Deep breaths

Where do ideas go when they die?

As you probably already know, I used to be a prodigious crack smoker.

But what may still be in doubt is whether or not, I inhaled. Regrettably, the answer is yes. Even in recovery, I’d sometimes wake up in the night, my cheeks puffed with an imaginary billow of smoke.

Now, why would anyone remember, of all things, the act of inhaling crack? Believe me. I wish I could forget. But that’s exactly the moment when my brain engaged its warp drive. It’s when I actually got too many ideas all at once. All in the space of one deep inhale. The barn doors fell off completely and every horse — even the three-legged donkey — charged out of the stable.

I could hardly wait to tell someone all my great ideas, ingenious observations and jokes and what-have-you. If someone was in the room with me, I might even hold up a hand, as if to say, ‘Clear the floor. Brilliant ideas, incoming!’

And then, as I exhaled, all those thoughts vanished. Out to pasture, never to return.

I have a similar experience in recovery.

You see, I wake up every morning, stare blankly at the squirrels hanging upside in the bird feeder and then get on the elliptical machine. Then the ideas show up. One two, five at a time. I can barely keep track of them all. They’re great ideas — things that I will do today. Powerful things.

After this, I’m gonna… wait! I know this much about working out. Never say, ‘after this.’ Because, what does that make ‘this’— this moment when you’re exercising and doing the right thing? It makes it chopped liver. All I want to do is get it over with and get on with executing my brilliant ideas.

But I know this moment on this undignified apparatus is an important moment too. So, I tell myself, the ideas can wait.

And so, I huff and puff away for heaven knows how much longer. Until finally, the machine releases me.

What were those ideas again?

Something about organizing something in the basement. Newspaper clippings? A blog idea, maybe.

But first thing’s first. I have to attend myself in the mirror where I make my customary kissy faces, implore my mother to squeeze my muscles and maybe even send the odd “progress” picture to friends and family.

By the time I’m finished swanning around the house, every last one of those glorious ideas are gone. Even the one about the greatest blog entry you could ever read.

Which is why you’re stuck with this one. And, as disappointing as it may be, I promise it’s better than what you might be looking at right now — if I remembered what I had to say about a year ago.

Back then, it was all three-legged donkeys.