Picture a drum cymbal, delicately balanced upon a point, say, a pencil tip. This represents my general mental stability. Without any external force, the cymbal remains unmoving. This is me in a vacuum, a sensory deprivation chamber of sorts, without anything to shift my head in any way. But of course, I don’t live in a vacuum. Instead, I live in a world constantly shifting and changing, and with those shifts, my head shifts. Writing is a way to help maintain equilibrium. Not in a padded room sort of way. Simply, in the way that other people may watch TV or exercise or read a book to maintain that equilibrium. But when I write something, despite the intentions to establish a stasis, the writing itself throws the cymbal off balance. Every word, every realized concept and idea, moves the cymbal. The more I write, the more the cymbal teeters further…
