If I know myself, I have used this title before. Oh well. I used this title before. Life.

In thirty-five minutes, students will be in my classroom and I will start the “teaching” for the day. Fortunately, my first block is my newspaper class, so it’s moreso leading as opposed to actual instruction.

The reality, is though, that this is my first day back since last Wednesday. And already, I feel overwhelmed and weary.

This weekend was the “summer vacation” that I have been missing for the last five years. Ever since I moved, every summer has been fraught with severe problems and difficulties that my family has had to weather. And today my lack of resilience is making itself very well known.

I fell through a rotten deck board over two weeks ago, as I reported last Friday. But today, as I hobbled into work, the weird swollen, numb feeling was frustrating. I’m ready to go hiking. The season is changing. Fall is hitting the mountains and I want to be outside, on the trail, immersed within sunshine and chilly temperatures and the continual sense of wonderment.

Not reclining on my bed or sofa or comfy chair with my knee propped up.

I also spent a lot of time this weekend writing. I wrote here. I wrote in my journals. I wrote in my planning book for my Louiston novels. I wrote in my head and in the air when I finger spelled words because I wasn’t close enough to a keyboard or a journal to take down my thoughts. I just kept turning back to the need to write over and over again.

And being here means a stoppage to my writing opportunities.

I started writing daily, weirdly enough, hours before Peter passed. I started reading a book that challenges people to journal daily for 100 days. It has, surprise-surprise, 100 prompts to engage the writing mind. And I’m only about four in becuase, daily, I spend time with my experiences and process and think and consider. And I’m re-reading Matt Bell’s Refuse to be Done which is about writing and editing a novel and he encourages his students to write 500 words a day as a creative exercise. So, not processing experiences, but following characters. So last night, I hooked up my bluetooth keyboard to my iPad and started writing a story for Pedestals in October. And I hate how it started. It fumbles and breaks around. But I have 700 words dumped onto a screen-page and I know they’re the wrong words but they exist. They are there. And it’s a helluva lot more words that I’ve written in that book than I wrote in the last two years.

I’m not a bumble anymore. I don’t bounce. I kind of flop and then lay on the pavement-ground-grass-path-street-parking lot-deck-Earth-floor-space and stare at the sky-ceiling-ground and contemplate how I’m going to pull my body from where it’s sprawled and back into an upright position and then onto my feet and hobble-walk-lope-shuffle-stomp-limp forward.

Today, the emotions thrum in the back of my mind and behind my heavy eyelids. Today, the emotions feel like a grumpy raccoon sitting on a trash pile in the dark daring the world to shine a light in its space. Today, I will write more. Another five hundred words about Rita. Or a series of answers about a Louiston resident. Or a scene from a Louiston book that will never be published but will sit in a mental warehouse of vignettes about a quiet town.

In the evening, after my shower, I will recline on my bed-sofa-comfy chair with my knee propped up and I will read some more. And then I will write some more. And even though I have about eight months until summer vacation, I will tease out those little moments when I put the world on hold and let the words stroll-walk-stumble-hobble-limp-lope-sprint across the page.