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Begin Again: This Space Between My Old Life and My New Life Won’t Last
I’ve been a busy bee, closing on my Montana house, getting settled in a new place, and contemplating my next move. All of this activity leaves me feeling unbalanced and unfocused — which brings a feeling of deja vu.
A few years ago, after moving to a new house in a new place and leaving my long nursing career, I was lost. Acting on a friend’s advice, I consulted a psychic. “I don’t know what to do with my life,” I stated, in a nutshell.
Unmoved, she paused to check in with my particular energy of the moment, and then said, curiously, “you’re already doing it, and soon, your path will become clear to you.” I remained flummoxed, but I suppose a bit more hopeful.
Almost exactly a year later, when I finally got around to putting my work out there, I realized I had been writing consistently for the past three years and had accumulated forty-five unpitched and unpublished essays, poems, and creative nonfiction pieces in my “writing” file. She was right — I just didn’t know it at the time. This experience was yet another answer to the question of how you become a writer. You write.
In the past twelve months, many of those pieces that sat on the shelf for so long have been exposed to the light. I wonder how many more pieces I have in me, and whether I will be able to write at all in this new place. Most days, I’m too tired to do more than cozy up on the couch and binge “Outlander” on Netflix — but this in-between time, this space between my old life and my new life, won’t last. I will begin again. I just hope the words will keep coming to me.
