Day One

Did I mention I have to sleep in this thing?? Sleep and I are not pals. We're like that quasi-hostile co-worker that you exchange a nod across the hallway with when you happen to see them every other Tuesday - unsure of their motives or why you never seem to get along. Sleep just doesn't like me.

So let's add something else to wrestle with at night. Marvelous.

I lay awake for several hours before dawn, eventually deciding coffee was a better option than the mental swimming I was doing. I nearly put an eye out attempting to brush my teeth. There are a vast number of things I've discovered that I am just horrible at left-handed. It's been less than 24 hours and I've sprayed hairspray in my eye and directly inside my ear. I've spilled half a dozen things in the kitchen, scared that crap out of Sawyer when I tried to vacuum left-handed and knocked the entire machine down a flight of stairs. (he arrived breathlessly from the basement convinced I'd fallen to my death) I basically massacred a hard boiled egg attempting to peel it and wore most of my lunch, requiring a full change of clothes before 1pm. It's going to be an interesting three weeks...

I'd realized last night that I had a book club/book signing to do tonight. Like a moth of an idea, it would flit panicked into my brain and then I'd brush it away, attempting to ignore it. The thought of driving in the rain, after dark, in an unfamiliar neighborhood, with one left arm was more than a little unnerving. 9am and a message from a friend volunteering to drive me - and they say angels don't live on earth. Extremely relieved and a little teary, I went upstairs to attempt to do something with my hair.

Left handed usage of hot hair apparatus = burn cream.

On to writing. I pulled out what amounted to 6 separate legal pads full of scribbled ideas for stories or books I've been jotting down ideas for years now. The first person dream when I slowly realized I'd had things harvested from my body to pay my debts. The red willow tree on the plantation linked to a bloody past and things erode when the arborist up north inherits the land. The laundromat where lives overlap and intersect amidst soap and human nature. I will spend a few days sorting and expanding plots until hopefully one grabs me....one will grab me, right?

I'm asked regularly if I'm going to write another book. I find myself wanting to say yes, but the demons of doubt pull at my hair. They slither beneath my thoughts to question the merit of such an endeavor. It's not like I can pull off another like the first - that was a memoir collected over a decade of living. (timeline wise, perhaps I could write another when I'm sixty?) I know we all have our monsters of skepticism. Life is full of people that value money over dreams and experience over possibility. I've been given 21 days to be quiet. Can quiet overcome monsters?