I'm feeling it and I'm afraid. This isn't a character talking; it's really me.

March was an unbelievably full month for me. My sister was married mid-month. I had a bout with an upper respiratory infection that laid me pretty low. And our congregation built a new place of worship in the last week of the month, having preceded the all-out building effort of that week with several months of preliminaries so that the groundwork was set and everything was ready to go up. It was a glorious, meaningful, spiritual month, and I would not trade the experience for a dozen easy, everything-falls-into-place months. The experiences are too rich to put into words yet, but they are there, simmering, and ready to go into written record when they are digested and the time is right.

The result however is that I'm not at all ready for April. I don't want to set goals. I don't want to submit manuscripts. I'm tired of writing practice but too tired to get busy on a project. I have my April guidelines, April contest, April assignment sheets sitting there in my goals folder and all of them seem too wieldy to handle. Like a sword that is heavy and my arm is weak. I need a light and easy sword that will cut through the weariness.

But if I'm weary, should I be resting? But if I rest will it break the flow. I've written more this year in the past three months than I did all of last year, and I've loved it. I've met interesting people that may someday become characters. I've had the joy of playing with words and ideas. Even today I sat in the parking lot waiting for my dear son to finish his day's work, and I picked up a pen and wrote from the prompt for today--seeing how many of the details of the picture I could remember. I need to notice detail more. I can train myself to do that.

In the end I wasn't very happy with what I wrote. I'm too busy telling. But it's what came first and it bled out of experience, and someday I may go back and re-read it, and a story will bloom from it like Black Olives did from notes I jotted after making a salad. We just don't know when things will gel.

And so here I am waffling. Should the goals be normal? Light? I don't want to lose the edge I've developed, but I don't want to be so stringent with my routine that I burn out and lose the enjoyment in what I've gained. Where is the balance?

Okay everyone out there. Don't LET ME STOP! :)

But for tonight, this is it. Rest well.