Winter's Time

Tomorrow is the last day of the eleventh month of the year, and the time is approaching to take stock of it -- the year -- for what it was and wasn't. Being mathematical by nature, I often break down years by numbers. I add up things like money made and money spent, articles published, trips taken, the wins and losses by my favorite sports teams, and so on.

Just trying to make sense of it all.

Of course, these are at best crude measures of a year, mere signposts that barely scrape the surface of what living in real time feels like. In truth, the emotional journey of any particular year would require far more skill to document. How do you measure gradual revelations such as that "being in a relationship" is far more trouble, ultimately, than it is worth; or, alternatively, something that feels a lot like love is likely just around the next corner?

Depression is the term we use to cover a broad range of states (note that I do not call them diseases) that many of us experience during the course of a year, or a month or a week, a day, even an hour or a specific collection of minutes. Although I recognize that at its extreme manifestations, depression amounts to a debilitating state, other, milder versions of this part of being alive can provide some of a writer's more productive moments.

Because, it is when we reach this state that our ability to capture commonalities across the barriers of age, race, gender and all of the other human categories used to divide us one from the other begin to melt away. This is when we access empathy and find ways to tell stories that, though they may start deep within us, stretch far outside of our own limited consciousness to touch someone else.

Every writer dreams of connecting. No word has ever been written by anyone in the hope that no other human eye would absorb it. The collection of words we choose are meant to soften, sear or unlock, but never to hide from another.

Always, we hope you are there, in one sense or the other, perhaps lurking secretly, perhaps bravely coming forward to react.

Then again, writing does not always relieve depression's symptoms; sometimes it deepens them. Why? Because by writing what you feel, honestly, you may sink to the deep end of your own experience of those feelings. That's the risk.

The cycle continues. The effort goes on. Blogging, in this instance, may be a dying art form, so soon after it emerged.

There is no money in it. There is no way to sustain yourself. If you are a very talented writer, why choose this uncompensated channel when you might better capitalize by writing a book?

Then again, if what you really seek is that ineffable sense of remaining connected, when all seems adrift, maybe there is no better way than to release your words like a child's birthday balloons, and watch them drift this way and that, on the winds, wondering whether they ever might alight in another's life at one of those moments when we all might feel a tad bit happier, and lighter, that a pretty little thing found its way to our doorstep.

The sky outside is dark. The storm clouds gather. Bad news is always just a cloudburst away. Yet, as those of us who grew up in winter climates know, at times like these, there is no warmer state than being invited into a friendly, safe, intimate place by somebody else, let's call her a friend.

Welcome to my blog. And I hope you like this balloon.

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