Wake up, check FB and e-mail, dress, breakfast, meds, coffee, not necessarily in that order. Say good morning to Anand and see if he needs help with breakfast; Kavi won’t be awake for a while. And all the while, the book is LOOMING, and finally, there are no more preparations to make, and you have to face it.
It’s swimming when you know the water’s cold, colder than you’d like it, and you ought to just fling yourself in, but it’s been a while. Instead you’re inching in, bit by bit, and that is self-inflicted torture and you know it, but you can’t seem to help yourself. Tomorrow, maybe, you’ll fling yourself into the ocean as if to a lover, one you can trust to catch you, but today you are suspicious, and anxiety is palpable, something you must fight through. It would be so much easier to weed the garden instead, and it needs it…
…but you’ve been clearing the decks for weeks now, and the truth is that the garden is weeded enough to get by, the house isn’t exactly clean, but it is no longer an utter disaster, the most urgent financial and other business matters have been dealt with (or are on this week’s schedule at various pre-determined points), and there is nothing actually screaming at you now, finally, nothing else that needs doing. In this next half hour, at least.
‘But half an hour isn’t enough time,’ you cry! That’s fear too. And yes, later you’ll have a four-hour stretch cleared away, which is better for the deep work; this morning, a doctor’s appointment and a trip to the DMV intervene. But something useful can still be accomplished in half an hour, even if it’s only reading over yesterday’s new scene, re-reading the next one. Setting the day’s writing wheels in motion so that the back of your brain will work while you are sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, in line at the DMV.
Soon, you are more than knee-deep. Soon, the shock of cold hitting a new inch of naked skin will become routine — you have done this before, after all, and you know it will not actually hurt you. Soon you will be waist-deep, chest-deep.
Then you will take a deep breath and throw yourself forward, submerged. A moment of shock, but then the cold forgotten in the movement of strong limbs. The water welcoming you, beloved, once again.