Space to Breathe

By Kim

This is the photo I will remember most from my recent weekend in Granbury. It’s the first one I took, a rather dull snapshot overlooking a porch and a nondescript backyard. The sky is gray, the trees mostly stripped of their leaves; even the red cushions on the chair are muted to rust.

This image perfectly symbolizes my mood since returning home after the enchantment of the UnConference a month ago. There are hints of color in the grass, as there are in my life, but my mind is heavy with rain I can’t quite release. Salem changed me irrevocably, yet I have not yet learned to fully reconcile the woman I've become with the woman those at home have come to expect me to be.

It was no accident that I immediately chose this spot in the retreat house as my writing cave, that this view, such as it was on that gloomy December day, spoke to me. From this spot I watched the clouds drift away, saw Joan and Pamela cross the lawn and Julie sit on the swing partly visible in the lower right corner.

I think everyone sensed I craved solitude and they left me alone in my little nook, laptop open on my lap, earplugs stuffed into my ears, my gaze drifting to the trees in the distance in the rare moments the words did not flow.

Sometimes they came so fast my fingers struggled to keep up, and at the end of three days I discovered I had written an astounding (for me) 7200 words.

I’m not a slow writer, I realized. I simply needed space to breathe.  

What abut you? Do you have a writing cave? Do you find you need to escape your regular life in order to be your most productive?