My laundry is piled high. No, seriously, it’s overflowing the basket, making a mountain on the bathroom floor, in pseudo-neat piles by the bedroom door. It feels symbolic of my inability to get things done at the moment.

I’m feeling stuck. Like I want change, but don’t know how to get it. I want to sweep all the clutter in my house–oh, so much clutter right now–into boxes and throw them away so that I never have to see them again. I want to leave the ripped up floor and the peeling wallpaper behind. I want to escape, to move, to run away.

But when I start to think seriously about where I would go, what I would do, my brain comes to a dead halt. To move–well, living in a college town would be nice. Oh, wait, I do live in a college town. The weather has to be good, because I know that S.A.D. hits me hard in darker climates. Hmm, the weather is darn nice here. Cost of living has to be reasonable, like, um, it is here. And it would be good if I knew some people, like, oh, I do here. Not to mention finding a place that is perfectly balanced between a sense of nature–like spotting hawks and herons on my morning walk–and convenient urbanity, like having multiple grocery stores within a ten minute drive.

In other words, where I live is just about perfect for me. Except for the fact that I feel desperately in need of change, like I want to escape, like I’m stuck.

I’m going to guess that doing the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, getting the floor repaired and the walls painted, would all go a long way to making me feel better about life. And writing a book would help a lot, too.

Three years ago, I was two weeks away from finishing A Gift of Ghosts. I wish I could go back in time and remember exactly how I was feeling. I know that back then I confidently expected that I would have finished writing my million words by now. I anticipated that I’d be starting to consider how seriously I wanted to take my writing, whether I wanted to try to earn money from it. I also expected that I’d have my master’s degree and be working towards my licensure. I thought that would take me three years, but I’d be a year into it. Yeah, that’s weird to remember.

What I should remember, though, is that this week has been an absolutely lovely week. R is home for fall break and it has been such a pleasure to have him here. He’s happy–really, seriously, having fun and excited, loving school happy–and it is such a joy to bask in his stories and know that he’s feeling great. The weather has been phenomenal–it’s turned now, so is cool and lovely, but I swam for five or six days in a row. We’ve eaten good food and watched television together and I’ve listened to interesting stories about the Byzantine empire and public transit in Sarasota and yeah, life is good. I don’t know where my life is going or what I’m doing, but maybe for now, I need to let it be enough to enjoy the day.

Well, and do some writing, too.