What can I say?

In the time it took to sip on one (larg-ish) cup of coffee, the sun has hidden itself behind the clouds.
I'm just sitting here, stretching out Saturday morning as I usually do, thinking about something that has plagued me the last couple of weeks:
what to write?

I've been a bit hard-up for topics lately. I've been working (work-work as I always refer to it) like a fiend and it's taking up all my time and energy. That doesn't leave much time for free-thinking, where I dream up all these blog-worthy spouts. I haven't even been falling asleep with words in my head. Just...blankness. Or thoughts of files.

My friend A., in the course of a long phone conversation the other night, listened to me whine, for lack of a better term. At one point I was near tears of frustration just talking about work, about family, about support systems. She brought me back to earth with two simple concepts:
One--Burnout (this concept, to me, needs no more explanation. But, like depression and anxiety, it is a specific goal I can work against, once I know what, exactly, I'm up against.)
Two--our general impatience with the universe. I have been mightily guilty with this one of late.
I will sit, at my desk at work, literally itching for the days to speed up and let me out (let me off!) of my 'cell' (office) into the greener pastures of Vacationland (aka Maine). Also, I want time to speed up to that magical place where Mike and I are together, together-together, all year long, none of these (seemingly) endless separations and opposite-schedules punctuating our newly-minted marriage.

So there they are. Pretty simple aren't they? And yet, the two, combined and intertwined, can create such negative angst it's almost unbearable.  They can dominate my thoughts, reminding me of an article I once read by a writer I admire, Abigail Thomas, about this longing we have. We long for things. For achievements, for milestones, for recognition, for feelings of value. When one longing is met, the feeling of longing does not go away. I had an epiphany when I read this article years ago. Okay, I thought--that means that I don't have to feel secretly guilty for 'wanting'. For setting those often crazy, way-out-there goals. I can have them in the background while I continue to live life, ie, live in the grind, the same one that plays out with all of us: work, worry about money, look for love, find it, don't find it, work to keep it, marry, think about marrying, children, no children, new work, money again, aging, our parents' aging. Then, death, grief, more life, picking up the pieces, re-building, re-building, re-building--for some of us, a process that mercifully doesn't happen often. For others, it's a function that comes to almost form a theme for life.

Last night, I had a quiet night in (the whole weekend is going to be full of this, I'm loving every second). I finished reading A Circle of Quiet, this magical, forgotten book that I'm convinced is going to become a kind of 'handbook for living' for me. Despite the author, L'Engle's, complete opposite-ness to me in every way, her words are so pervasive and ...sensible, I found myself reading her book over a number of weeks, savouring it, rather than finishing it within days.  Unusual for me.

So, it's Saturday, I haven't really written in a week (I took Hiatus down, I'll revive it later, I took it down for me, and my loyal readers already got to it and have taken it in--if you missed it, email me and I'll send it to you) and I've been fretting about not giving enough airtime to my thoughts, to this blog, but here it is. Another entry, even if it's filled with the detritus of my tiny mind.

I leave you with some L'Engle to mull over  for your weekend (truly, I read these lines following my conversation with A. and I was, as I always am, over and over, convinced about the true nature of order, fate, the path);

"...we do hurt ourselves when we try to take short cuts to find out who we are, and what our place in the universe."   p. 225, A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L'Engle, (c) 1972

See what I mean?