Dear Roger: Excuse Me While I Talk With The Voices In My Head

Being a writer is a bit of a mental illness. When I have a plot or a story line I am chasing, I often wrestle it around for days, sometimes talking it out. The characters can be difficult to get into, with their motivations and lives changing with the stroke of a pen and it can be frustrating to figure out what direction my muse is trying to push me. My kids are used to me talking out loud or muttering and scribbling on odd bits of paper, looking frustrated and sometimes typing so hard on my computer that my son makes noises of distress and says,"Are you beating someone up again or mad at another character? You are punishing your computer!" He has learned that computers do not last long with me, often having keys bare of their letters with worn spots where the wrist rest is, odd coffee stains on the screen and a search history full of topics that he has learned to never click on if he values his sanity as a hetero male.
When I have writers block its not fun to be around me. I get morose and grumpy, struggling to figure out what has happened to stop the flow of words. I've had writers block for most of the last 9 months and its been so bad I haven't even dared to touch one of my stories that was finished and only in need of its final editing for fear of launching into a hissy fit driven melee of destruction along the lines of the,"Great Artistic Bonfire of '91" that took out most of my photography and artwork. I have another story that I had been sharing online with some friends that I left with the characters lingering in a very tenuous position, and my inclination has been to have them end it all in a passionate, rage driven murder/suicide. Yet when I mention what my potential end is for them, my faithful readers do not react well and honestly, it would break my heart to end them, but every time I open the the files that is what I see happening so I have left it alone.
I started writing another story a while back about a young musician who turned to street hustling to survive, and its actually flowing pretty well on occasion. There has been a young man who wanders   past the office on occasion that fuels ideas for his mis-adventures, so I may actually be able to do something with this one, but between work and kids and doctors appointments its hard to keep the focus.
I have written 3 songs and a friend of mine who saw them was impressed, but I don't know what to do with them. Ill probably just give them to my son or daughter or maybe enter them in some contest in the next year if I find the time, but its weird how they come to me. I used to write and sometimes perform Cowboy Poetry,(a looong time ago), and the songwriting comes to me much like the poetry from back then did. I still have many of those poems I wrote and maybe someday my kids will do something with them. My son seems pretty intrigued by them and hes got the musical bone as does my little girl.
Had another doctors appointment the other day to try and figure out where the hell the bruises and the exhaustion might be coming from. They drew SIX damn tubes of blood off of me after telling me that even with all the cooking and eating ive been doing that I've neither lost nor gained any weight. At least Im holding steady, so I will see that as a positive, though summer is coming and I tend to shed weight in summer pretty badly. The doctor had them test me for liver function, platelets, cbc, thyroid, and then she asked if she could test me for a couple of diseases I haven't been tested for in a few years. I told her that even though its been a long dry spell she might as well as its better to be safe than sorry and with 11 years in public safety spent mucking around in the mud,blood beer and various body fluids on accident scenes and dead body calls its probably a good idea.
My little girl has her party on the 9th and she is really excited. The only kids that are going are her siblings and while that might be odd for most kids, for her its really not.She hasn't asked for anything other than the party and that is just one of the things I love about her so damn much. With her its not about things, its about time spent with loved ones. I know she really would like a new computer,(hell, we all would!) but she doesn't ask and when she does finally snap and have a bratty moment, she always apologizes and hugs the person she snapped at,(usually her tutor), and often cries because she is upset at herself. She is growing up so fast and even with the changes over this last year she is still my sweet monkey girl.