Distance gives Clarity

One lovely thing about staying with writers is that not only do they understand the desire to sit and write for a while, they also get the need to not be socializing in every waking moment. As a result, I've gotten a fair amount of writing progress done on this trip. In a very little while I'm going to go climb into my new truck and head for home, but not before I set up the gps and the hands-free set up for my phone that ought to enable me to do voice recording while I drive. I have nine hours to drive today, and five tomorrow. I'm going to break this inhibition about talking my stories, darn it.

Because distance from home, and a step out of my usual routine, has made me realize that I need to write. It's also made me realize that although there were very good reasons for me to set up my desk in a common area of the house, it's been a big part of why I haven't been able to write much at home recently. I have... ideas about how to resolve that, though. Beyond the whole 'crack my brain's defenses' plan for the drive home.

The holidays are approaching, with all the attendant disruption to routines (and diets!) they inevitably bring. I'm looking at that, and the kids, and my dear husband, from a great distance at the moment. I'm very much ready to go home - I didn't sleep nearly as long as I thought I would last night, because I'm ready to be on the road - but I also have realized how much I needed this retreat, even if that wasn't what it was supposed to be at the start.

How many things in life don't come out the way they were supposed to? How many of us can look back at the path of our lives and feel a bit or more than a bit of bewilderment at how it's come out? There is certainly a lot of good to be had from stepping off the daily ruts and up far enough to have some clarity about where you've been, and thus be able to extrapolate where the path might go... because I'm not a believer in fate or predestination. I believe that I can influence my future, and in order to do that, I need time to think, which I have had, and still have more of coming before I'm back in the bosom of my family and caught up in the whirlwind of daily life again.

Cat tax: my hosts’ ‘kitten’ Ashbutt. He’s the biggest floof!