Now that I’m a few days into serious work on a story (notes toward which may be found here), I find myself reverting to an old habit: breaking up the intensity by jumping up every so often, wandering aimlessly through the house until, inevitably, I find myself in the kitchen. Then I end up eating something, usually not because I’m hungry, but because it’s the activity that most obviously corresponds with finding myself in a kitchen. (Needless to say, this isn’t a particularly well thought out process; I’m in something of a fugue state, largely unaware of my actions outside of what I’ve been feverishly writing.)
It strikes me that this is a good way to get fat again, fast. (Or fatter. In recent years, about 1/3 of the weight I’d lost in 2002 has crept back. It’s sneaky like that.) This is not so much an aesthetic issue as a health issue; for instance, the heavier I’ve been, the worse my asthma has been. So yeah, I’m not particularly interested in gaining weight now, even if it is something of a relief to finally be back in a decent creative groove again.
Here’s the thing. Most writers have oral fixations, right? Certainly lots of us smoke. Outside of the one month I resided with Evelina Giobbe in St. Paul, MN and was literally compelled to do so (can you say “long story”?), I never have, and I find the habit personally abhorrent (even if it wouldn’t aggravate my asthma).
Okay, so some of us drink alcohol. Certainly, I like to drink sometimes, but at this moment it’s not the most feasible habit to take up (not least of all because I’m not much interested in becoming an alcoholic).
There’s coffee, of course, but even I can only drink so much of that; as it is, I take in enough caffeine every 24 hours to kill a moose. I drink either espresso or extremely strong coffee, so it’s concentrated – consumed in smaller amounts, less frequently – and thus doesn’t really satisfy the oral fixation thing, which is a sort of weird, nagging constant. (And drinking weaker coffee in greater quantity would be yucky; drinking decaf, somehow sacrilegious.)
Well, there’s herbal tea, right? But… eh. Something about being raised (at times) in hippie houses seems to have burned me out on the phenomenon.
Water? Doable, but boring. I need something that at least offers a modicum of stimulation outside the stuff I’m writing so I don’t go nuts from it. (If you knew how complicated the piece in question is, you wouldn’t doubt this.)
Besides foods which would fatten me, that leaves… what? Chewing gum? Okay, but the problem with chewing gum is there’s nothing you have to do with your hands at the same time as you’re chewing. (Go ahead and giggle… weirdos.)
So having ruled out food, alcohol, smoking, coffee, tea, water, and chewing gum, I am left with… flossing, unless I can think of something better.
Thoughts?
