Into the Game 005

I drove through downtown, paying more attention to the traffic (light as it was on a Sunday evening) than to the glass-and-steel structure of the buildings. Sharon and Adrian had moved down here to follow a job, and chosen a house in the suburbs; I'd moved down here to follow Tom3, and chosen a house outside of town, beyond the current ring of development. My particular job skills -- which amounted to programming and troubleshooting -- didn't require a physical office, so I hadn't had to choose between my career and proximity to my son. I liked to think of that as having a sound strategy for living, but as I got older I was more and more convinced that a lot of it was just luck.

I stopped at a drive-through and ate dinner on the way home. I really had meant to do more work on my current project, but the time at the zoo and dropping Tom3 off with his mother had worn me out. So, instead, I took the opportunity to collapse into bed and get a really long night's sleep. I did that a lot in my teens, and I still enjoyed it -- just nowhere near as often as I once had.

In my dreams, I was chasing Tom3 through a 10' x 10' dungeon corridor. He didn't seem to be in any danger, but I kept having to stop and fight monsters, and I couldn't catch up with him. Finally, I got up and used the restroom, and when I went back to sleep my dreams were less coherent and memorable. I was okay with that; boring dreams made for easy sleep.

And that was really it. It should have been just another weekend visitation, one among hundreds; vital to me, but not particularly important to anyone outside the family. And it would have been, but three days later my son's friend Daniel came knocking at my door, and that changed everything.

This concludes Chapter One of the first draft of Into The Game. I'm still writing the thing; as of this morning, I've got nine pages of Chapter Two. (So it's coming along about three times as fast as anything else I've tried to write recently.) However, this is as much as I'm prepared to put online; if I can actually manage to finish, I'll probably try to e-publish it.

And while I'm at it... if you're still looking for something to help you avoid working, Ann Lamott has some wisdom to share on the subject of first drafts...