Hunkering Down

You’ve probably seen a few of those Cold War films—the ones advising well-groomed and preternaturally calm white people how to survive nuclear holocaust:

I’ve been doing a bit of ducking and covering myself lately, and it quite plainly has not involved a keyboard or an internet connection. (Mostly it’s involved snowshoes, good books, and long drives. Tomato, tomahto.)

Nothing’s really gone to shit, and all remains well in the land of me—it also remains well and truly busy. Free time ebbs and flows, shrinks and expands, and lately it’s been rather slim. Free time is also a question—now that you’ve done what you have to do, what do you want to do?—and one that I sometimes answer by staring slackjawed at the teevee, even if I later curse not having written instead.

But regret is like the impotence and anger I feel reading the news: a dead-end, gut-rotting sort of feeling that doesn’t fix or restore or console or support anyone or anything. It doesn’t serve me, so best to let it go. It’s okay to duck and cover every now and again, so long as you eventually come out from under that picnic blanket.

The impulse to crawl under there in the first place usually strikes me in those periods when work is sucking me dry. The more work robs from the rest of my life, the more I’m seized by the this-isn’t-how-it’s-supposed-to-be and are-we-there-yet gremlins. It leads a gal to all manner of instant-gratification daydreams—winning the lottery, and the like—to distract her from the work and the time that must go into creating the life she wants.

My fantasy life looks a little different that most, because it doesn’t involve much leisure. I still want to work for a living—and probably harder than I work now—but I want my customers to be furry and four-legged, my time clock to rise in the east and set in the west, and my wages to be paid in fresh eggs, sturdy walls, and a byline. That life is coming, but I’m so impatient for it to be here.

Sometimes it’s hard to have priorities and a paycheck.