Losing Touch

I took my turn in the vortex yesterday. The vortex is a zone of creative focus where I  get lost doing some project. It usually lifts me up like the little house in the Wizard of Oz and takes me to a timeless space where I write. Yesterday I worked on the prison book. For several hours I lost contact with all of my teaching duties, my appointments, and the desire to eat. (Now that is weird.) Anyway, what was different about yesterday was that I couldn't quite get back when I left the computer and tried to resume my regular life in this world. It might be part of this brain thing that's going on. I don't want to dwell on it, but things are changing up there, and not for the better. Hmmmmm. That's a problem. I still have papers to grade, students to meet, magazines to mail out, curricula to design. So, this morning I am pushing my feet back to earth, kind of the opposite of pulling up by the bootstraps. Down, boy. Down.