My place is my pleasure dome, I don’t know when it became like that because I used to get a lot done when I moved in. I was scared back then, I quit my job, got fired from another after a month and I lived on unemployment benefit – I was losing money every month. I wrote because I knew I wanted to write and I wrote furiously, all day, I think. Then I got comfortable and all that stopped. I guess I managed to do some writing at work which maybe is the reason why my place became the pleasure dome. I needed some place to unvine from work.

All creatives need a place to work. My day job became that place so I guess I should consider myself fortunate. That’s not the case anymore, though. The good times are over and I’m back into uncertainty. It’s hard work and I got no writing place anymore.

I guess the bar became my new writing place for a while. I got a lot done down there because the place was mostly empty in the afternoon. And I drank slowly so I didn’t get smashed. I’m in the midst of trying to make my place my work place again. I tucked a chair in the corner – really stretching the limits what I can do in my small apartment.

It’s working, I think. I’m writing there now and at the very least I read. I crave to sit down on that chair and read on my free days, which is a good feeling, and when I read I get inspired to write so it’s working out well so far. As long as I write I don’t drink or smoke. I sometimes take out the pipe while I read and pretend that I’m Gandalf of Tolkien or something, it just feels right doing. I have a beer sometimes too but it’s different from doing it at a bar. I got a romanticized picture about drinking and writing after reading everything from Bukowski and it is nice, doing the thing he mostly writes about.

No matter what I do, I want to be somewhere else.

It doesn’t matter if I watch a movie, write or draw, my mind like to take me to places. Even in my sleep I just want the quiet part to happen. I’m drained when I wake up and can’t write – won’t write! I take a walk instead, a long one. The mind begins to empty and fill up again with funny stories because I’m bored. It’s the best to be bored. Sometimes I amuse myself by going down a strange path, into an alley and find a quirky looking tower from the last century or something or a driveway with a lot of junk on it that tickles my imagination and a story takes form about the person that lives there. The stories are endless but making them understandable for you guys is the biggest drag in the world!

It’s only in books that I find some sort of peace. My head keeps shouting but the words I read drown them out, partly, sometimes totally. They just won’t shut up and I’m too scared to tell them to. The things in my head might be better than real life, after all, otherwise I wouldn’t be bored to begin with.

Driving is its own kind of magic, the kind of magic that you don’t find easy anymore; it’s solitude, and the complete absence of everything. You have no choice but to be absent when you drive, and as long as you know where you’re going, and are familiar with the road (and the car) driving couldn’t be easier.

I like thinking. I don’t do that nearly as much anymore. I suppose that’s why I love traveling and I suppose I also like the feeling that I’m going somewhere – doing something. It’s tangible and it’s easy to quantify, just count the steps.

Driving gives you a respite from yourself and all the must-does. The nag in your head stays quiet for a while. Sometimes you ponder the past, other times the future (but not nearly as often). Sometimes you think up stories or just watching the trees and the car swear a bit to the left if the trees is on the left and on the right if the trees are on the right. You’d never hit a car though, although you think about. Nothing would be easier. Then you consider the consequences, the aftermath. Often you survive the crash and then stuff happens in your head and you’re gone. The magic happens.

The radio is on, for the most part, and strangers sing and laugh in your ear. Sometimes you sing along. I sound good as long as I don’t turn down the volume. The raspy sound of my voice, the tone deafness. I was just on kiddy wheels all along, borrowing their power.

I wonder what happen when we have self-driving cars… I swear humanity will go to hell then. The last sanctuary bulldozed by progress. When will we regress?

I wonder if it was the same way when people got cellphones. It used to be that one could escape on a bus or traveling on a train. Of course, they always had the option to read or play on the gameboy. I don’t think it was the same.

Writing and driving is kinda similar, in a way. They are both magic; you get lost in what you do. Though, it’s more peaceful driving, I think. An activity that is destroying the earth. Though, death is nature too, I suppose.