I’m tired as hell, and cold. So cold. These December days splash by in watery waves, slipping through my fingers and onto the floor. I don’t have a grasp on anything, yet go through robotically, as if I’m off in a race to finish the month first. And – yippee – what if I win? What do I get? Certainly not a wedge of warmth. Or an inkling of sumptuous rest. Definitely not the deep resonation of a month teeming with self-reflection.

I fanned my way through November lightly, with the NaNoWriMo exercise – which proved to be amazing, and actually not as difficult as expected. I must’ve had that novel brewing in my head for awhile, although I didn’t know it at the time. November was good to me. I was fond of it. It wagged its tail at me, and I happily patted it on its little fuzzy head. I was focused, and worked hard. Now I’m floundering slightly, working it up for the holidays, a little bemused and feeling like I’m treading water – the water being the flow that escapes me.

I haven’t stopped to think, naturally. And now, I need to think a bit, and to rest, and to take stock. Size up the inventory. Settle down and hunker into my chair, here in my resting spot, my cozy space. Which is cold, so perhaps cozy isn’t exactly the word for it – but it IS mine, I guess, and it IS a working space. So, you see – there might be something good coming from all of this – from all of this mess, this endless ritual of projects, errands, tasks, and a head turned in all directions.

Frankly, it’s the all-directions part that really gets my goat. I mean, it’s the focus that I love – and when that’s disturbed, it takes awhile to return. I hate having to think about Twenty Billion Different Things, and I hate having to DO Twenty Billion Different Things, and I want to write, I want to write, I want to write. I want to write.

Let’s be realistic. I must find a job. I must tend to the children. I must run the household, do the shopping, launder the mass of various material that piles up like little haystacks around our bedrooms, and make sure everyone is happy and that no one dies of starvation or something else equally as frightful.

Isn’t that my job? Well, isn’t it?

And yet, I want to write. I want to write, I want to write, and it’s being left behind in the backwash of the rudder, this writing, and I look back at it as it sits, gasping for breath and praying for a miracle. For, that’s what it will take, my return to the word – my break in a silence that has been enveloping these late autumn days and nights for too long.

But, here, now, some kind of sound is pushing forward, and now, you see, I’m happy to be here to be its voice. For, although I am damned cold and enormously tired, I am sitting here, right now, in the midst of the Twenty Billion Things and I am easing its breath and bringing it in and letting it sit next to me and hold my hand as it whispers in my ear. The sound of a soft creation. The sound of a window into reflection. A word. And then, another.

It’s a start. Just a start, only. But, it’s mine.

Image: Prevalent Findings I, by Lisa Ridgers