"A Room of One's Own"

When the going gets tough, the tough take a nap.  Or get an ice cream cone. Or maybe hang out at the dog park.  I identified my state of mind last week as "caregiver fatigue", which really means trying to fix things it's not in my power to fix, be terminally optimistic and patient, and put my own needs on the far back burner.  It's an imbalance that's so familiar that it took several days and some outside intervention to identify.

I was polishing up my Earth Mother image. It was somewhat tarnished from several years of therapy and learning to be good to myself, even when I'm not perfect and even when I'm not 100% available for duty to others.  Damn these therapists and sponsors, anyway! So I put away the polish, put on my big girl panties and (with gentle reminders) realized again that there IS a limit to how much I can, or should, do for other people.  Such a hard lesson for someone who, at one time, was praised constantly for being "Mommy's big helper".

What pulled me back from the precipice was writing, of course.  Besides an outpouring in the journal, I have done at least a few hundred to a few thousand words every day for the past four days.  And it works!  I'm feeling more like myself again and the ideas are flowing.  As a matter of fact, they're in overflow ---- I've been bombarded with ideas for my next NaNoWriMo book.  It's not against the rules to do some planning, outlining and research before November 1st, after all.  And after the last two books (Visions and Warnings and the one I'm finishing now, tentatively titled Lost Souls) which veered off into untested waters for me, I'm returning to historical fiction for the next one.  It will be set at the end of the Nineteenth Century in a coal-mining boomtown in southern Iowa.  I'm itching to get started on it, or at least to do some character descriptions and background research.

There is something magical for me about coming upstairs to the room I have created for my various interests and creative projects, and delving into my imagination.  Buddy comes and goes, often sacking out beside me on the old, worn couch.  Light streams in from the window that looks down on the street below.  The fan revolves silently, setting a few of the ribbons and papers aflutter, and I hear the comfortable sounds from downstairs that tell me Jill is here, Torrie and Lucky are keeping watch, and Netflix is still working fine.  I've never had such freedom before.  Virginia Woolf was right --- "A Room of One's Own" is ideal.