A Jumble of Things

Here's a collective, "in no particular order" snapshot of my life these days:

• Fall is fully underway, in fact I think the leaves will mostly be on the ground in a week or two. But it has certainly been a beautiful few days. When I wake up early the view from my third floor window is really breathtaking, all cloud soaked valleys and early morning sunlight tracing the tops of trees. Grandpa gathered a huge trailer load of apples from a neighbors untended trees, and found someone in the area who owns a cider press. That's right, for the past three days I've been drowing in tart, delicious, fresh pressed apple cider! He made close to 60 gallons of the stuff =). I'm planning to make apple cider pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.
• October traffic in the Inn is picking up. We have a (mostly) full house tomorrow and for the next three weekends. I'm actually enjoying cruising around the kitchen fixing breakfast, chatting with guests as they come through. Its amazing how much more fun it is when I'm moved in up here. It doesn't feel like I'm just killing time on the job anymore, which is great.
• I've started really playing music again. I've found myself sitting with my guitar for several hours most of the past week. I love the tangible feeling of getting better, of being better able to play what I'm hearing in my head, of picking a song that I've always loved off of my iTunes and learning it. I'm even starting to write a few myself, slowly. It feels wonderful.
• I woke up today thinking about my story again. It's been weeks since I've had any desire to actually write. I've noticed this pattern pretty clearly in myself: I get a strong creative urge and a write up a few chapters, and in the process I stumble on new ideas, or discover holes or "blank spots" in the plot or characters that I didn't know were there. Then I go into a kind of "hibernation" stretch where I really have no desire to write, even as my mind comes back to the setting or plot points every so often. I muse and daydream. I usually get a flash of an idea or two that I really like, but it takes a while for them to sink in and become a real part of the fabric of the story. Then, one day I wake up and I'm just ready to go at it again. I'm excited and inspired, the pieces I've been feeling my way around have all clicked together into a whole shape. Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever going to really make consistent progress forward...but every time I go through this cycle, the story gets richer and more refined, and my writing improves in general. Thankfully, I finally don't feel an artificial pressure to try and press through for some reason.

So, that's life for me, more or less. I've been very quiet lately, tasting and lingering on all the little pieces of this season of life. I've been sitting in front of a lot of fires, which always makes my world seem warmer. There are hard parts. Sometimes the silence feels more lonely than comforting. Sometimes I catch hints of the future, like a new scent on the wind, and for a moment I feel this intense urge to move on from here and follow it.

But mostly, I am content, and honestly that surprises me a little bit. It wasn't too long ago that I definitely wouldn't have said that, and I don't really know when that changed, but I'm glad that it did. Everything feels very subdued, but powerful. The melancholy moments all seem to be balanced by quiet hours where I feel more peaceful than anything else. Life feels like a gift, even the parts of it that I don't understand, and for the first time in a long time, I don't think there is anything I would change if I could.