Off Track

I spend a lot of time off track. 

I can see the track with its cobblestones and open spaces, winding through seaside villages I want to visit and arriving at destinations I am keen to see.  Some days I join the traffic. I too am one of the Traveling People, doing things and going places. And then there are other days. Mondays. Thursdays. Wet days. Windy days. Forgetful and forgettable days. Or just days when I am not moving.

On those days I slump into a cafe, squeeze myself into a plastic red booth and order a stack of pancakes I don't really need. Or I am the homeless man riffling through your trash, a tin can at my feet and a sign about my neck which reads, 'Feed the hungry.' Some days I am the wrinkled woman with faded photos in my pocket who walks into a library near you and tucks herself up in the back behind last week's newspaper.

Some days I am not a writer. I am not a mother. And I am not a wife. I am barely me. 

I get angry with me about those days. So pointless, so full of wasted hours. Then, in a last bid effort to rescue some of those hours, I decide to write anyway. Right there in what ever hovel of a state I find myself, I write. Sometimes the words are as flat as me. But often the words rise up with the wings I wish I had. They are full of everything I need to tell myself and can't.

And that is the writing I have been able to publish. Not the carefully planned out, well ordered, life-is-on-track writing. But the I-am-off-track-and-daring-to-write-anyway writing. THAT is the writing I have  success with.

Now, when I am off track, I grab my lap top. I sit in the mud by the side of the track I should be on and I write. I am not afraid to write in that place. And I am not angry with me any more. Because those words are flavored with grit. They are full of girl who sometimes sits because she can't stand and sometimes writes because she speak. They are the real words that come from that deep place inside that I used to keep hidden. 

And they are the words that return to me with an editor's letter of acceptance.

Off track is nice. You meet people there. People like you, friends. Because this blog is mostly my Off Track Writing. 

So now you know.

I spend a lot of time off track.

What about you? Off track? On track? Don't care?