Writing is just like yoga.  Once you get the hang of it, a few poses, the basic vocabulary to expand from in variation, it's a matter of you going and doing it, alone, at your own pace, you, your body, the wisdom of your body, the drama of bringing muscles and bone into a pose.


I liked restaurant people.  They were people you could always talk to, who always said hi to you, who would not dismiss what you were going through, if you were to share it with them, beyond the communal burdens shared.  They would be the ones to get it.

I, for a long long time, have been telling people, quietly, not upfront, or loudly, how hard the job of being a barman was, once you added it all up, the collateral damage, the hours, the strain, the way you felt the next day, mind awake, body unwilling, the constant strain of talking to people, even when they were friends.  I was a good bartender because I knew, if I was going through so much, then I would treat them gently, not speak out of turn too much.  A talky bartender, self-focussed, is irritating.  We are all guilty of it, I'm sure, but practice restraint.  If they ask you how things are going, and you go, "Oh, my old mom, she calls a lot..."  they get it.

I didn't even get it myself, 'til I was, against my wishes and will, laid off, to the extenuating circumstances of the Covid-19.

I found daylight.  I found energy, peace of mind.

I took my usual walk along the river bluff and the trees and the grass, and no, I wasn't a misanthrope for wanting to do so, but rather it was my own natural rhythm.

I read pieces of my own writing I'd not had any time to handle even.  Freedom.

It was no joke, but rather insightful, whenever people asked me about how my writing was going and I were to mention Cervantes, his years of being kidnapped, debtors prison...  or Dostoevsky and his Siberian exile...  The fancy folk with bankroll, they wouldn't listen to long or deep to that, a subtle very polite, oh, look boy, just be quiet and do your job, if you're not going to become an actor or something more obviously useful to me in a way I don't feel guilty about...

I exaggerate.  But those were the pains.  You cannot dismiss them.  I've lived through them, so far.  It's not my own fault, nor my habits, that the job was rough that way, in all ways.  A real damper on life.