Hero Worship

     Right.
     I really need to stop writing blogs when I'm sleep deprived.
     It's doing absolutely nothing for my reputation as a sober, serious individual. And there's some guys wearing white lab coats lurking around lately, eyeing me with an unhealthy interest. It's kind of freaking me out. So let's talk books, and maybe they'll get bored and go away. They don't seem to be the reading type.
     Besides my own books, of which I am a rabid fan of (unless they're giving me back-sass, that is), I have an ever increasing stable of "never throw out" books that I will read over and over again when the desire to visit their world strikes me. They take me away to places new and bold, familiar and old, and bring me back to my world a happier, more thoughtful, insightful, peaceful, energetic person. They reveal layers of myself and the world I live in, enabling me to live my life with a wider and more comprehensive understanding of everything. The authors that create these stories? I quite frankly worship. The brains that came up with the worlds that captivate my imagination intrigue me, and I would love to have a telepathic mind-meld with them. There's really no way I could sit down and have a conversation with them--the stuttering, the drooling, and oh, the horror of the socially awkward mis-spoken statement would prompt a mad stampede to city hall for a 1000 yard restraining order. Mind meld, oh yes, that would be much safer for us all.
     But every once in a while, one of the subjects of my hero-worship tumbles off their gilded pillar, and I can never see them, or their books, the same way again. The glass has shattered, distorting the reflected glory into a hideous caricature of their former god-like status. I, meanwhile, am crushed and hurt. Betrayal of my most closely held emotions propels me to jettison every trace of their influence. Books are shoved under the bed or given away, bookmarks are burned, websites are deleted, Twitter feeds are un-followed, screen savers are uninstalled, t-shirts are heaved into the scrap pile. You see, there is no more fervent detractor than a former advocate.
     I'm not naming names, because my own personal feelings are irrelevant to the author in question. Their super-star status negates my input, for they have far too many shiny new fans, who are much louder and screechier than I ever was. My quiet devotion to their worlds, my constant support in the form of buying hardback versions of their newest book for the last 10 years--like I said, are irrelevant. The fan club that I actually shelled out $35 to become a member of--largely ignored. And that is a crying shame. Their books were good, until they rushed them and went for cheap thrills. The super-star status went right to their head, an intoxicating champagne that fizzed and bubbled until it became more important than the people that got them there. It's a shame, really. Those splinters they're going to pick up on the way down that ladder are going to sting like a bitch.
     Meanwhile, I'm in the market for a new hero. Any volunteers?
   
   

Productive Avoidance

     There seems to be a strange feedback loop going on in my head lately. "All is naught, all is imperative,"--a thought that floats through every moment of my day, a senile shaman who's had too much peyote, dancing and cackling merrily in my poor sore noggin. The significance of every thought, every action weighs heavily on me, while the utter insignificance of it floats my feet inches from the floor. It's driving me crazy, this 'forcing me to address the day moment by moment' doublethink (thank you, Mr. Orwell, for that exquisitely appropriate concept).
     So to deal with my new affliction, I've learned the sacred and mystical art of productive avoidance. A moving target is harder to hit, or so the reasoning goes. Clean the bathroom? Heck yeah! Change the water in the fish tank? You betcha! Suddenly decide to fix that length of fence line that had been peacefully falling down for five years? Sweet Georgia peaches yes! Be so tired that you want to pass out at the end of the day? That's the plan!
     And it's there that the cracks in the dam are found; the blank concrete face that I had presented to the day found riddled with fissures and rotten to the point of failure. There is nothing so tempting to circular logic than a worn down, weakly defended mind. What that evil, spinning logic keeps forgetting, though, is my secret weapon. Or cache of weapons, if there is sufficient fodder for them all to come out to play.
     My books.
     Oh yes, that was a plural stuck in there. And no, it wasn't a typo (I have plenty of those pre-edit, thankyou vry muach). There are now two and a half books bubbling in the works, one mostly to completion, the other more of a series of post-it notes and scribbled notations on various scraps of flat, note-friendly mediums. They keep me busy with their worlds, and mostly out of harm's way.
     I play with my plot, scheme with my themes, fraternize and satirize with my main characters, and generally get lost within the worlds that I have created in my own head. This sets up a wave propagation of delightful harmonics, cancelling out the squallings of introspective shamans, and luring me into the hopefully peaceful slumber that I crave.
     Or sends me scrambling for note-friendly mediums to jot down a breakthrough concept that just won't wait for the morning. Either way, I consider the day productive if I can avoid spinning in circles, questioning the very reason for my existence on this wobbly globe we call home.