the in-between

In a scattered in-between space. That narrow focused goal directed energy from few weeks ago has shifted to this diffuse state. It's a bit of a time of collection, of sorting and also a bit of post-partum blues.

I managed to get through the week in Samui. I tested and got my Nidan. Big, big achievement for me but after, along with the joy i also feel some emptiness which unnerves me. Like I've put down a huge load I had been carrying and though it makes me feel lighter it also leaves me less weighted into the earth.

The week has been filled with small things to firefight. A leak from the upstairs coming through our ceiling, the microwave dying, the A/C making strange noises and little Yoda peeing outside his litter box every morning. The construction outside pounds away and all the roads around here have been dug up leaving not not even one quiet little roadway to walk through when I go out. I hate it all. It numbs me. I want to escape my body and go into auto mode.

I am suddenly drifting. I was supposed to return here and rest a few days and then begin work on the fantasy novel again. The story is now sound, the characters have a life and what it needs now is some description, some details and cleaning up of language and dialogue. A task I hoped to finish by end May. But the boiling frog dream and memory pulls at me. Something is nudging me towards it while another voice says, 'No Not another unknown challenge.'

I long for the familiar. I have no clue how to structure a memory. Why do i need to write it? Why do i feel others should read it? How to do this? What to leave out? Why begin something new when I could just finish that book. It needs to be finished.

A part of me longs to work with what I have grown to know and not throw myself into another task where I have to read and learn and work and read and learn. But it calls. Some calls are hard to ignore.

But I am procrastinating. Putting it off. A bit afraid to start. And so much else also going on demanding attention. Yes, it is the in-between. I don't like these spaces much anymore. I know I used to. They used to make me feel alive. But today i am just tired.

narrow uncertain goals

Right now I seem to have narrowed my future vision to a sharp beam of limited sight. I am so focused only on two things and the outcome of both is uncertain.

I wake up every morning with a stuffed head and pain in my back and right knee. I am working with a physio to strengthen the back and knee. He sometimes is surprised by the pace at which I keep going and my determination to do the stretches and exercises despite pain and fatigue. 

But I have an ulterior motive. In two weeks now I go for a week of training in Koh Samui where I hope that my back and knee hold up and I can complete the intense week of 35 hours of training and test for my nidan. It's uncertain whether my body will hold up through that week but I will do everything to push through except perhaps injure it permanently. Why I do it? Because it is there to be done. 

Once I push through my training session I shower and sit down to work on the third revision of my fantasy movel. The stuffed sinus makes it hard to think clearly. I shake my head grab a hot green tea with lemon and sit down with my laptop. Outside the construction noise pounds away - drilling, piling and who knows what else. All distractions - reasons to stop and just leave it all. 

I am beginning to really know the book, the characters, maybe even the heart. In quiet moments throughout the day I make decisions about what I really want the world to be. The books grown in size to about five hundred pages but it's uncertain whether it will ever exist in print. Yet I keep going at it. Sometimes I feel it's crap but everyday I just pull out one scene I am unhappy with and revise it and in the two weeks before I go I want to finish the work on all the sparse and un-flowing scenes. Again why I do I do it? Because it is there to do.

To have a time like this with such narrow and uncertain goals is an uneasy process. It's exhausting on so many levels. And exhilarating too. Anyone who's been there knows. Maybe three weeks from today I might know something more about the why of  these days of activity. But today all i can do is put on my shorts and head to the gym.