Sometimes I have trouble sleeping so I listen to British news all night. I find their silly voices soothing and boring, and I drift in and out of sleep and have dumb hybrid half-dreams where I’m a Ukrainian soldier whose cat named Cindy Lou Who (my cat’s name) is bitching for food in the middle of the night. It’s a living.
I can’t imagine what the radio did to prompt the excellent dream I had the other night. I think I dreamed I wrote a children’s book about a small elephant who ran around Washington DC stealing cherry soda. It’s possible I also just dreamed about the elephant and added the “wrote a book about” part upon waking to somehow make it about me. Either way, what a delightful concept.
Like all decent cat owners I have fun inventing stories about Louie. She is usually some kind of shady small businesswoman or detective. I considered writing about her fake adventures years ago but decided against it mostly out of laziness but also because I love children’s books and dread being the sort of failed writer who makes disrespectful assumptions about how easy it must be to crap out a couple hundred words about, say, an elephant who steals soda.
I don’t consider myself a failed writer, by the way. I’m not a very ambitious or competitive person, and I understand how talent and math work. I’m pretty good at writing and have had a handful of small to medium successes with it in fits and starts through the years. That’s pretty successful! Plus hey who knows, maybe next year’s my year to win a pulitzer. It could happen. It was never likely of course and I didn’t spend a lot of energy thinking about it, but in the darker days it was a comforting daydream about something that wasn’t technically impossible.
The thing is, though, I stumbled the wrong way out of the New Republik soft opening last January in a literal blizzard and I got frostbite on both hands. I was hospitalized for 4 or 5 days and I don’t think I was out of the woods amputation-wise until the last wound finally closed up sometime in April or christ possibly May. But I made it—all my fingers are intact and look 90 percent normal and work 90 percent normal. I have good insurance and a great wife who got me to the ER in time, and I got lucky. But the bitch of it is the two lingering effects 10 months later are stiffness, which who cares, that’s just like early onset arthritis; and intense fingertip sensitivity. I can do basically everything fine except type.
It’s cruel. I can edit drug company marketing bullshit just fine all day, because that’s only using a mouse and typing curtly, plus they pay me and work is supposed to suck anyway. But to get into a good recreational ramble after hours was out of the question, I thought until just now when I actually forced myself to try it. Turns out the barrier is largely psychological. It hurts but I can fight through it and I wasn’t sure I could, and I guess I was afraid to try, because if it didn’t work then I had to officially give back that part of my identity or mission, what have you. I only ever wanted to be a writer and as great good fortune would have it I am one.
I was delighted when I saw your name in my inbox. Drunkspin turned me on to to craft beer and now (a decade? and who knows how many Two Hearted’s) or so later I still think it’s the most fun I’ve had reading about beer. Glad you made it out the other side and you’re back at it because you’re a helluva writer man.
Thanks for sharing this, Will. I'm really glad your recovery from the injury is moving forward. Your charm and good humor sometimes mask the seriousness of the situation, but I've always admired your talented prose and I am glad you are getting back on the keys occasionally, working through all the attendant issues. Nice to see another post here. Enjoy the holidays and I will see you around the hood.