Troubled Times

I got home from my day job yesterday and found my youngest watching the TV in our room, my lad watching movies on the computer, and my beloved working on her latest jigsaw in the dinning room.

I could have kicked the lad out of the study and gone to work on an assignment (as I should have), or gathered up my laptop and gone elsewhere to write with no Internet distractions. I could have opened a book and spent a few hours reading in quiet solitude.

What did I do?

I played golf!

After saying I wouldn't, I did. I took the easy option of not upsetting the household, or at least one of my children's activities, and moving into the unoccupied lounge room and turning on the Wii. I could have gone in there and written or read, but no, I played golf!

Could it be that my writing is reaching a crisis point now summer is returning?

Is there a battle of wills going on that I'm just a spectator to, or worse, not aware of at all?

I can see the opponents circling in a dark and smoky cellar. In the red corner stands a man cloaked in shadow, his dark oily hair obscuring a third of his face. He shrugs his shoulders allowing the black satin robe to pool on the canvass at his feet.

He is huge.

Muscles barely restrained by olive coloured skin. Dark purple veins pulsing just beneath the sheen of oil and sweat that coats his body. He looks up, the single naked bulb over hanging the square ring is reflected in the one red eye not covered by his hair.

In the blue corner is a thin little man in a white shirt and suspenders. His pants waistband is closer to his armpits than his waist. He pushes his thick horn-rimmed glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose and adjusts the pencil protection pouch in his shirt pocket.

The bell rings.

I sit on the only available chair, my hands slick with a cold sweat. The brute of my past charges toward my writer of today. He wants back in the limelight; he wants to stretch his long disused muscles.

My writer, sways deftly under the rain of haymaker blows, each capable of removing his over-sized head from his scrawny neck.

They pause and step back from the conflict. They turn toward me.

They want me to decide. The battle will rage forever, and may never be fully concluded, but they need me to make a decision.

I look around me, casting desperate glances of hopes into the gathering gloom. The bulb overhead flares and explodes. Darkness is now absolute.

I hear something coming closer. It's my past. I recognise the stench of long days in the hot summer sun, too much exercise, and pushing past the limits of an aging body.

Hands rest softly on my shoulders. I flinch but they're firm and hold me in place. A timid voice whispers in my ear. "Take your time. You can still have us both for now. You still need to exercise your inner demons, but don't neglect me or I may not be able to stay."

It's the voice of reason and creativity I can hear; it's the voice of my inner writer.

I can do both. I can enjoy my family, my sport--even my mucking around on game consoles, as long as I do it in moderation and set sometime apart for writing. That time must not be tomorrow because tomorrow never seems to get here.

Tonight!

Tonight, I write!