Balance: My Great Work

At one point last night, it was beginning to look like I would have this evening to myself. My wife and oldest child are heading out of town. My thirteen year old has a standing invite for staying over at a friend's house for most Friday nights. And for a while it was looking like the youngest might be staying over at another friend's house.

For a moment, I allowed myself to start making plans. Plans to write. Plans to do some recording. But those plans were short lived. The youngest, as it turns out, can't sleep over at that friend's house, owing to commitments the next morning.

It got me thinking about this strange love/hate relationship I have with solitude. I love to be alone for blocks of time. Three, four hours at a stretch. Usually, I like it if the solitude is accompanied by a sense of not having to do anything, rather than being filled with a 'honey-do' list of chores.

When I am working on a writing project, I will often manufacture opportunities to do just this. To run away from home so I can focus on one thing and one thing only. But, as often as not, this plan backfires on me. When I am alone, I am incredibly easily distracted. By anything. If I am the slightest bit tired, I nap. If I am hungry, I drive long distances to find food. If I am the slightest bit blocked, I watch TV or a movie. And by the time such a weekend is over, I am so in need of interaction with another human being, I wind up following my wife around the house life a cur waiting for his dinner.

I have also noticed a strange propensity in myself to engage in more antisocial activities when I am left to my own devices. When I was a drinker, if I was left alone for an evening, I would often grab something like Jack and Coke supplies, or hard cider, or pretty much anything. And I'd watch crappy, prurient movies and drink myself slurry. Other times, when I had intentionally isolated myself to write, I found myself avoiding writing, preferring to drink and/or smoke myself through a weekend.

So, although there is a part of me that craves the periods of solitude, there is a part of me that recognizes that in many cases, too much solitude would be my downfall. I could so easily turn into my mother - who drank, smoked, ate, and absorbed vapid entertainment almost continuously through the final twenty-five or so years of her life. For her, work was the only time she ever left the house and interacted with people other than her immediate family.

And since she worked at night and slept through the day, we didn't see her that much either.

I no longer drink. I no longer smoke. But if left to my own devices, I could see myself turning back to them in a heartbeat.

Trying to achieve balance between integration and isolation. That will be my great work.