getting ready to catch a plane back to KY and 2. I remembered that if my personal NaBloPoMo point was to get used to writing again, I'll be fine because that's slowly happening.

Matthew and I ate at an Indian buffet with my friend Jon yesterday and I recognized something else that's slowly happening. I hadn't seen Jon in a couple of years and I described him to Matthew before we met up. Jon builds boats and theatrical sets and animal habitats at the zoo. He used to lend me his electric bike when I was in town, is going to sail to the South Pacific, and taught me to cross my eyes in a way as to ward off creeps at the bar.

I told Jon I'm tour managing now. I told him I managed Idol last summer and right now am setting up promo dates for one of the Idols who has an album coming out in a few weeks. I have been calling this promo project "something to keep me busy". I blabbered a bit more and then Jon brought up the fact that the first time I worked on the road I thought it would be cool to do because it'd be something to write about.

Ironically, that is the one thing I now cannot write about. I can't write about what happens at work because of confidentiality/legality and I'm usually too busy anyway. I stared at Jon for a minute.

"Damn." He's keeping me honest.

Because I work with a lot of Brits, the expression that comes to mind is that I've lost the plot. Which plot, though? I like my current plot. I get a huge amount of satisfaction out of work, I'm learning big things, and I'm not bored. But I LOVED writing. Jon remembers how I was in Seattle, turned on by words and ideas, with lots of time to simmer, something I don't do now.

Matthew suggested I start writing longhand again. Because I'm always on the computer, budgeting and planning, typing, talking, clicking and calculating, using my brain in a way that is pretty much the exact opposite of the slow meandering thoughtfulness, maybe I need to pick up a pen in order to simmer. Because now my brain is speeding, even in procrastination. I peek at other websites, distracting, filling up time when I could be staring into space.