When you need someone to pull you away

This one time I was playing outside being the happy, well-adjusted five year old I was when my seven-year-old brother and my three-year-old brother came yelling that I had to see the spider they caught. I followed them to a five-gallon bucket filled with sticks, grass, and a few rocks.

They told me that there was a BLACK WIDOW inside. I knew a little about black widows, but even if I hadn't, I would've known it meant danger by the urgent yet fascinated voices they used. Personally, I hadn't seen a dangerous spider before, and I was more than a little curious.

So, I looked in the bucket. The black widow was hiding, as they are wont to do. I circled around the bucket, trying to get a better view of the little spindly-legged, swollen-abdomened walking vial of poison, but I couldn't see it.

"It's down there! Behind that twig!" I don't even remember which brother said it. Probably both. Repeatedly. With much excitement.

But I still couldn't see it. So I stuck my head in the bucket to get a better look.

My older brother grabbed hold of my shoulders and yanked me away, and with the most scared voice I had ever heard from him, yelled, "Black Widows are poisonous! And it was RIGHT by your head! YOU COULD'VE DIED!"

I'm pretty sure my debilitating fear of spiders can be traced back to that exact moment in time. After all, I ALMOST DIED.

You know, sometimes it's really hard to pull yourself away. Sometimes it takes someone with their hands on your shoulder to pull you back.

Sometimes it's revising that's drawn your head inside the metaphorical bucket. You revise. then send it to CPs. Then revise. Then send it to beta readers. Then revise. Then realize you've learned a ton, and you want the book to reflect everything you now know, so you revise. And you just don't know when to stop.

Sometimes it's the story that has pulled you in, and you need someone to pull you out of what's going on inside your head because there's a lot going on outside your head!

Sometimes it might even be a storyline that just isn't quite working. And deep down, you know it's not working, but there's this one thing about it that you love, so you keep trying to force it. Sometimes it takes someone to pull you away, at least for a bit, to get some perspective on it to see WHY it isn't working.

And sometimes it's your loved ones, pulling you away from the computer because hey! They haven't seen you in forever!

So what is it for you? Do you tend to have something that you need pulled away from? Who is it that usually saves you from ALMOST DYING! whatever you're pulled into?