My plan to write a side project in November, obviously, has been put on hold for the duration of my healing.  I thought I was okay with it until I saw everyone showing off their NaNoWriMo diplomas (even tho I wasn’t doing NaNoWriMo). Even knowing that I can go back to it the moment I’m ready, it was still a reminder of the fact that I’ve lost time on…everything.
Stuck on the sofa, the oxycodone dumping me into brainfog, I could feel it dragging at my bones, making my skin twitch with a kind of sluggish impatience.
And I found myself thinking a lot about lost time in general. About things I wanted to do, made plans to do, and then didn’t do, for reasons good or not. I thought about the things I may not have time to do now, and what I would do, given time.
The kind of thing you do when you realize, gut-level, that you have an expiration date.
That date may be a ways in the future yet. But the tick tick tock, once heard, doesn’t shut up.
I can say that I’ve never shied away from an interesting challenge, and I’ve never been afraid of change. But I have allowed Reasons to interfere. And now I’m thinking about how even Good Reasons can lead to the wrong decisions, where ‘wrong’ is a moving target you can only see in hindsight.
“Shoulda” is a cold and pointless word. “Still could” is a better term. “Still can” is a better term yet.
I’m off the oxycodone now (huzzah) , and my words are slowly coming back. The new due date for my side project is December 31st. It’s a reminder to get going on everything else, too.
December’s the end of the year, yeah. But endings are also where you grow beginnings.