Wintry Late Afternoons

I'm watching the wintry evening approach outside of my window from my desk. We had snow last night, which covers the ground but has not piled up nor been plowed into filth on the edges of the roads. The streetlights and headlights, golden against the black roads and the gray light, seem almost cheery.

So many evenings like this have seemed depressing in the past. This one reminds me of my hopeless days in That Place, wanting only to get home at this time of day so that I could indulge in whatever chocolate I had scavenged and bask in the glow of my computer and t.v. screens. What was on did not matter, only that it distracted me from my life. I am also reminded of earlier times, facing a walk home in the dark, the only joyful part of my day, to a gray apartment and escape into hours of Law and Order reruns, and a night that would only lead to a trek back to who knew what disaster or harassment the next day. I grew to hate the concept of hope in those days. If hope was a thing with wings, I was Betty Draper and her BB gun in the back yard, minus the cigarette.

I don't feel that at this moment, in this week. I also don't feel the vestiges of guilt and grief from a trip to Texas, nor do I feel the dull echo of a feeling that I should be doing something more, but with no incentive to do that more -- whatever it was -- except to escape that dull echo. Escaping dull echoes can be done in so many unproductive ways. More accurately, dull echoes can be escaped in many seemingly productive ways, but not necessarily ways that are satisfying. I have learned there is a difference between "happy" and "satisfying." "Satisfying" feels so much better.

The television has been silent for the past week, as well. I watch a lot of t.v., or, rather, I frequently use the t.v. as background noise for such things as paying bills or cleaning house or the millions of other mundane tasks that only really require a fraction of your alert brain. The other fractions need distraction. Sometimes I sleep with it on so that I can get to sleep because the story of whatever is on will distract the part of my brain that just won't shut the hell up and allow me to relax. I tend to only stop and watch Mad Men, or whatever show I'm addicted to at that particular moment.

This week, the Gentleman Caller was my distraction for several days, which meant that the t.v. was off, which started a no-t.v. momentum. I'm finding that I like the silence for now. I finding that I like the way time moves with out a t.v. I'm finding that I like also not having anything from which to escape. I like the satisfaction of burrowing into my article and with purpose. I have forgotten some of these sensations because work -- the job work, not the real work work -- and its attendant silliness can distract me, exhaust me, and cause me to drift back to the t.v. and the dissatisfaction.

In the service of selling myself TALL I shall not let myself drift.

I can't promise no t.v. because -- for crying out loud! -- we have Lost and Project Runway coming up!