I have trouble with reality.

I don’t mean I fantasize and blur reality with fantasy. I mean, I get lost in my head. I’m a writer by temperament. I imagine people and situations and daydream easily. Maybe it’s an Irish-thing. I don’t know.

I do know I often lose my keys, forget to lock car doors, and get sometimes get stuck for minutes at a time while standing at my door about to leave — because some thought or idea or image or notion for a story takes command of my thinking and seems more real than the door I’m standing beside.

I’ve always seen drawing and painting as a chance to focus on the world outside my head. To study the concrete world, to fall in love with it, is what drawing and painting is about.

Of course, drawing and painting is also about falling in love with drawing and painting — with line, with color, with form and composition. But drawing and painting teaches me to see the world. It teaches me the habit of seeing the world.