All Panic, No Disco

Dear Reader, I go off grid at The Lake™ in August, it's become my summer ritual. I pull up like a battered car with the wheels falling off, one eyelid twitching, burnt out and dysregulated after a busy spring and summer. All I want is peace and quiet. It takes longer than I budget to come back to myself, to feel alive again. It always does. I want to snap back quickly, like pulling a rubber band against my wrist with a satisfying sting.THWAP.Me — but whole again. But it doesn't ever really work like that, now does it? After a month of isolation I begin to feel like myself. My upper lip grows dark, my feet turn to talons. I stop looking in the mirror. It's all hikes and spaghetti and tree frogs singing in the nighttime. I get some good writing done. The kind I never seem able to do in LA. I try to put my finger on why. The noise, I decide, is the problem. The way traffic, crowds, and the constant low level panic of creatives trying tomake itbleeds energy from you like a low level poison. A Foreign Concept is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The city is made of concrete and anxiety. A feeling of scarcity and the ever-burning question:am I doing enough?When someone around you wins it's hard not to wonderwhen will be my time?and when everyone is losing it's hard not to feel hopeless. There are just enough people, just close enough to you, that get struck by lightening andmake it, that you keep going and going. The prospect of making a living from your art hangs in front of you like the proverbial carrot on the proverbial stick.It can't be that much further can it? My girls and I spend all our time dissecting these questions, trying to get to the bottom of things. As we walk the reservoir we try to figure out how to survive our collapsing industries. As we slice onions for shared meals, we discuss what we need to do to adapt, where we should put our energy next. Over and over we debate: freelance or full time, how much social media presence isreallynecessary, are we doing something wrong? We lie by the edge of the river in the sun cross examining our last projects for why they didn't change our lives. By the sea we plot our next projects which we are sure willthe one. At night in bed, we lie awake and wonder: If I quit now, will I be giving up right before I was about to strike gold? It's all panic, very little disco. The panic is alluring, seductive. It has the feeling of being productive, of taking action and doingsomething.The panic warms my belly each morning in LA as I sip my morning coffee. It stays with me all day.I allow myself to be distracted by shiny objects because it makes me feel like I am moving forward. Instead of focusing on the stories and projects I want, no,needto tell, I chase low lying fruit just to crosssomethingoff the list, to be putting something out. I don't spend enough time where it needs to be spent. I compromise too much. I move erratically, bleeding energy, burning myself out. The whole time I think I'm progressing. Only to look up and realize I have been spinning in circles, chasing my own tail. AtThe Lake™, I see this all clearly. I am a mad scientist in a white coat in my sterilized lab analyzing the variables needed for theperfectenvironment to create.Yes, yes,I think,I've figured it all outas I hold up a smoking beaker. I shouldliveatThe Lake™,or somewhere else off grid. Somewhere where there is no noise, no panic, no disco. Just hikes and spaghetti and a darkened upper lip. I'll go into the city, only when I need to. Yes, the answer, at last. I feel firm in my decision for the first four weeks. On the fifth week something changes. The Lake™ is in the Appalachian Mountains, some of the oldest mountains in the world. At 480 million years old, they predate the existence of trees and land animals, recorded history. There are things ancient and unknowable in these woods. The more time I spend there, the more I understand that. As I walk in the woods, I swear I see something in the corner of my vision. But when I spin around I find nothing, no-one there. Thanks for reading A Foreign Concept! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share My fifth week I take the pick up and drive to a hike close to the house. It's one I do often by myself, on the days when my writing has pulled me too far into my head and away from my body. On one section there are some massive boulders. The type of rocks you look at and thinkyes, an alien must have but this here. They have the feel of an ancient ruined temple. The rocks are set in a way that when you walk through them it feels like walking through the floor plan of an old home. One with a human sacrificial air. I don't get lost, in a physical sense, on hikes very often, and this path is very clearly marked. Which is to say it is unusual when, near the big rocks, I feel the path changing in front of me and I don't recognize where I am. The forest feels like it is opening itself up to swallow me in. I am suddenly very aware that there is no one to hear me scream. I feel a presence, a certainty that I am being watched, thatsomethingis in this forest with me. But it's not the logical fears: the shared female experience ofwhat if a man is following me, what if I hurt myself, what if there are animals. No, it is a different type of feeling. A very specific type of terror. One that is deep and primal and instinctual. A warning that my ancestors left in my DNA. That something lies in here. It's a feeling of being somewhere you shouldn't be, of falling into something you don't understand. Of crossing a veil you shouldn't have crossed, into some danger I'm not capable of understanding. I run back to the car and sit behind the wheel, shaken and out of breath. I've spent too long in the forest, I think, I need to get back to the city, to civilization,immediately. That week, the leaves start changing and my writing starts to dry up. The quiet I craved has become a vacuum, I have nothing to bounce off. I need inspiration, a sounding board, conversations with other creatives. A little more panic, a little more disco. I know the answer is as simple and frustrating and irritating as it's always is:balance.A balance between isolation and community as the ideal environment to create. Things, as they always are, are changing. And as autumn deepens I feel it coming, rapidly towards me. Xoxo Sumlion Thanks for reading A Foreign Concept! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share