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Three years old. I’m in an alley next to a dumpster, crying my heart out. I’m all alone. And I’m lost.

This isn’t a story I was told. This is something I remember. Maybe the details are fuzzy now but the emotions — the panic, the fear, the sense of being all alone in the big scary world — those are vivid.

And as I write this I’m thinking: a therapist could have a heyday with this material.

The story begins on the lower level of a store somewhere on Long Island. It’s just Mama and me, my sisters most likely at school. An EXIT sign catches my eye, glowing red just like the one in the movie theater where I’d seen Lady and the Tramp — my first time in a theater. I was so excited to point it out to my mother. I turned to tell her but she was gone. Or maybe I was the one who was gone. Somehow I pushed through a door and ended up outside, in an alley, beside a dumpster. A woman heard me crying and brought me back inside, where my mother was frantically searching.

One moment I was right beside her. The next, I was lost — and all it took was a shiny thing that caught my eye.

I’ve done the same thing with my work. Not once — many times.

A fellow artist once told me: cats sell. And she wasn’t wrong — she had the bank statements to prove it. So I painted whimsical women with cats and big hair and indeed, they sold. But that was years ago. As I grew as an artist, the cats gave way to abstracts.

Then last year we sold our house and with it, my studio. We’re building a new one, but in the meantime I’ve been reduced to painting tiny things on the kitchen table. Just for fun I painted a naked lady with a cat. Loose, a little Picasso, genuinely fun. I loved it.

Then I thought: childless cat ladies. The election. The meme. The market.

Money. Money money MONEY!!!

So I painted more ladies and cats. But these were forced and not very good. Actually, they sucked. And I knew it.

I was chasing the thing that made the first one work. But I didn’t understand that what made it work was that I hadn’t been chasing anything. I was just playing.

That’s when the Muse really lets loose.

What the hell are you doing?

Working. I’m working.

I’ve seen you work. This isn’t it.

I thought maybe the next one—

Smack.

You knew after the first one and you kept going anyway. That wasn’t momentum. That was toxic schlock.

I don’t know what I’m doing.

FINALLY.

Smack.

Something honest. Was that so hard?

I was in the alley again. And I hadn’t even noticed the door closing behind me.

That’s the thing about being lost — there’s no alarm. No moment where something says you are now lost. Just a quiet accumulation of small turns until you look up and realize you’ve been gone for a while. The Muse didn’t leave. You just stopped being interesting to follow — and she’ll keep slapping you until you are again.

So before anything else — before you fix it, before you figure out why — you just have to stop and tell yourself the truth: I don’t know where I am anymore.

There it is, she says. Finally satisfied. For now.

That’s not defeat. That’s the beginning.

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This Week’s Prompt

Maybe you’re lost right now. Maybe you’re not — maybe you’re exactly where you need to be and the work is alive and you know it.

But most of us have been in the alley at some point. So think about a piece of work — made, started, or abandoned — that felt wrong from the inside. Not technically wrong. Wrong in a deeper way. Like you were performing a version of yourself that had already expired.

Think about it. When did you first feel the hollow place? What was your EXIT sign — the shiny thing that pulled you away from where you were supposed to be? And if your Muse showed up right now — in your head, ready to swing — what would she say?

You don’t need to have found your way back yet. Just notice where you are.

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