Making a Place

Let’s talk a little bit about discouragement. And depression. Not fun topics but they are definitely steps along the road to all kinds of recoveries—physical, emotional, mental or any combination thereof. At least that’s been my experience and I don’t think I’m so unusual.

We’ve just had a huge snowstorm—the one that swept across the country causing havoc everywhere.

Here we just had three solid days of storming gray skies, high winds and plenty of snow.

I love the snow and we certainly need as much of it as we can get in this dry land. But when it comes down for days on end and I can’t afford to have my road plowed until it’s all over, that means I get snowed in. Which also means I can’t get out to the gym—for a week (see previous post Getting to the Gym).

Talk about your loss of momentum. The air whooshed right out of that balloon about as fast as Marco Rubio’s campaign (my apologies to any Republicans among you). All that hepped up, but fragile, energy that got me going in the first place and had me so committed, has gone and left me wondering if I’ll ever be able to find it again.

And I haven’t yet bought the stationary bike several of you recommended I should have at home (in case I was ever snowed in) or the home weights (still researching the bikes—no excuse on the weights). The gym interruption wouldn’t have felt like such a big deal if I’d been able to do some exercises here.

But then, and probably more to the point, I’ve been going through a string of pretty nasty pain days lately and I get so discouraged. I start feeling completely defeated in fact. I mean it’s not like this thing is ever going to heal. And my knees just seem to get worse and worse… It really is almost enough to send me right back to bed for, well, the rest of my life I’m thinking would be about right.

I know you all know what I’m taking about—those days when you feel so downtrodden and sorry for yourself it’s hard to even breathe? Yeah. Like that… exactly like that.

I’ve come to know when I’m feeling that bad, if there’s any chance of retrieving myself at all, I have to find something, anything, to grasp hold of. The good news is that, lately, I’ve been able to summon the energy to do that. So I cast about.

It can be as ordinary as noticing my house lit against the snow at night…

… or as insignificant as that same snow nested on top of sunflower seed pods left over from summer…

… bearing witness to the storm breaking…

… the sunset afterward like the sky taking a bow, its gray curtains parting for the occasion…

… finding beauty in the work we do…

… any thread I can hold onto to pull myself back up to where I can remember who I am again… (after a good cry that is, we all deserve our tears).

Then there is always the possibility of sinking one’s teeth into a PROJECT! After the gloom has lifted and there is energy to be found and some friends to help.

This project started with a desk. I’d seen a little corner desk in some catalog that came to the house and it caught my imagination (a very good thing to take one’s mind off troubles is imagination). I thought I might just be able to fit it into the only remaining corner of my small living space that is unused and then I could bring my big computer up from downstairs. I liked it!

Here’s the little corner I was thinking of, not bad…

But as I was measuring said corner Kim came over to the house and asked what I was doing. I told him and he reminded me that I already had a desk downstairs. When I objected that there was no room for it up here (you see I’m sitting at that very desk right now, up HERE on the second floor), he begged to differ and our project was born. Here’s the space Kim suggested. Much better…

But my how things stack up once you’ve been in a place for awhile…

It all had to move somewhere so we set to finding places to tuck our treasures…

… and dishes had to be unloaded, making the cabinet a feasible item to carry down my narrow and winding stairs…

My computer had to be carted up here to see if we could get it to work with the downstairs Wi-Fi. I had no idea if it would. The electronic wizardry of computers is still beyond me I confess. But it WORKED! I couldn’t believe it…

Then the desk came up…

… the china cabinet went down…

A drawer I hadn’t cleaned out for probably a decade…

… was cleaned…

… and I moved into my wonderful new writing space…

I think you all know it means so much more to me than what meets the eye.

It means, in fact, that I am beginning to dream again…

I am starting to think of a future and am making a place for myself in it.

Pain or no I intend to continue.

And you all are some of what I know to grab hold of when I need a pull up; when I need to remember who I am.

Thank you for that wonderful gift.

Love to you all,

Jeane