Nothing to see here

I’ve been camped  for almost a week in the desert and have written nearly nothing despite my constant complaint that I need to get away from people so I can focus.

And now, just as I have finally dug out the laptop and set up shop in the shade next to the van, I get a message: “Are you in Quartzsite? I am.”

He’s the father of a friend of a young friend, introduced to me awhile back with the information that he was about to travel in his van and could use a veteran vandweller’s wisdom. Well, I couldn’t turn that down so now that he’s nearby, I offer to share my camp with him. (He came all the way from Alaska — how could I not?)

Not that I won’t enjoy his company. He sounds nice enough. But I won’t be alone any more. I don’t know how I feel about that. He will be another excuse to avoid writing. Like I need excuses.

In other news, I’m still torn between writing about the San Diego/vandweller thing, or getting to work on the sequel to Green Card. Or do I have to choose? Maybe I could do both? Plus the personal essay class I’m taking?

Professional writers multitask all the time, or they’d never be able to pay the rent. Why shouldn’t I? Because I don’t trust myself to finish any one thing unless I focus on it exclusively.

I blame my mother. Her way of getting me to clean my room, or do whatever chore, was not to allow anything else until it was done. Of course, it never worked but she kept at it until she finally gave up completely.

So I have carried on the tradition all this time, long after Mom had any control over my life or activities. But she managed to inculcate the belief that I am not capable of managing more than one thing at a time, that I am not allowed to start anything until the last thing is finished. She still lives in my brain.

But I rarely finish the last thing anyway, so why not move on to the next thing and then back to the last thing when I run into an obstacle, and back-and-forth until they are both finished?

Of course, you might have noticed by now that I’m not doing either thing. This debating process, the should I or shouldn’t I, is a wonderful tool of resistance. As long as I can’t decide, I don’t have to write. How clever.

Image by cocoparisienne from Pixabay