My rhythms of life are quite different. But your point about winter resonated. I had a few sad winters a while back. Once you've been sad in winter you can never be properly happy in winter. I solved the problem by moving to Queensland, where we don't have temperate-zone seasons, just the dry season (cooler, but hardly ever cold) and various stages of the wet season (hot and sticky, but not in a way that makes me sad)>
I identify with a lot of this, particularly what I’ve come to think of as the mature attitude to writing: the self is indeed a “passenger,” around whom writing happens, like a passenger on an ocean liner around whom crew members swarm, getting somewhere without apparent personal effort. The melancholy you describe is real, and painful, but in my own case I’m starting to recognize that by right-sizing the role writing plays in my own life as ancillary to that life, I’m freeing up space for hanging out with friends, bike rides, and reading with no particular purpose—in other words, pleasure.
My rhythms of life are quite different. But your point about winter resonated. I had a few sad winters a while back. Once you've been sad in winter you can never be properly happy in winter. I solved the problem by moving to Queensland, where we don't have temperate-zone seasons, just the dry season (cooler, but hardly ever cold) and various stages of the wet season (hot and sticky, but not in a way that makes me sad)>
I identify with a lot of this, particularly what I’ve come to think of as the mature attitude to writing: the self is indeed a “passenger,” around whom writing happens, like a passenger on an ocean liner around whom crew members swarm, getting somewhere without apparent personal effort. The melancholy you describe is real, and painful, but in my own case I’m starting to recognize that by right-sizing the role writing plays in my own life as ancillary to that life, I’m freeing up space for hanging out with friends, bike rides, and reading with no particular purpose—in other words, pleasure.
“Mrs. Miracle” ❤️
It is 100% her real name!