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I was in LA last month at the Lambda Literary Foundation’s “Writers’ Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices.” For a week, every day between 8:30 am and 9 pm, I attended my non-fiction workshops and various lectures about the craft of writing and the business of marketing one’s writing, and all in the gorgeous surroundings of the American Jewish University in Bel Air, overlooking all of San Fernando Valley. It was a luminous week; every day felt purposeful, reminded me why I write, why I’ve written my book, CROSSING STYX. I returned to my home in Vancouver re-invigorated and spent several days, head down, immersed in further revisions. Then the funk hit. My revisions, for the most part, were complete, and once again I was staring at an 86,000-word manuscript that I have been writing and re-writing for six years. I’m tired. Sometimes the structures that I’ve built in my mind in order to live—go to a day job that does not feed my soul, interact with my parents and my siblings that, for the most part, do not want to hear about my life and why I write what I write—come crashing down inside and I do not know what I am doing with my life, my days, with my memoir. I’m embarrassed to admit, at 45 years old, that I feel lost, that I’m not sure about any of it. I forget what compelled me to write this book in the first place. I called in “sick” to my day job today but if I’m sick it is only in my heart that I’m unwell. The dark horse called depression is always one step behind and today it caught up, or I slowed down, and I had to remind myself to still get out of bed, to shower, shave, eat my three scrambled eggs, dry toast and coffee, go for a walk by the ocean. To at least try and look through the diffused winter fog that permeates. Some days I want to withdraw my retirement fund, the little that I’ve saved, and buy a one-day ticket to Budapest, walk the Chain Link Bridge to Buda, sit in Café Gerbeaud and drink a melange, stroll along Váci utca. I want to do what has very little to do with writing but has everything to do with living. Then I remember that no matter how much I deceive myself, think my magical thoughts, running away will not bring me what I want most to achieve. If I forget why I write, why I wrote my memoir, it’s time to stop and rest, see the trees and not stay lost in the forest. Life is everywhere. All is well.
