Ah, winter in the South. We’ve gone from freezing temps at Christmas to warm and thunderstorms. Who knows what it will feel like next week? Makes it hard to get comfortable.

I post pictures on my Instagram of me writing in my car. Usually in a dimly lit parking lot while I wait for my partner to get off work, with my notes on my steering wheel. It doesn’t look very comfortable but it works. Sometimes I need to change my space to free up the words.

I realized a couple of days ago that I don’t really have a comfort zone. I never have. As a kid, I was not able to develop that safe space where I had a comfortable place to become really good at something and get positive feedback on it. There was always something that felt like danger, or getting in trouble, was always right around the corner. Even when I was good at something or I did something right, that feeling never truly went away.

Lots of writing advise will tell you to step out of your comfort zone, that the real magic happens when you push just past that edge. I saw this again recently and had my realization. And I asked myself, if I don’t have that safe place, what do I do? What happens when I don’t have that boundary?

I have nothing stopping me. I have nothing truly holding me back. Nothing but that old feeling that imminent danger is lurking around the corner. Except that it’s not. None of the people or situations that caused those feelings are still in my immediate plane of existence.

That means I can simply write. Write all the things I want to. Create all the characters I have in my head and let them do all the things they want. I have no limits. So, I am trying new characters, new topics, and new writing locations on for size. We will see how it goes. It is a new year after all. All I really need is a place to sit, pen and paper, and some good music. Let’s see what kind of trouble we can find.