Words Like Scrap Lumber

Friday morning and I am pinning down an imperfect week. And still pretending there is any other kind of week. I am still running in the dark. Sometimes leaving work when the sun has already dipped below the horizon. It’s incongruous that such short days make for such long weeks in the winter months. Time lurches. Suddenly, deadlines are underfoot.

I wish I wouldn’t will the winter months to pass so quickly. I wish I could find a way to give in to them, relax in a “cosy” atmosphere. But I am doing something wrong. There’s such a sharp edge to the end of January. I light the oil burner and inhale the rosemary. Pour myself a cup of tea. Wrap my shoulders in a wool blanket. But reading/writing by candlelight is romantic but hard on the eyes. And a computer screen is just not cosy. So I push through, unable to find anything comforting in the cold draft from the window. I fight it – knowing full-well that fighting it is the wrong thing to do.

And the words, then? Lurching. And I have this illusion that I’ve written more than I have. I have an unearned feeling of accomplishment and an inevitable emotional crash when I see how thin the work is. Ideas take up an inordinate amount of space in my mind. Like Hollywood film sets. You walk through the door and there is nothing there. A pile of random two-by-fours.

Suck it up, and get to work.

Yeah. That’s not a cosy image.

And then… well, what the hell am I building with all this scrap lumber anyway?