Ok. I’ll admit it. I quit working at 3 yesterday. How opulent and lazy is that? I was toast. My nerves were gone. That happens sometimes when art becomes commercial. Funny the two things just don’t seem to have anything in common but some how they do. Thing is my “art” brain can never wrap itself about the commercial concept of “deadlines” or “perceived deadlines”. Sure, I can do it. But creativity on a dead line is like a walking race. It just doesn’t feel right. Yeah, I do love it, but it’s tense. Imagine trying to choose the most beautiful blue you can think of, And having to do it in less than a minute. Ahhhh. . .

So I go a bit haywire. I get the task done through sheer will and anxiety. Left and right brain do strange bloody battles as I work. When the task is done. I simply go mind bogglingly crazy. Loony. I have so much pent up energy I feel as if my deeply seeded fear of spontaneous combustion is finally going to come true. I pity the poor folks who have to cope with me when I’ve reached that end. I mean they can’t really tie me up. So they just tend to fade back and let me go. I mean, I don’t keep valium around the house and something needs to be done.

Corona happens to be just like valium. You just have to increase the dose to match the effect. It only took moments from me hitting the last sent button to zip out my completed work before I had my first liquid sedative popped. In only seconds more I was up and dancing around my office while “The Darkness” in glass shattering volume, were rolling through their most Spinal Tap-esqe song “Knockers”. Good follow up to my last two posts right? Well, I am multi-faceted after all! Like most humans I can move from the intellectual to the crass in no time flat. And when you’re stressed out and feeling crazy there is nothing like wildly dancing by yourself in your office while someone sings;

Odd how even when I’m rockin’ out to pure cheap, lusty, rock and roll I’m still finding songs about inadequacy. I’m sure I’m going to have to talk to some Freud wannabe about that one day.

Within an hour I’d mastered 3 bottles. By the second hour I’d moved on to number 6 and had been through the most high volume music I could find from Cake, Nirvana, Cheap Trick, Flogging Molly, Brad Sucks, Foo Fighters, Ani DiFranco, Duran Duran and everything else in between. My window was open and the cool winter air was rolling the the office and I was dancing myself into a crazy sopping sweat. I even managed to unintelligibly answer a couple emails in the midst of my frenzy. Hopefully the recipients just went, “Ah, derrick, yeah we’ll try this again tomorrow. . .”

Thing is, if I’m drinking I have to keep jamming. Otherwise before long I’ll end up offering to anyone in the audience “Derricks Introductory Lectures to the Injustices of the World and Varied Shades of Grey Solutions”. Most prefer my dancing. And that says a lot!

Being 41, by the time ten-o’clock rolled around I had burnt out exhausted on the living room floor. I went from dancing to “Alien Ant Farm” to watching an episode of “Jonathon Creek”. I passed out with some joy. Then, being a parent it was not long before I found myself sitting up with a coughing child watching Scooby Doo in a dark living room hoping he could find a way to get back to sleep.

Well, that brings us right here doesn’t it!? As I write this Beethoven’s Sonata in C Minor plays quietly in the background. I’m wondering if I have the energy to go to the pool. I wondering if all the stress of yesterday paid off. I wonder why I don’t get a real job. . .

There’s your little window in to life with derrick. . .