A Letter to the Void

I’m going to do something risky here and assume the best. Thanks to some major shifts in pretty much every area of my life and the lives of many people close to me, the past year has been a blur. Thanks, too, to my family, friends and some very kind professionals, the Year of Mania seems to be winding down.

This past week, I escaped the blackout that took over my whole town by going home to help my mother move into assisted living. Due to some confusion that still seems quite fishy to me, for about 36 hours she had no place to live. I’ll sort that out later. Nevertheless, tomorrow she moves into a room I’d quickly live in myself if I had a pile of books and some free time. She seems happy; she seems ready. Fingers crossed.

This is where the assuming the best comes in. In the hours I spent in a rental car this week, I felt this longing to get back to myself. First, I need to get back to running and eating fruit. I also need to pay attention to the people who live in my house. Then I need to get down to work, paid or otherwise. I need to read more. I need to write more. I need to clear my head of things that don’t belong on a housing application. Hopefully, I won’t spend two hours a day on the phone to social workers and doctors.

This isn’t to say that what’s been happening the last few months wasn’t necessary. And if you ask me, I did a bang-up job. I didn’t do it by myself, certainly, and I didn’t always do it well, or with the grace and patience I’d have liked, but on the whole I did a bit to prove myself as a human being.

Anyway, my point is that I’m trying to decide what this space is for, which is a constant question in the life of this space. Sometimes it does too good a job of being a clearinghouse for mental clutter because once I write here I tell myself I can stop writing. But I can’t. Not really. Or, I won’t. Not if I think I take myself seriously.

So what to do here? People (more than one person) are counting on me to use my creative energies elsewhere. But I like it here. I like you guys, whoever you are, but I need to be someplace else, too. I need that because of those other people I mentioned, but I need to build up the mental muscles that have atrophied in the last few months (and maybe years if I’m really honest).

So, I’m asking, what should I do with this space? Does it go on hiatus, or does it change to act as some sort of aid to the other work I’m doing? I know I could probably make use of it, but it needs to be productive, and not in some intangible, emotional salve kind of way. (Those are fine, but I’m impatient right now.)

The fact is, I’ll ask because I love to ask, because I love the energy that comes from planning with a crowd, and then I’ll decide for myself. I may even just be posing this question to myself, but doing it out loud.  But strangely, in the midst of everything, this space became a real thing, like the Velveteen Rabbit. It surprises me to realize that I don’t feel right about just leaving this thing to wither, so it must be important somehow. The next most logical thing to do then, in my mind, is to ask the people who helped make it feel like a real thing (albeit a small real thing) to participate in its evolution. It might not work. But as I said, I’m taking a risk and assuming the best.

So, what say you, mysterious readers? If you were me, what would you do here?