You. In or Out?

You are hard pressed to recall a time--outside of your focused moments of composition--when you were entirely free of what you've come to regard as The Inner Bureaucracy. 

During those moments when your focus takes you into that desired terrain beyond time, space, and causation, you can still on occasion hear some distant rumble, as in some neighbors, drifting from conversation to argument, or those moments in hotels when, on the certain brink of sleep, you are rousted back into wakefulness by the sounds of mutters and thumps in the outer hallway.

Thus do the quite real voices you hear about you in the ambient sound of a landscape conflate with at least one voice within your head, perhaps as many as five or six at any given time. Even such a direct decision to "have breakfast," or "eat lunch," meets with some commentary from the cheap seats, up toward the remote sections of the consciousness.

 "You don't want to overdo it," a voice may well tell you in response to the straightforward decision, "Breakfast," accompanied with a scent of a cafe latte. "Big breakfast means nap time around eleven, right?"  You are quick to respond.  "Not necessarily," and so a running dialogue triggers into action.

In consideration of you accepting your working persona as an optimist, albeit an optimist by a slim margin, you often consider your inner voices as The Town hall Within which, by its relative bureaucratic ambience, as one wishing to get things done rather than passing legislation in which your default mode is intransigent resistance to forward movement. 

Nevertheless, the times are rare when you're not aware of some sotto voce query, "You sure this is the way to go at it?" as though there were several other more effective approaches than your choice.

Small wonder you enjoy writing and reading, basking in the full concentration of being "in" a story you are either writing or reading, your Inner Town hall contributing images, senses, and quick, easy to absorb footnotes that combine to enhance your close connection to the text at hand. 

However this implies you seek writing and reading to get away from the multifarious aspects of yourself, you're firm in your belief that these two states are pleasurable to you because of the way you make optimal use of the totality of yourself at the time.

These observations were slow and hard come by, an occasional insight at a time coming your way after a day of writing, by which you mean a given eight-hour work "day" consisting of exercises in which you learn to focus well enough to produce two or three hours of actual composition.

A five- or six-hour stint of reading produces three or four actual hours of reading and absorbing the material, the surrounding time spent reflecting on and absorbing potential meanings.

Thus the metaphor of writing as poker game, in which the dealer--who, remember, works for the house--frequently makes eye contact with you to confirm, "You. In or out?"