I’ve stopped doing too many of the things that had
previously defined me.
Where once I attended yoga, I’ve taken up staring. Where once I wrote daily, I now take
notes. And where I used to think about
taking up kayaking, I now only think about thinking about taking up kayaking.
Everything has changed.
It’s exhausting, being newly single. Peoples, I’m tired. Between not knowing how to turn on my
furnace, needing a chair to reach the cord that turns off the overhead fan, and
wondering if I will ever bake a whole cherry pie again, I find myself in a
constant state of flux.
Where am I? Who am
I? Where’d that one thing go, the thing
that used to be in the drawer with the other things?
I don’t know. And
there’s nothing to do but find out.
“What you need,” my mother says, “is some gumption.”
This took me aback, frankly. One, that she said something
so direct – not recommended in that Hmm-I-don’t-know-about-that
Minnesota Book of Suggestions – and two, that she used the word “gumption”.
Gumption: Like
something stuck to the bottom of your shoe.
Or a gas-producing vegetable…
She’s right.
Dagnabit, the ol’ lady is right again.
I’ve sat still for too long.
It’s time I start doing things again.
It's time I started thinking about thinking about
acquiring some gumption.