I know Runner's Highs. Back in the 70's when it was Jim Fixx, Forest Gump, and I, there weren't a whole lot of runners pounding the pavement. I started off by walking home from school - about three miles - and then realized that I could probably bike the same route, and then realized that I could probably run the same route as well. So while my family would drive over to my Grandmother's house near my school, I'd run over. I ran my first race - 7 miles no less! - when I was 7 years old. And I pretty much ran every day from that point until the end of High School - ten years solid of running. I was a skinny, endorphin generating, freak.
At the same age, I also wrote my first story. It was Halloween and my class had to write a paragraph before we could go out to the yard and participate in the costume parade. I got started writing and before too long, I blew my class off so that I could continue writing. My story ended up being 7 pages long and it took me all of two days to write. Up until that point, I hadn't probably written 7 pages in my entire life. But, when I sat down with pencil and paper in my hand, this euphoric feeling came over me - I was in the story and writing it at the same time. It was like playing and recording at the same moment. I wasn't just writing about Charlie Brome fighting aliens, I WAS Charlie Brome fighting aliens, and writing about him at the same time. I couldn't possibly put down my pencil and return to the humdrum existence of some stupid costume parade. There was a whole world out there ready to be explored. I was experiencing my first Writer's High.
I've been thinking about this lately because I've always just sort of thought that I only really got this high AFTER a good session of writing. But I've realized now that its not the writing that produces the high, its the imagining of the story. And a good story, whether I'm writing it or not, comes upon me so clearly that it draws me back into that world and I can almost feel myself there, watching, participating, and writing the action at the same time - so that I start to get antsy and energized and can't wait to sit down at my computer and start writing. My synapses are firing faster than the finale of the Boston Pops Fireworks show. I'm getting High just thinking about getting High.
I've also noticed that a particularly good piece of writing that I read or watch can have a sort of contact High effect. Something I didn't write at all can still transport me to that world and make me feel like I'm fighting alongside Aragorn or battling my inner demons with Locke or riding around the pitch on my Nimbus 2000 with Harry.
I've always known that my mood fluctuated entirely on the basis of whether I was writing or not and now I'm starting to piece together the reason why.
I am a junkie for intellectual stimulation and for the most part I find real life starves me of my fix. There's just no denying that I can get more of an intellectual hit out of a bad episode of the Teletubbies than in the entire combined 7 years of speeches from "W". Real life just doesn't cut it.
Anyway, thank God for LOST. Right now, I'm not feeling a thing, brother... not feeling a thing at all... and its good.
Have a great weekend.
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