Wading in Slush

I've been writing about being on the cusp of change, of these about to happen. This about period is a long painful period to be in, like change purgatory. The days on the calender fall away and nothing is really happening. Waiting for the right timing, the last day, the new job, the next phone call and the world keeps spinning around and around and around and I'm looking forward to change but i have to wait. Nothing ever happens as fast as we decide it to. There is always a lag time.

In the mean time we just go day in and day out and slog away at the work I've got. This has become an exhausting period of time for me. Not just the work, though installing floors has really sapped my energy and strength, but also a sort of open ended work arrangement. An arrangement i don't want to question and end prematurely but at the same time it is rather hard to plan for the future, plan the next step when the step is masked from view. But, i am thankful for the work. A way to pay the bills. I am always thankful for that.

Since the day after Christmas i have felt tired. So it isn't just work, i know a lot of it is the stress of work ending, finding some more things to do, starting career counselling. I think, to, i am suffering for post Christmas depression. The anticipation and build up to the day, then the exciting and fun morning watching my wife and children (mostly my 5 yr. old the 8 month old only wanted to eat the paper) open gifts and all the food and drink and the next day it was over. Simply enough. Finished. Since then i have felt this funk hanging over me. I had built my late fall around making it to Christmas both with work and with high hopes and expectations. Now that it is over, a couple weeks gone, the real world is over taking me again and the fantasy land of celebration and expectation has fallen by the wayside dramatically. What is this need to celebrate? The new year has become a stereotype depression for me, as i wrote on the 1st, and going into 2010 is no different, save that there is more at stake. Each year there is more at stake than the year before and time to time i just freeze and it all washes over me like slush, the heavy, cold, wet, dirty leftovers of winter that are a by product of the end of winter and the promise of spring, but it is a dirty messy change. Not at all like the fall where leaves gradually change colors and the palate of nature is always a brilliant hue of oranges and reds and slowly the stark nudity of the trees is enough to inspire and call out the better of people. It is change made for poetry and adventure and few people would argue against the crisp, cold, sunny days of fall. But i don't look forward to the damp sunny days of late winter when the snow is melting and the lawns and sidewalks are covered with mud and slush.

Change, for me, is more like winter to spring. There is always a period of hardship and inconvenience to overcome become things begin to happen. And always it starts as delicately as new life, where one misstep or mistake could end what has promise to be timeless, beautiful, and full filing.

In the heart of winter I look forward to spring but i never think about the change in between.