RECYCLING ME

     It is great to awake once more with new direction to my days. I often find myself grinding sluggishly through a day-to-day existence through the winter months, wondering if  the time will ever come when I really desire to be productive again?
     Then one day the temperature rises moderately, a soft breeze replaces the freezing wind I've become so accustomed to feeling and the sunshine again has a welcoming brightness to the rays it sends down. There is a stirring deep within that tells me there is still a bit of creative life somewhere inside and it is about ready to hatch. I know it must be nurtured, kept warm and turned lovingly to keep it alive. So I go through files, read past compositions, arrange book signings, contact colleagues neglected through the winter months and gradually begin to write once again.
     Through my office window I see a lone clump of crocus, golden on the cold dead lawn, stretching toward the thin sunlight and I feel the words deep inside my being also reaching, reaching for the clean surface of the page before me.
     I've often said that it is a shame I had a built-in excuse to not write and make a living. I've always had a wonderful husband who has financed my lazy lifestyle. I've never been forced to sit myself down in front of the desk and produce in order to eat. True, I did work in the newspaper business for awhile and added to the family income in that manner and I did free-lance work also. But anyone who has ever written articles or books knows that one had better have a second income if he or she wants to eat anything other than beans nightly. My better half has always cheerfully allowed me to write when I wanted and never pressured me to "make money". Thank goodness. We would have starved.
     However, I might have lived up to my potential had I been forced to write constantly instead of whenever and whatever I chose. As it is, now and then I sit back and produce something we all crow over and most readers enjoy and I bask in the glow of their approval. But at night, in the dark, I hide my head under the pillow in shame.
     Well . . . 'nough said. A new anthology will be out in April and another of my stories will be in it and then a second one again in the fall plus  I have a juvenile mystery in the works so maybe I'm not entirely useless. Let's hope so.
     Now. I did think to tell you all about my trip but I got off track. So I believe I'll save some of it until the next post. There was so much and it was all so wonderful. First Paris and then Prague!  Ooooooo.lala.
     So. Until next time...au revoir!