Writing Thoughts and Escaping From Reality

So, once again, I’m tempted to write in another fandom. I wrote my first Jeeves/Wooster fic, “Hard Boiled Eggs” and I’ve been on a reading binge for at least a week. A large part of the latter is that my elderly mother is doing badly and I need to hide from that and from the state of the world in general. So I plunge into the world of Archive of Our Own 3 for hours on end.

But is all of my time to be taken up writing fanfic? I’m not young anymore. I should be turning my thoughts to a memoir,  and essays. I have many ideas. I’ve written about mental illness. Right now I’m writing a piece about going insane. I’m quite good at it. I’m considering writing about handling a gun (45) while I was in Memphis and how I really wanted to buy it. Even though I’m pro-gun control and a New Yorker to boot. I should finish a long piece I’ve been writing about my father’s death. Or the time I had orgasms for 18 straight hours. Or the time a SWAT team showed up on my doorstep and took me to the psych ward. (Turns out it was a false alarm–someone called in to 911 deliberately. I never found out who it was.) I managed to write about being deported from England, in “A Basket Full of Cats”.

I should finish the enormous historical fantasy novel I’ve worked on in spurts since 2009. I should promote the anthology of my plays that a small press published over a year ago. I should try to perform more than twice a year.

Part of me just wants to write about the unexpected consequences of when Bertie convinces Jeeves to be Fred Astaire to Bertie’s Ginger Rogers.

If I was younger I wouldn’t be quite so conflicted. Oh, wait, I’m always so conflicted.