It's a new dawn, it's a new day, and all that jazz. Or so they tell me. The beginning of a new year always makes me feel so... somber. Almost funereal. It never feels quite real, as though the months from January to March happen in a fog-soaked dream on some other plane. It's not an entirely unpleasant sensation, but certainly not a good place to be for overlong. It's a good time for writing, at least for me. It's the time I can release, at least a little, my kung-fu grip on the illusion of control. Perfection. Control. My ever-present, invisible frenemies. They live in my head and run taped loops all day long, critiquing every move. Critiquing every imagined move, as well.
The big boys are both at school, and there are a million things to do this morning. Which probably explains why I got back from dropping Toby at school and then spent 15 minutes in the car, in the driveway, listening to NPR while perusing November's Vogue and daydreaming about auditioning for a play at the local theater.
I auditioned for a real play exactly once - when I was in high school. I was terrible. Self-conscious and crippled with insecurities, over-conscious of my Rubenesque figure in a room full of anorexically thin California blondes, I knew I was doomed to fail before I started. Naturally, I was correct.
Such a different woman am I from that emotionally crippled girl. Some of the scars, however, remain. So I look at the open audition notices (for a playhouse in our ridiculously small Mayberry town) and daydream about just going in with gusto and having a ball. My husband encourages these flights of fantasy. I shrug and say "maybe someday" and go back to my lovely daydreams and try to decide if the blouse on the clothes-hangar of a model in Vogue would hold up over my 38D's. Then I jot down notes, ideas for a short story. I head back into the house to finish my cold coffee from this morning. I sit down to type up a few notes on this long-neglected corner of my digital brain.
Outside, the sky is gray and the frosty air burns in my throat like whiskey fire.
Inside, the house is quiet but for the crawling sounds of one tiny explorer and the low hum of the fridge. Time to begin the day. Time to begin the year.
Hello, my friends.