The rotten high hill

This whole "writing" thing was a lot less difficult when I wasn't trying to go anywhere. Somehow, just the decision to do it for real - for pay maybe - for the enjoyment of other people or at least for their critique - somehow that decision faced me up this damn hill, and putting one word in front of the other has just gotten a whole lot harder.

Silly.

This is silly.

I do know how to write. Why can't I write today? (It's a good thing the computer screen doesn't spit out wadded up pieces of paper - I'd be buried forever under mounds of wadded up paper.)

Okay, think. Concentrate. This is like that. There's always a "that" that this is like. Always. And it always gives me a clue. If this is like that (and it is), then I can look at that and figure this out.

I feel ... I feel ... I feel really overwhelmed. I feel like my legs won't hold me up. I feel like I can't move ... no, I feel like I can't move UPHILL. This feels like facing our hill.

I live uphill from our town, and there are lots of ways to walk back up the hill to our house. If I take the direct route (which, of course, it is my preference to do, whether in a car or on foot), it's not quite a mile of paved stair-stepper exercise all the way home - not quite a mile, and then the driveway, which is steeper than most of the road was. I end up sitting in my kitchen, all red in the face, panting and huffing and wondering where the girl I used to be went and when did that happen and how could I be this out of condition ... but it's easier every time, of course. Now that I'm not anemic, it's easier every time.

There are many, many less direct ways to get up here. Some routes are intermittent steep parts with flatter parts between. I did discover (if discover is a synonym for "really bad decision") a route last week that seemed to be mostly steep parts interspersed with you've-gotta-be-kidding-me parts. I don't plan to do that one again any time soon. And I've ridden my bike down - and then had to call home for a ride back up. Only, the car that came had a pile of large teenagers in it already - no room for me, really. So he just took my bike, and I walked back up.

That is precisely how I feel at this moment about writing - writing anything. I'm stuck at the bottom of the hill (ironically, at the library, of all places! that's what's at the bottom of the hill - the library) and my bike is too heavy and I am too flabby and the hill is too steep, and the very most anyone could even do for me at this point is to give my bike a ride. I still have to walk. Up. I can't even figure out which way to go.