Practising for Someday

It was a difficult day today, and I can't even pinpoint why. The usual two-hour slog to work and the usual two-hour slog home. The busyness in between. Nothing extraordinary. It was a gray, rainy day, though, and somehow my spirits just plummeted as I travelled, and by the time I got home all thoughts I'd harboured of writing went sort of out the window. I could tell I was headed for a bout of major depression, so I decided to be nice to myself and try to head it off.

I covered the windows with dark curtains and turned on a low light. I turned on the Fireplace Channel on TV (don't laugh. It was the best I could do because the switch on our gas fireplace is broken). I curled up with a fuzzy blanket, my dog, a mug of hot chocolate, and Susanna Kearsley's The Shadowy Horses, a favourite no matter how many times I read it. And I just pretended I was in a cabin in the Muskokas, with loons on the lake outside the window instead of mallards in the swimming pool. All I lacked was a candle scented like wood smoke to add authenticity.

And it worked. I'm feeling cozy and restored to myself again. I wrote for an hour or so. Now I'm going back to the couch with my book and dog.

Someday when I'm retired, I will do a lot of this.

The book I'm currently working on is one I'm co-writing with my biologist sister about caring for the earth. It's also a cozy sort of book, and I'm hoping one day some other frazzled woman will find peace curling up with it by the fire.

Writers start young in our family...