Hiking Through an Elevator Shaft

My recent four-month writing and blogging hiatus, caused by intense stress and workload from my day job, has come to an end, thanks to a hike through an elevator shaft. I sometimes can’t predict when the intensity of my day job will overtake my writing life nor how a creative dry period will end, but this time the conclusion involved a stuck elevator, five fire trucks, and some of Chicago’s finest. Let me explain.

Over the last few months, all my creative thought had been replaced by a focus on business, filling every waking hour with deadlines, cramming all writing time to the edges, and leaving my brain bone dry. I worried I might never regain my passion. A writing desert, I’d called it.

That changed on a recent work trip in the Windy City. I started my morning early to get a jump on a day filled with interviews, meetings, and deadlines. I loaded up my backpack and used the hotel elevator to descend just one floor. A sudden bounce of the elevator car did not strike me as normal, and I suddenly found myself stuck between the first and second floors. Despite hitting the “open” button dozens of times and waiting approximately five minutes for the elevator to wake up (a little caffeine please!), I finally called the front desk and explained my situation.

While they tried to get the elevator to descend (I imagined them standing in the lobby incessantly pounding on their elevator button, too), they reported that they would call for help. I wasn’t exactly sure what “help” meant. I pictured a cranky, middle-aged, un-caffeinated building engineer, Mr. Bookman from the basement. But I waited patiently, resigned to the fact that my morning schedule was now in someone else’s hands.

After approximately an hour in an elevator with a temperature dialed up to a level good for baking bread, I heard clattering from above followed by an authoritative voice asking me if I was okay. I wasn’t sure if it was God, or Mr. Bookman, or perhaps Santa Claus. I reported that I was fine, despite having nearly disrobed completely from the heat, and that I was alone, thankfully.  He explained that they were coming in for me.

They? Who was They? That’s when a ceiling tile in the elevator car opened up, scattering the biggest dust bunnies I’ve ever encountered. A ladder descended followed by a Chicago firefighter in a blue uniform and a red hard hat. The first thing I did was hug him (don’t worry, I was fully clothed again by then) and thank him profusely. He demonstrated how to climb the ladder and warned me to beware the grime, especially given my brand new, off-white pants (courtesy of Chicos!). How thoughtful.

Only a few steps across a smattering of cables and steel and (apparently, non-working) electrical equipment and I emerged safely into a gaggle of a dozen more firefighters. They had sent three ladder trucks, an ambulance, and two fire chief trucks—for little ol’ me!

While my hike was merely a few steps up and over an elevator shaft, my mental journey was significant. I realized a few things in the sixty minutes I had to ponder life and stress and otherwise occupy my mind to avoid a panic attack. I hadn’t considered the usual life lessons—you know the ones: life is short so make every minute count or life is just a series of moments that take your breath away or you never know what the day will bring so make sure to wear clean underwear! Thankfully, I already follow these rules.

No, I pondered my writing life.

I thought about how much I’d missed my daily writing routine, how much my mind had lately been filled with financial statements and performance reviews and new business presentations, instead of dialogue and characters and narrative arcs. I realized I needed to put my characters in more precarious situations and raise the stakes in the plot by say, I don’t know, trapping them in an elevator for an hour. How I longed to be sitting at my writing computer on my couch stuck on an ill-formed sentence rather than trapped in this sweltering elevator.

I realized how quickly life’s mechanics interrupt our intentions, how we are sent on an unplanned hike (although a twenty-five-step journey barely qualifies as a hike), and, if we are open to it, a story suddenly appears, inspiration where there had been none, a jolt of an elevator bounce to slow down my pace and open my mind. And a writing life is restored. Thank you, Chicago Firefighters!