It’s really easy to assume that whatever I am in the middle of is the way things will always be. The spring felt like that, though therapy and careful self-management kept everything from feeling like an insuperable obstacle. I managed, fending off the crises, ticking off the things that needed to be done. And last week was the last of them, two MFA defenses. Gone, and gone. Suddenly I can look forward at a month without any particular responsibilities, and into a fall with lots of to-dos, but mostly they are travel related to the collection’s release and then the artist’s residencies in Iceland and Scotland.
I’m plenty busy — American Tour is still being revised, and I am helping clear an estate (for pay); I still have dinners and coffees and drinks with friends on the calendar. But I suddenly have moments of exquisite, contented boredom. What to do, what to do? What I don’t have to do, is react to feeling overwhelmed and unsafe, and that seems to free up a lot of energy. Therapy tells me that a better response to all those negatives is not to react even when they are there; but it’s much easier to do this when they aren’t, after all.
So what’s coming up? In the next month, I am finally finishing American Tour, then there’s a week at a cabin with my brother’s family. I can clean out the fish tank, I can visit bookstores, I can take stuff to the thrift store, I can make iced tea, I can reread Patrick O’Brian. It sounds perfect!
It’ll be so wonderful having your time be yours again! And so much good stuff coming up.