15 minute free-write, with a timer set.

Go:

It’s like leaves in a windstorm, the clutter in my head. All the ideas, thoughts, dreams, wishes, complaints, fears, all circling together in a little wind cyclone wanting to settle neatly into piles. And the thing to do that settles them is give them a home, a place to be still until it’s their turn.

Write them down.

Dear God, how will my children fare as the climate collapses. I think about this every single day. What skills will they need that I haven’t helped them build? Where will they go? Should I have considered this before having children? Certainly. But I didn’t, not well enough.

The petty, selfish behavior. Get the shot. Wear a mask. Why is this so difficult to understand? Why can’t everyone see that everyone is in a tough place. Everyone. Who has it easy right now? NO ONE. So it’s ridiculous and petty and selfish and unhelpful to complain about service at a store or restaurant. Be glad the business has stayed open. Be glad that anyone showed up to work. The food was slow, eh? The restaurant owner is saying a prayer of thanks that even one person showed up to work, even though s/he needed many times more people to get the work done. This is hard, what’s happening right now. It’s hard for everyone. Buck up.

In the dream the world is calm and quieter. There is time to make things, write, be with other people (some people, only a few) in a way that is enjoyable. The dream is worth holding on to, even if it remains a dream. The clutter will never go away though, not even in the dream. That is not how this creative brain is wired. Clutter is the soul of creativity, for me.

Work. Work. Work. So much work. Decisions and plans and managing a hundred moving parts and pieces. People counting on me to know what to do and how to proceed. How can we keep going like this? What’s on the other side? How will it come together? I don’t know. But we have to keep going, doing the best we can in each moment. That is the best I can do, the best I can offer.

And then: What if everything works out? What if it’s all even better than any dream or wild imagining could envision? What then? Is that a hope, or a fear.

Timer is chiming. Set all of this aside for today.

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This post is 14/56 in a self-directed challenge to write (or at least post) something (SOMETHING) every day – a birthday gift to me from me, because writing gives me a place to put the clutter that lives in my head, as evidenced today.