Sanctuary of Almost

So many afternoons spent in coffee shops, promising myself I’d write, but never etching a single word. I believed the café would be the key: that somehow the right atmosphere would unlock something dormant inside me.

Turns out, living in a prison of anxiety does a spectacular job of keeping the creative process under maximum security. So I had to engineer an escape plan. In a way, it was literal.

This was long before laptop nomads colonized every corner table, though I’d later discover the centuries-old tradition of writers seeking refuge in cafés and pubs. I knew nothing of that lineage then. I just needed somewhere to sit and think about writing, and occasionally even do it. Anywhere but home.

I’d stock up on notebooks and migrate to these aroma-filled sanctuaries, hoping to ditch the gravitational pull of my depressing apartment and focus solely on thoughts and words. Mostly thoughts. Very few words. But between the daydreams and distractions, a handful would occasionally spill out.

The progress never looked like progress. But hell, it was. Maybe all of it (the apparent complacency, the surface-level stagnation) was just forward motion in disguise, a slow crawl toward getting words on the page.

Twenty Years Later

I’m still here. Not much further along, but carrying some personal victories. Closer to my dream than I was back then, even if that’s delusion talking. There’s not much difference between reality and fantasy for a mind that ping-pongs between hope and despair.

I didn’t dream my way into the stories I was trying to write. That would have required actual work: pen meeting paper. Daydreaming was just intermission from the loneliness, failure, and boredom that seemed to rent every available space in my head.

But every so often, I’d snap back. The moment would arrive when I’d drag my gaze away from some hypnotic tree branch outside the window, or the barista I was too shy to talk to beyond ordering my sugar-drenched disaster of a coffee, and finally focus on the page.

Then, like turning a faucet, it would flow.

Not always. Sometimes the faucet was rusted shut, and the idea of committing to words felt like prying open a door that hadn’t moved in years. The weight of that commitment was crushing for a brain already drowning in existential misery (most of which, let’s face it, I’d earned).

But when it came, it came. And there was something about it that felt like channeling forces beyond myself. Looking back, I’m less convinced about the cosmic muse business. Maybe it was just conscious and subconscious minds swirling together in their own beautiful chaos, responsible for whatever ended up on the page.

The Slow Improvement

It’s gotten better over time. Maybe the higher powers deserve some credit now. Not sure I’m ready to give it to them though. After all, I’m the one who slogged through that never-ending shitstorm of a life.

But lately, the victories feel more genuine. Even if they’re still buried neck-deep in depression.

Ah, that word again.