Not fear of the electric chair, a torture chair, the dentist’s chair, or any other genuinely scary chair.

The fear I have been experiencing lately is fear of this very chair I am sitting in right now. The same old computer chair I have sat in for years now.

It’s not that it’s a painful or uncomfortable chair. It’s comfortable enough for a cheap computer chair. It gets the job done. It keeps my ass off the fllor and my hands in reach of the keyboard.

And nothing particularly bad has happened to me in this chair. Unless you count wasting your entire adult life sitting in chairs like this one playing video games bad.

But hey, that doesn’t count right?

No, I just seem to have developed an aversion to sitting down here lately. When I think about it, a part of me just plain screams. It is strange, and highly distressing. This chair is where I work and play and live. If I don’t sit here, I don’t know what else to do with myself.

And that, perhaps, is the problem.

I am thinking that maybe my recent book writing experience awoke a high level of awareness in me, and as part of that increased awareness has come in the form of being aware of just how unhappy I am with my tiny cage of a life, and how I crave release, but release cannot come because it’s a cage entirely of my own devising.

It is a cage of fear, deep down animal fear, and until the fear goes, the cage stays.

But there has been a part of me that doesn’t want to be here for a long, long time. I have kept that part suppressed because, well, if you have no faith that the cage door will ever open, what use is a part of you that wants to escape except to make you even more miserable than you already are?

Of course, it’s not that simple. You can shove emotions out of your consciousness, but that does not remove them from your mind. They are still there. You just shoved them in a closet and pretended you couldn’t hear them screaming to get out.

And the longer you lock them up and refuse to deal with them, the louder they get, and the more of your life and your mind it takes to keep them in there.

My closet is quite, quite full. I think perhaps part of the peace and happiness I felt during my book writing was that, for a while, that closet had a lot less in it than usual. Writing like hell for hours on end was actually enough to drain me to the point where I could get some peace in this dramatic electric psychedelic warzone hat is my mental neighborhood.

A lot of things are born here and then just left to run around in the ghetto of my mind.

My mind is filled with feral mutant bastards who will never find the way out.

I also seem to be going through a low point in my faith in myself as a talented writer. I don’t worry about this too much. I am learning to accept that this is simply how it goes when you are an artist. You go through highs where you think you are brilliant and lows where you think you suck, and if you can hang in there and not give up during the slows, then you can can see that they as just part of the process of improving as an artist. You reach a certain level in your growth, and for a while, you are happy and impressed with that level, but then eventually, you start looking for a still higher level…. the next rung up, so to speak… and the process of reaching for that next rung involves growing discontent with the rung you are on.

So I will swing back up, sooner or later. It is a brutal process in many ways, and it is no wonder that a lot of is creative types end up getting off this crazy ride before really achieving anything, or never getting on the damn thing in the first place out of fear of the harsh ups and downs of the process.

As many an artist has said to themselves many times in their lives, “this is a crazy way for a sensitive creative person to live their life”.

Too bad we are the only ones who can do it.

Part of overcoming the downs of the process is to remember that it is just that… a process. It is not just about what you are right now, it is about what you are capable of becoming.

It is absurd for even the best seed in the world to hate itself for being such a lousy tree.

All this is well and good. But, about that chair thing….

(See, I remember that I had a point at one point. Quit pointing at me!)

So why am I fearing the chair? Because part of me has come to realize that this chair, and the computer, and the rest of it, are both my cage and my way out.

The scared part of me does not want to go back into the cage. It wants something else. Something I may not yet be strong enough to even imagine, let alone do.

Perhaps all I can do at this point in my life is sit at the bottom of my well, and look up at that big bright circle that represents the way out, and say to myself, “Someday. ”

And do what I can to make that come true. A little bit every day. Some says better than others, but every day trying far better than even the most peaceful and quiet day of doing nothing and letting yourself sink deeper and deeper, and further and further away from the light.

Someday, I will write my way out of this hole.

Until then, I will fear the chair.