"Just Sit at Your Desk and Write"

A Lady Writing, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1665
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

This is what my husband always says before––and after––I've applied for each of the thirteen jobs for which I've been well qualified––with no interview (not one).

"Just sit at your desk and write." 

Even though there is laundry. Even though there are meals to prepare. Even though there are happy boys haying and swimming and tracking in endless piles of farm dirt. Even though the house is always generally a mess. Even though we are moving, at last, into our farm cottage in the busy middle of our farm, from a more commodious, but stifling, doublewide across the road.

So yes, there is still the "stuff" and there is the refiguring of the boxes and the storage issues as we await our once and future farmhouse.

There is still no DSL (which is why I do not blog as much as I would like to do).

But there is a desk. There are many pens. There is much paper. There are computers. There are summer breezes sailing over the knob even on the hottest days and into our farm cottage. There are cattle lowing and birds chattering. There is bountiful broccoli and other emergent plants. There are full pantries and freezers.

And there are words––always the words.

"Just write," he says, partly from exasperation––perhaps because he knows me better than I do myself. Or maybe he is just weary of being a cow-man with a perimenopausal, somewhat haphazard, farmwife.

"We are a team. Just write."

And so I shall.

You come back when you're ready! 

Catherine