Waking Up

Tonight, for the first time in three or four months, I sat down, started, and finished a book. This feels very symbolic to me - of how half-asleep and pulled in so many directions I was all semester, barely keeping my sh*% together, and sometimes, not so very successfully. Family. School. Book Deal. I was coming apart at the seams, barely finishing edits and being a mom to my kiddo, knowing there was light at the end of the tunnel and pushing, pushing, pushing to get there.

And this week I turned in my second round of edits, and finally, FINALLY, I'm breathing out the breath I feel like I've been holding for months. I will never do that to myself again. I know my limitations and I wash pushing too hard, for too long. Today I went to the coffeeshop--I had things that are next up on my plate to work on--a paper that's still due, all the edits from my fabulous writer's group on the first 1/3 of  book II that I wrote this past winter. I made an orderly to-do list for when I have the energy again.

And then I just sat. I listened to music. I did free-writing in my journal, trying to get out the jumbled up thoughts that have been brewing or sleeping in my head for so long, sometimes just recording details of the things around me, thoughts I've had - just trying to reconnect again to myself. There are times I feel hollowed out from so much doing, doing, doing, that I feel like a shell of myself, a robotic version that still wakes up and bathes her son and manages to write papers and eat and sleep and wake up and do it all again. But whatever's supposed to be housed underneath the skin was buried and comatose for a bit, like a bear hibernating.

Well, finally, spring has come my darlings. (Metaphorically that is. In actuality, Texas has decided to turn on it's hell-o-meter early and we've had two 100 degree days of heat this week!!!). So then I sat and stared some more. Read some Natalie Goldberg, who talked about connection to all the things around me. And I think, YES. Yes, that is so good. It feels so good to draw a breath again, to breath in my surroundings and exhale again.

My son graduated from Kindergarten this morning. It's time for endings and beginnings. In a couple months, we're moving away from Texas, to Minneapolis, MN. Transition. Saying good-bye to things here. Starting new things there. I can't tell you how excited I am about this. Even before I got an agent, the husband and I had decided I'd take this year off to write. Writing was the only time I've truly felt alive and awake all semester, the only bits where time and space seemed to slow down to a meaningful speed, to sink in. Good things.