I am currently sitting in my office, my favorite room in the house, which I have just cleaned and smells like roses and peonies because I got a new candle. The door is wide open and I can feel the sunlight on my back and the fresh air billowing in as I type. I wonder if a poem will strike. I don’t expect it today, you see, but soon. Soon, they will spill forth like they always do when I have shaken off the last of the winter doldrums that I carry with me.
In winter, which I do love for its coziness and holidays and snowy mornings, I find myself unfortunately depressed, as is the case with Seasonal Affect Disorder. I mean, that’s not a diagnosis I have, I have Major Depressive Disorder which just means I’m depressed no matter the weather. It is, however, worse in the winter, especially in January and February. By the middle of March, I often feel as though I am hanging on by a thread, and then-miracle of miracles-we change the clocks back. A resounding sigh of relief echoes across America.
Listen, my global community friends, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a ridiculous little old rule with no current use and we all hate it. We are living in miserable agony as we watch 4pm sunsets. Please bear with us.
Oh, but when we change back! When we jump forward!
It’s been a week and my sleeping scheduled has already completely changed for the better. I feel normal again, and it’s like I didn’t even realize it wasn’t normal before. I feel generally more positive as I soak in as much sunshine as I can. Today, my legs hurt, but in a good way…not in the “I’ve been on the couch for three days, oh god, I gotta get up and move” way, but in a “I walked several miles this weekend, oh god, I gotta sit down” way. Because I could. Because there’s no move flipping snow on the ground, and I don’t mind playing in the mud so long as the sun is out.
We spent the weekend hitting up some of our favorite fishing spots, and that was nice even though we didn’t catch anything. It was just good to be outdoors.
And it’s good to have doors to open, like my office door which has sunshine streaming though it right now.
I sat down to work today for the first time in a long time because I have been so ill. I mean, yeah, sure, first I cleaned the office because it had become a sort of staging ar4ea for other stuff in the house while I was out. But then I sat down to type, my list of tasks for the day beside me, and I started this blog. I thought, for a moment, that I caught a whiff of a poem, so I stopped and popped over to my poetry file for a moment, but nothing came. It ebbs and flows, but I feel it rising. I have many creative pursuits planned during my recovery time, and I hope that working on some new poems falls into that plan as well.
In the meantime, the old poems: an update.
Still out here trying to sell A Lovely Wreckage.
Furthermore, still querying (Un)Requited. I received a LOVELY rejection the other day. The first. Essentially, they said it was great but didn’t fit the catalogue, which I kind of figured when I looked though their offerings. However, chapbook presses are few and far between, so you can count on that baby ending up in your inbox at some point if you are even remotely interested in publishing chapbooks.
Meanwhile, its been “in-progress” on Submittable at another place since mid-January, so finger’s crossed.
So, good weather makes me think of poems, but apparently can’t just make me create them on the spot. Which is fine. I will wait. Things are only just starting to grow, anyway.
Ham 'N Eggs 