Time

      It's that time of year: Tinsel, stockings, Christmas trees, snow (not here!), carols, and ++++. It's also the time (I figure it starts around Halloween) when hours, days, and weeks speed by with such intensity that I've come to believe clocks worldwide are a jumble of frenzied gears trying to make it through the year. Certainly, my noggin is that way, and it's not yet December 1.

     Take, for example, my post of November 11th. Achievement washed over me that day. Morning poems were stacking up. I felt on track with writing and revising other pieces. But like the imagined clock gear, it began to unravel.
     This last week, I have written pages of false starts filled with cross outs and strikethroughs. Okay, the Christmas storage bins needed to be brought into the house, then opened, and sorted through. Time to decorate the front of the house. No one could find the door wreath. An incomplete Christmas gift list sits on the counter. When will the tree be set in its stand? To write or not to write Christmas cards? Also, up in the air.
     Sorry––strayed for a minute, another common occurrence these days. The point is my recent writing efforts have not held my interest. Momentum drops. Pressure mounts. Words go against the grain. I cross out more than not, even give into full-blown X's through paragraphs or stanzas. I watch the clock. Time speeds along. Was that a knock at the door? I barrel out the room turning the corner on a dime. Preoccupied with a gadzillion things, I smack my foot into a heavy storage bin. Convinced I'd heard someone at the door, I hobble to open it, and found just what I needed––a box of inescapable mediocrity delivered by and to my very own frenzied mind. Oh my!!!

P. S. I fractured a toe in that "turn on the dime." Really. I did. If that can't slow down gears at this time of the year––I don't what else could. Here's the good news: It's an end-of-the-year hiatus, and I must accept it as just that. I am a writer. A new year––and a new clock––dawns.