Backspace, a toxic relationship.
Backspace was easily the most popular button I used. If there were an election by popular vote, Backspace would have won in a landslide: the undefeated heavyweight world champion of my keyboard. I imagined that, late at night while I slept, Q, Z, and other less popular keys would circulate gossip about the latest swanky activities taking place over at Backspace’s exclusive parties. I was naïve to think that the relationship with Backspace would ever work.
My narrative was routinely ambushed by Backspace in a way that went something like this: “No, no that sounds so esoteric.” Backspace. “Goodness, now I sound vain as hell.” Backspace. “Okay, this might work… wait, I haven’t even stated what the topic is yet.” Backspace. Looking back, I revel at the key’s longevity, considering how often we clashed. I knew things had taken a turn for the worst so, in pursuit of salvaging my own sanity, I chose to give myself some distance from Backspace.
Bed, the rebound.
After I broke up with Backspace I spent some time alone to get to know myself. I knew I had it in me to come up with something fitting to start my paper, I just needed some time to construct my own thoughts. I needed to learn to love me. However, like any person who isn’t tied down to any particular keyboard button, I decided to date around a bit. Honestly, a writer has their own needs to consider, too. I spent some time making routine rendezvous with Couch and found the relationship quite comfortable. I had always appreciated the appointments, after all. I dated Phone on and off throughout the day and found I was always entranced when we were together, but I noticed that our interactions drained Phone more than it drained me, so I left out of respect for Phone.
Despite the fun, I knew the dating game wasn’t serious for me. They were great and all but they weren’t furthering my real goal: I needed to write. Deciding to change the pace, I committed to a long relationship with Bed. Bed was not selfish and freely gave me inspiration while I spent some time away from my writing. I was charged with a new awakening and swiftly pressed my newly forged dreams from the deepest recesses of my subconscious to the outer-most reaches of my tangible senses.
Enter, an ally.
My fingers hovered over those old, familiar keys for only a short moment of hesitation. My joints wanted to continue to be jammed up like they had always been, but my body wasn’t yet aware that my mind had recently been released from captivity. One glance at Backspace and I knew it: this was my time to shine. Almost effortlessly, I began to navigate the keyboard like a seasoned captain navigates the deck of their creaking ship to bellow down reassurances toward their lively sailors over the sounds of the crashing waves below.
“One sentence, done. Two sentences, done. This is a huge paragraph… maybe I should try a different button.”
Enter. “Oh, hello there,” I thought, “this is a new key.”
Enter. This one kept my paper flowing, I had noticed. And then the realization hit me: my issue before wasn’t the keys I was pressing: it was my mindset about writing. I wasn’t the problem but neither was my paper. It wasn’t Backspace, toxic as we were. It wasn’t Couch or Phone, despite the fact that I could’ve lost myself running with that crowd. Bed wasn’t even necessarily the solution either: Bed only teleported me through space and time, well actually just time, to the solution. The solution was proximity. I was too close to the paper to really assess what it was that I was looking at. Taking a step back to collect myself gave me renewed focus about what I was writing and with my renewed focus I was locked in.