Somewhere late this afternoon, I finally got my feet back under me. I had decided the only way to convert my restless energy into muscles free of stiffness and soreness was to get up and start working on my secret project again. It appears to have worked. What it did not do was to get me wandering around with a camera. I spent nearly 48 hours straight on the couch, feeling sorry for myself while that bug ran its course, and by the time I was my old self again, it was dark and gloomy. Somehow pictures of mud at night don't seem very interesting to me. Neither do stories of life on the couch, watching through the stacked up history on my DVR.
I want topics to come to me unbidden. I've been lucky thus far in that they have done exactly that. Even on days when I think I am completely out of topics, I start writing, and the words just flow out of me. Nine times out of ten, it turns into something I'm really, really proud of. It is especially rewarding when the posts seem to fall out in one fluid, organic birth. But I can't count on it to happen every time. Sometimes I flat-out struggle, and it is an effort to place each word in order. The more I do this, the easier it all seems to appear. I couldn't have imagined 300 plus days ago that it would have come this far, and that I would never miss a day. I certainly had doubts that it would get so easy. It feels real, and it feels like it has wheels. I had been thinking about making myself write a second essay each day, but to set one aside for my eyes only at first. I can't decide whether that would make me feel like I'm running out of material faster, or would it just be advanced level training? How hard would it be to keep everything straight, when I want to refer back to things I've written, that haven't made it to the public space? It was hard enough when I wanted my daughter to already be familiar with the things I wrote in the fiction piece I started in November, and I got confused when trying to recall no one had read all of that but I. Plus, I can't let myself get so absorbed in writing that I forget to keep living to have inspirations about which to write.
I try very hard not to complain about living alone. I do have assurances that when my man's assignment is over, he will return home. Assuming he isn't having so much fun doing what he's doing that he finds a way to go back over in a different position, I will have him back eventually. Last week I came home to find the neighborhood ducks congregating in my yard, and as I took their pictures, my next door neighbor came home. I haven't seen her much in the last year. I told her how the man extended his contracted period of overseas work, and she said, "At least yours is coming home." I wrote last May about how I woke early one morning to the sound of emergency vehicles pulling up about 30 yards from my bedroom window. I learned the next day that my wonderful neighbor got up in the middle of the night, and dropped dead of heart failure, to be found hours later by his wife. I admitted to her last week that many times I have been tempted to whine about being left behind, while the man is in an exciting place, with new friends from all over the world, and I am stuck at home. Yet whenever I want to feel sorry for myself, I stop and remember that I am lucky. He IS coming home, unlike my friend next door. I am lonely, and I do miss him terribly. But there is comfort in the knowledge that he will be back.
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