My headaches have not cooperated in my quest to get back into this writing thing (pronounced qui-tig bit-writ). Today was (according to my off-the-cuff calculations) the official first day of the rainy season in Seattle. The forecast for the rest of the week is wet and showery, which means it’s almost time for me to light the fireplace. (It’s still not cold enough yet.) The sun has been annoying me the last few weeks, and I’m glad it’s going away for a few seasons. While I’m sure I’ll change my tune in a few weeks, it’s nice to wake up to dark and wet mornings, where I can turn over and sleep for another hour (especially when that sleep involved holding the incredibly warm Doolies).

After dropping Doolies off at the airport (she’s not going home yet, don’t worry, I wouldn’t let her escape that easily; she’s visiting San Francisco where she will receive yet another award for being a wonderful medical resident, and where I will meet her tomorrow night), I returned home (fighting through a terrible, rush hour traffic snarl), and went for a refreshing run in the rain. It was the furthest and fastest I’ve gone since beginning my twice-weekly run (I never intended to run so infrequently, but that’s about what I’ve been averaging). After I returned, rainy and sweaty, I warmed up last night’s leftover soup (it’s nice having a reason to cook meals) and showered. I just finished the dishes from my dinner, and I’m curling up with my computer on the warm couch typing words again.

It’s nice to do this again. All day, I’ve wanted to write. Fighting through traffic to get home from the airport was the worst part. I had all this creative energy looking for an outlet, and yet the other cars on the road would not cooperate. I went for a jog because the energy had built to such a fevered pitch that I had either to run or bang my head against the wall to relieve the energy.

Today was the first real P.H.D. I’ve had. While I haven’t had headaches every day, I have had headaches at least every other day over the last two weeks. Most disappointingly, the interspersed headache-free days have not resulted in P.H.D.’s. That is, until today. I spiced my today’s P.H.D. with a tasty Americano in the afternoon. The spice was what drove the creative energies from before, and now I’m trying to foster the remnants to write a few words. After not writing for a few days, I’m feeling rusty, like I have to force these words onto the page to say anything.

As usual when I’m not writing, I spend a lot of time thinking of inspirations. This week’s: write about the unexpected and wonderful. A couple of days ago, after poorly spacing our Netflix watching and finding ourselves with no movies to watch, we popped in and watched the first half of “Garden State,” the wonderfully wicked Zach Brach movie. That’s what got me thinking about the unexpected and wonderful. Every character and scene in his movie fit that description, from his antidepressant drugged main character, to his eccentric New Jersey friends. It took what could have been an ordinary story and made it extraordinary by thinking beyond the obvious and reaching for the unexpected.

I do love to blather about other people’s work. Speaking of my own work, the story I was working on before the headache hurricane is now officially dead. It is neither wonderful nor unexpected. It is trite, poorly written, and uninteresting. Such is the fate of most of my work. I might return to it when I have fresh ideas or when I throw together a workable outline, but part of the reason I’ve not written in a while has been because I’ve been digging myself deeper and deeper holes, which I couldn’t climb out of. I see the lifeline and it involves me moving on to something different. November is only a month away now, and I have to start revving up for the Marathon, which is a terribly scary thought.

As for now, I’ve written for a good twenty minutes the above dribble (or is it drivel?), and I think that’s a good start to easing me back into putting letters together to form words. Tomorrow, I’ll try to work on paragraphs, and maybe by this weekend (when I’m safely ensconced in San Francisco’s hilly streets), I’ll be able to think about storyizing again.