Insurmountable March

It’s been building for weeks. Every time the thought came, I escaped it. This weekend it started with the first thought on Saturday. That led me to flee.

Around the laundry pile in the hall, to the office.

When we first met with our cleaning lady, we decided the office would just be skipped. Maddie works there in her little (huge) corner and it’s almost always covered in scraps of paper, glitter, paint, pencil shavings, notebooks, clay creations, paint specks, and the like. I was assured this is normal.

Well, knowing that one room is cleaning skipped has appealed to my procrastinating hoarding capabilities. Which has led every night before cleaning day to become “shove it all in the office” night.

Piles of mail, anything and everything on the stairs that usually lives in one of the three rooms that is NOT the office, things kept on the counter in the bathroom, stacks of books, magazines yet not read, random child papers, baskets of clothes not yet folded, already folded, and from the aforementioned pile in the hall. Add in a child’s art cave behind all that and you’ve got Monica’s closet from Friends.

That is unless Kim has something to avoid.

So the office is purged of all non office paraphernalia. Clothes have achieved the elusive trifecta and are washed, folded, and put away. Mail placed in the sorting bin, bills paid, papers shredded. Desk uncovered. Every strange discovery put back in its proper home. Maddie’s room received a bonus purge to help me escape my thought.

See, that thought I was fleeing was the entirety of March. The month that brings great personal reward and builds connections. That month I say has changed me as a teacher and a person. The month that I feel wholly and completely unprepared for. The month that my writing ebbs and flows and revitalizes me does not feel so. Life obstacles, professional weight, internal struggles, cycles of unhappiest obligations. Round and round they spin in and out of my daily life.

Will the challenge fit?

So many Marches. So many slices. So many reads. So many moments. This writer may be more of a reader. This writer may be spent. This writer isn’t sure she has it anymore.

This writer is going to try.