Balance

I’m reading Bag of Bones by Stephen King just now. I’m about halfway through and already dreading the moment when I fall off the end of it. It’s literary and intelligent and engaging – a ‘good read,’ as they say. It’s so good that I found myself this Sunday morning lingering over it when I should have been working on my own writing projects. Hard to strike that balance between my own writing (the dance) and reading (the one who brought me). Especially when the reading is this much fun.

That’s not the only area of my life requiring balance just now. My day job is taking up a lot of my mental resources and I love my work but I’m also very aware of the need to get the writing off the ground if I’m going to make anything of it in ‘retirement.’ And I come home each night of late with my brain fairly well wrung out. What you gonna do?

We’ve begun the process of prepping the house to go on the market. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with this place from the beginning. We bought a trasher and gradually rebuilt it over the years. I admit I’ve sometimes resented the family and other time I’ve lost these last two decades-plus as we tore into walls, built new ones, reworked plumbing and electrical, the works. The thing is, now that the time is at hand – we’ll probably sell in the spring of next year – I feel like I’m deserting an old friend. Every nook and cranny from the rooftop to the sub-basement is familiar to me. Much of it built or rebuilt by me or Mary or both. We raised our daughters in this house, hosted family, argued, loved and sat around. A couple dozen Christmases, six Cookiethons, birthdays, new pets, dying pets… It’s been home to our family and now it will serve us one last time by relinquishing it’s equity to our cause. But I can’t help the feeling of deserting an old friend.

I’m in the process of relocating my writing space, having donated the old one back to the common cause as the guest room it was originally meant to be. Relocating forces one to look at stuff. And stuff, I have. Lots and lots and lots of stuff.

Maybe I’ll strike a balance by just ignoring the stuff and continuing my writing.