Love In The Time Of Corona: Turning Left

I thrive on itineraries.

Maps.

Reservations.

I can make a killer to-do list. I get a secret thrill from checking boxes when something is finished.

I’ve always had a compulsion to obsessively want everything planned out.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been blindsided by defeat.

Maybe it’s because surprises have been disastrous, rather than joyous, for me in the past.

Maybe it’s because I’m afraid I’ll be standing on the sidewalk, watching the parade pass me by.

I even have trouble with alone time, because I try to fill the sands in the hourglass, and that way, I won’t feel like I’m wasting time.

I’m afraid of having none left. That’s what it comes down to.

I tell my students, all the time, really, that change is the only constant, and I’ve had a lot of constant change in the past 36 months.

I told myself it was time to get down to the business of making those sands in the hourglass really, truly count, so this little scribbling is me putting them to good use.

I’ve dreamed of being a writer my whole life, even if there was a time when I didn’t know it. I’ve doodled poems, scrawled half-baked stories that sit idly in a file on a computer we put in a storage closet in my spare room. Written opening scenes to three plays I don’t have the courage to finish.

Funny…that’s a good summary of my biggest problem.

Ambition+first drafts+life getting in the way of ambition=unfinished business.

So, at forty years old and some change, I’m making a commitment to myself.

Do what thrills me. Don’t give up.

Try, even if it’s just a line scratched on a crumpled napkin.

I’ve said before that I’d love to publish a novel, a play, a compilation of monologues.

I think it’s time that actions should speak louder than those undercooked words.

I’m turning left. Turning into the traffic of existence, taking a detour from all of my itineraries and checklists.

Making time for writing…first, for me.

Then, to breathe life into those unsung songs that are waiting to spill from my heart onto the page, stories of lives yet lived.

Moments, minutes, milestones.

I’m going to have all of them.

I just have to pick up the pen, make those fingers clack thrillingly across a keyboard.

It’s time.

And this time, I won’t give up until it finally is something.

-Kindred Spirit-

05.07.22