The Writing Life--

Huh? What? Oh, that's right, I haven't been carving out any time lately to write. I've been helping others with their work, acting like a social butterfly, attending dinner and game nights playing "Whoonu?," rollerskating, picking out a car, watching the movie Contact (which nobody likes but me and two other people), having lunch out, working with a photographer on an anthology project, shopping with my mum, spending mother's day with my mum & 95 year old nana watching herons, walking the dog, taking the cat to the vet, taking myself to the doctors for allergy medicine, The Pursuit of Happyness (great movie), volunteering at the elementary school, yoga, Tuesday night with my writing group...yes, basically my last ten days...but I'm not complaining. It's been incredibly fun. And it's good for me as I tend to be someone who thinks that "going out" sounds like a lot of work and would rather just put on some jazz (or the swing years and beyond), find my slippers and warm blanket and slip into a book for an evening. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really a lover of books or just inherently lazy.

But I've been missing my writing time lately. I had just established "going to the office" (basically driving to a local coffeehouse and setting up shop) and now, so quickly, it's been two weeks since I've had my chai tea and favorite chair. And the time just didn't *disappear* like some dove in a magician's hand, I gave it away. I said yes to things I wanted to say yes to and marked it off my schedule. But I wanted to say yes. I hadn't really been living how other people do, I've been living through my fingertips in poems, and to be honest, I'm not quite sure what I'm up to in my writing. I'm in a sort of spinning-the-wheels period where I just watching the world pass and kicking up a lot dust.

It's one of those times when I keep waiting for something to happen. For the phone to ring. For that email. For someone to tell me -- we're going to publish your manuscript or we're going to publish your children's book. I feel as if I'm on the edge of my seat just waiting for something to happen in the movie and I'm not sure what it is, I can't quite tell from the music... So, I guess I feel okay passing on my writing these days, though I'm starting to think about it returning and then I think about summer--I *never* write in the summer, do I want to start?... I don't think so. It's sort of like quote, "Nothing good ever happens after 2 a.m.," well, that's my summer writing, nothing good ever happens in my summer writing. I see summer as one of those times when I fill myself up with reading. Sort of like all year, I've been emptied of words, or sentences, of plot or memoir, of characters I'll never meet, and now as the sun makes me want to feel as if there is no better place in the world than under my sun umbrella (yes, I'm pale, I use a sun umbrella) and if there is a bag of books at my side, a few seabirds in the air, I'm happy.

So, I'm in this place of watercolor where there are no lines and things just sort of blur into other things. I think I'll be okay here for awhile, at least for a summer...