My Epic

I have written seventy-five pages. I didn’t take my laptop with me to Des Moines last month for my little hippie friend’s birthday, then I ended up leaving from there for Fort Worth again to see my friend for her birthday. I just made it back to Des Moines on Friday, in time for my niece’s actual day of birth. I’m staying with my sister for a bit, helping her get everything set up for the baby (who came early) and just helping her out since she’s still recovering from that whole growing and then expelling another human being thing. At least I hope I am being helpful. I have to watch out that I don’t become overbearing. I have a tendency . . .

It’s good to hang out with my family again. The first couple days were stressful, but it’s calmed down now a bit, and I am getting back to the writing. I bought a cheap notebook in Texas. One hundred sheets. Two hundred pages back and front. I am on page seventy-five.

As I said, I’ve been cleaning my sister’s apartment (she’s a hoarder – it’s okay, she knows), which has been an epic task worthy of a bard’s song and involved a mighty mouse slayer (me) and a dangerous journey (into the disgusting mess of my teenaged niece’s bedroom). I came across a file box filled with the only copies of several of my older works – a few short stories, quite a few essays, and the last known copy of what was once my graduate thesis. I thought I had lost all of it in my gypsy travels, but there they were, safe, guarded by the mice who left their calling card in the bottoms of the hanging files. Kind of made me feel bad about evicting them.

I’ve already started reworking one of the stories. Something my hippie friend Emily and I talked about the other day. Suddenly the story made sense to me. Suddenly I found it again.

I am getting things back in order. Maybe not back. Maybe just in order. I’ve given up so much time – to illness, to meaningless jobs, to standing in my own damned way. But kind of like the story, I have been putting in the hard work, facing my fears, fighting when I need to, and suddenly, amazingly, life makes sense to me again. Suddenly, I have found myself again.