What is happening to me? As if all the procrastination and self-distraction that I typically do wasn't deleterious enough, now I'm finding it impossible to tear myself away from a new video game! I'd tell you what the game is called, but the dang thing is free online: telling you would be like dragging you under the water with me. There's no reason we should all drown... the honorable thing for me to do is to die alone!

Maybe it is, as Wendy says, something about these snowy frigid days of February that freeze my brain and frost my creativity. I think that it's more likely the increasingly longer and sunnier daylight hours, that get me to thinking of daffodils poking up through the snow (I've already seen them!) and the dream of summer days spent at my seashore home. Then again, it also may be the terrible realization that I've just passed the fifth anniversary of my husband's death. I don't think I ever planned out this far ahead. After he died I set my sights on getting though another day; then on getting beyond that brutal third month; then I longed to reach the allegedly transformational 1-year anniversary which was supposed to have been the conclusion of my grief. Imagine my surprise when I looked back from the second anniversary and discovered that a year prior I had been lying to myself: I hadn't been done grieving back then at all - but NOW I was done grieving!

The third year anniversary I looked back on the second and laughed at what a fool I'd been.

But really it was only a 2 1/2 year bereavement process and I think that was pretty good (considering how my entire future had been predicated on things "Joe and I" would do).

Reorganizing your future in your fifties isn't an easy thing. Moreover, once you realize how absolutely nothing in your life can be relied upon, then building a future and making plans feels a lot like building a house on a foundation of loose sand. You know it's all going to fall apart eventually. You know it's going to crumble. You know... but the fact is that you don't "know" anything. No one can. That's the mind-boggling, earth-rattling, plan-stealing problem I face. Do I put my energy, my heart and soul, into plans that may, or may not, ever come to fruition? How can I be writing a book - how can I dare to dream of finishing it - when the last big plan I had for my future went up in smoke?

I have to forgive myself for not making more progress with the goals I've set and the expectations I had for myself and my writing. The exact same thing happened to me last spring, and I survived. I also need to accept that I have some trouble facing the end of anything (even a box of cereal). The closer I get to it, the more I want to pull away.

But maybe it's okay to hit a wall now and then? Walls challenge us and make us choose: Do I go right, or shall I turn left? If I get really creative, I think beyond my box when I hit walls: I could climb over or maybe even dig under?

Or maybe I will just go straight through that f-ing wall.

"Yeah, WALL, what do you say to THAT?"