Alright, I’ve started writing this post three times, so this one MUST be the charm.
I haven’t felt like this in a long time and I guess I wasn’t expecting the depression to hit quite so hard. Sarah, my eight-year-old daughter, has gotten on a plane and flown back to her mother. She was here for her spring break, and I was lucky that it coincided with my birthday on the 14th.
We took her to the airport Friday and she completely and utterly didn’t want to go back. I understand, we have chickens and goats and horses and 20 acres of woods to explore and a giant house to ramble about in; but, never the less, we took her up to PDX and I sat in the gate as she walked to the plane and then waved once more through her tears before climbing the stairway and disappearing for another long span of months.
Now, I find myself in that dangerous place, the place where I have trouble balancing the world “as it is†with the world “as I wish it could be.â€Â Right now, it would be very easy for the dragon to grab me by the throat again and squeeze me for all I’m worth once more.
Which brings me full circle back to writing and blogging and whatever. There was a time when I wrote things that I was proud of having written. I have not felt that way about something I’ve blogged in a long time. At one point I felt that anonymity was the key; that by being behind a veil of self-defense, I had the freedom to say things in a way that wasn’t filtered and ultimately made for better writing. Now, I think that’s just crap. I think that for the last year or so I’ve just been too damn cautious in my writing, and that it has suffered for it (when and if I even bothered to post it). It wasn’t the anonymity that made it better, it was the confidence to just write and let the chips fall where they may. I used to be the kind of person who “did†first and “worried†later (if ever). Now, I calculate everything. I analyze, and measure, and contingency – until I don’t act at all.