Life Advice You Might Not Expect from Stephen King

Please forgive me for admitting this, but I've never been a fan of Stephen King. Just the thought of reading one of his books has always made me think of having nightmares and waking up in a cold sweat, horrible images swimming around in my mind.

But when a person moves to Maine, especially if that person is the reader type, no matter how much of a scaredy-cat that person may be, she'll eventually read at least one book by the famous Mainer Stephen King. (His house is just over an hour's drive from mine.)

I started with this one ⤵

It was so good that I devoured it, dog-eared its pages, underlined stuff all over the place, and then handed it over to my writer(ish) teenager and watched him devour it too.

It. Was. So. Good.

(and in case you're wondering, yes, I've bought more good books written by him since then and even watched a new movie made from one of his novellas, too — no nightmares yet)

I expected the writing to be good. (duh) I also expected him to have good advice for people who want to read and write more. But I wasn't expecting his story about choosing his wife and kids over his addiction to drugs and alcohol to bring me to tears and give me a whole new respect for him as a human.

And I certainly wasn't expecting a family togetherness gut-punch from this little section ⤵

"The last thing I want to tell you in this part is about my desk. For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room—no more child's desk in a trailer laundry-closet, no more cramped kneehole in a rented house. In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study. . . For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind, like a ship's captain in charge of a voyage to nowhere. A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living-room suite where it had been, picking out the pieces and a nice Turkish rug with my wife's help. In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza. They usually left a boxful of crusts behind when they moved on, but I didn't care. They came, they seemed to enjoy being with me, and I know I enjoyed being with them. I got another desk—it's handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T.rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave. . . I'm sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I'm doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to do it. I came through all the stuff I told you about (and plenty more that I didn't), and now I'm going to tell you as much as I can about the job. As promised, it won't take long. It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room. Life isn't a support-system for art. It's the other way around."

For those of us who aren't employed in the arts, we might think of it like this ⤵

"put your desk in the corner,
and every time you sit down there to work
remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room.
Life isn't a support-system for work.
It's the other way around."

For a lady who has her Macbook lying all over the house on any given day and has been known to take on more projects than she should (and work on them right in the middle of the living room), I'm thankful for this gut-punch reminder as often as it comes to mind.

For all of us who love our families and our work and want to take care of ourselves and sometimes struggle to make it all work together, I'm thankful for words like these from unlikely characters to remind us what it's all for.

If it helps you, I hope you'll be thankful for the reminder this weekend and it gives you permission to leave your phone and to-do list under a rock for at least a few hours while you live your life.

I'll be here trying to do the same.

Wishing you all kinds of fun this weekend (and Monday) — both spooky and sweet.