I’ve been driving my Chevy Tahoe for 12 years now.  With 108, 098 miles on the odometer, it still runs like a top.  I take it for service every 3,000 miles like clockwork. While having it serviced yesterday,  I expected to be spending my time in the waiting room of the service department by catching up on emails.  I’d brought my laptop specifically for this purpose, but turns out the internet service in the building wasn’t working.  After initial irritation, I decided to plug in my headphones and hunker down with my writing.  Not my blog writing, but my writing…the memoir project that has been looming over me like a cloud.  It hovers above me, a shadowed reminder that it’s ready to be unleashed.

The problem is, the emotion of getting it pounded out into words creates sudden halts in my progress. As my vision clouds with tears, I find myself jumping up and walking away in an effort to get an emotional grip.   But, surprisingly enough, sitting in the Chevy service department yesterday with folks coming and going, mechanics clanking away just on the other side of the large window that looks into their service  garage,  I got so sucked in that I missed calls on my cell phone, stopped just briefly to respond to text messages, and only finally snapped out of it when the service agent tapped me on the shoulder to tell me my vehicle was ready.  I glanced at my watch…several hours had elapsed.

Who knew that a busy service department smelling like, well.. like a GARAGE, would be the place I could finally push beyond my emotionally gated entry into the next segment of the story? Although I’m sure this hurdle was just one of many more yet to come, I feel like I have crossed that big threshold at last, allowing me to finally just get on to the heart of it.

Maybe by the time my car has 200,000 miles on it, I’ll be coming down the home stretch.  I just hope the writing journey smooths out and carries me along dependably,  just like my Chevy Tahoe, no matter how many miles accumulate.

I guess the best writing places are those where you can just get into your own head.  I challenge you to find a list anywhere in this world that suggests an auto service department might be the environment to consider when looking for that special spot all writers actively seek out.

Who knew?