I needed a break. After five years of mostly being alone I was tired of having to make too many decisions about what felt like everything. It came to the point that deciding what to write had become burdensome. So I stopped. Cold Turkey. The stories kept on accumulating but I did not write them down. This is the first time I have sat down to write something in three months. I have set my red tomato timer for ten minutes and I will not stop until the timer’s alarm goes off.

I had been consistently showing up for the past two and a half years. I had tried my best not to miss a daily but some had been missed and it was okay. My world did not end. The world did not notice my absence. I needed to drop out and take some time out to think. What to do next? What do I want to do? I still haven’t answered those questions. Instead I focused on self-care. I restarted doing my morning pages, combined with stationary bicycle riding for a dose of exercise and to warm myself during the colder mornings of the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

I had amassed a collection of these pages over the past year. Initially I had wanted to review them to see what insights I could glean from them. What secrets would the scrawling reveal to me? Nothing. My scribblings were not fit for human consumption they looked more like graphed heart beats. I could not read my own writing. Pages and pages. Book after book of ink-stained etchings. I threw them into the recycling bin, one after another, after another. Release. Relief. Relive.

BBBBRRRRRIIIING.

I guess I am back.