Time and the Muse

 It's been a long time. A uniquely long time. I have been waiting for my Muse to show up for, well, over a year now. I have a feeling that she isn't going to. Let's just assume that she, like thousands and thousands, became a victim to Covid and either she died or she just ran out of the energy needed to get me moving, to restore my creative spirit and allow me to speak again.

Is she here now? I am figuring that she is still a "she".  If I may be so bold. I'm not going there. I just know she's a total she and will always be. But, I am not going there, remember?

We are now well into 2021. That seems more than remarkable to me and to the majority of people with whom I share my confusion. To some of us, it's scary to note that we're still thinking that it's 2019. We want to think it's 2019.  If we're over age 65, this kind of thinking is important to us. We lost a year. We can't really afford to lose time. The reality is that we don't have that much time ahead of us.

It's hard to write about anything beyond what has been the highlight of our existence since very early in 2020. For most of us, we rarely ventured beyond our front doors. We spent our days inside of a womb. The perimeters of our world shortened. We patiently waited for the back to work whistle, the signal that would tell it is was safe to come back out. Within our wombs, we created new ways to exist. New ways to communicate with others in their wombs. New things to cook, sew, knit, read, bake, grow, hear, smell, fix and view. It was new and somewhat exciting. For a while. And then, it became old, boring and very bad for us. We lost the joy of cooking. We became tired of the new paradigm. Our daily walks became boring and the routines that we had developed for what we thought would be a short haul, became drudgery as we realized that this was a longer haul than we had signed up for in the first place. There was nothing new or exciting out there to grab. 

I still find it hard to come up with new topics of conversation, in person, never mind in writing. My creative juices have not been flowing and I often wonder if I am the only one who is feeling that way. Am I alone in this void? And then I remind myself that to survive is to be creative. Pat myself on the back. So far, I have survived quite nicely. I have learned some new art-forms. The art of placing my needs in front of my wants. The art of dodging viral enemies and staying well. The art of appreciating my home, the time spent with my husband. The art of making a living space more livable. The art of accepting things the way they are and must be and accepting the me as I am and will be for however long that may be.

So, welcome back, dear Muse. Let's work together again, accepting each other for as long as that may be. We don't have time to lose and we're not going to waste too much more.