Time to Snap Out of It

Okay, I sometimes feel guilty with many of my friends telling me “You’re doing what I wish I could do” and “I’m so envious.” It’s time to come clean and admit it’s not always a glorious adventure. I caught myself this week, in spite of all the inaugural joy, feeling very blue and having days of doubt. The same thing happened when I first put my stuff in storage, and when I first arrived in CT, so I think it’s just part of the pattern, but I’d catch myself thinking, “What am I doing? Why am I here?” There’s a certain amount of loneliness and restlessness.

This all seemed magnified on a particularly cold day here when my printer broke, I missed two calls from my friend in Portugal (and my stupid American cell phone wouldn't allow me to call her back), I lost a brand new Metro card, I was missing my family, my website wasn't working properly, I saw a mouse in my kitchen...and I stepped into an icy pool of slush from a leaking fire hydrant and the slush went over my ankle and into my shoe.

Yep, I felt miserably far from home, and the city seemed overwhelmingly loud and dirty.

Compounding all this funkiness was the fact that I wasn’t writing. I was perplexed by my ability to waste so much time! I couldn’t even use location as my excuse and say, “Oh, the city is just so distracting,” because I wasn’t really going out and exploring all that much, either! So, Thursday and Friday I hunkered down and WROTE. Wrote long hours, with my French press coffee, in my jammies. That was the remedy. I’m living this life, after all, so that I CAN write long hours. That was the key, and I'm happy to report I feel I'm getting my groove back.

I think I had put a lot of pressure on myself to go out and “experience all NY has to offer” every day, every night, ALL the time. But I look at the all the people here: they have jobs they go to. Well...so do I.

I also cut myself a break because I arrived at a brutally cold time. The idea of going out exploring wasn’t all that inviting. Really, really cold temps make me want to hibernate, no matter how intoxicating and stimulating the city! I promise not to let the cold daunt me completely...and actually, the current weather makes for very good, focused writing days.