I find myself with a lot more free time to write on my hands as I seek out the next step of my professional communications and marketing journey. With that in mind, I plan to share bits and pieces of new, original writing here.
I’m in bed early, never this early unless I’m sick, but I’m not sick. I’m just tired.
Down on the futon in the basement, giving my wife room to toss and turn with her broken ankle, sparing her from my snores and restlessness. I’m reading, half-awake, fingers twitching to catch the Kindle before it slides from my hand. The next time, I’m too asleep. It clatters to the floor, and that’s my sign: I’m losing this fight.
The Kindle goes on the table, glasses on top, beside my iPhone glowing a dim red, the same hue as the digital clock I had as a kid.
I drift off and wake suddenly, convinced I’ve slept all night. It’s only 11:54.
And then the thoughts come. What if I can’t find a new job fast enough? These things take forever as resumes disappear into algorithms and applications get lost in digital mazes. Will anyone speak on my behalf, open a door, offer that human connection I can’t get past the digital gatekeepers without?
My breathing quickens. I stare into the dark, willing the panic down before it blooms. It’s going to be fine, I whisper to no one. It’s going to be fine.
Sometime later, I wake again. My shoulder cramps, but I can’t roll over. Something’s jammed against my back. The cat. He’s asleep, perfectly content. I twist carefully in place, like the wooden dowel in the toilet paper bracket. I can’t wake him. That’s a violation of the cat-owner code.
Dreams take over—cinematic, nonsensical. I’m on a cruise ship made of chrome and glass, pools shimmering in sunlight. Familiar faces fill the scene, but when I wake again, they’ve all vanished. The fragments dissolve, like mist thinning over a morning lake.
I shift again on the futon, feet pressing against the wooden armrest. The couch is exactly my length, which means it’s always a few inches too short once you take the pillow into account. The furnace kicks on in the next room. The iPhone clock has gone dark; I have no sense of the hour. Only a faint light from a neighbor’s house filters through the casement windows and across the basement. Then the furnace cuts out with a metallic sigh, and the house goes still. The cat is gone.
I don’t know how much time passes when a sharp pain pulls me awake, a charley horse coming on fast. I try to flex before it hits, but I’m too late. The muscle seizes, fire tearing through my calf. I want to scream but don’t; I contort silently, mouth open in a silent howl as I clutch at my leg until the spasm fades to a dull ache. I’ll limp tomorrow. I know the pattern.
Lying there, seething at the pain, I start again with the inner monologue. It’s not my fault. I did my job. This isn’t about competence or skill. I stare up at the ceiling, barely making out the recessed light’s shadowed arc. I wonder why I haven’t felt angrier. Maybe relief has blunted it—relief to be out of a place that would soon demand the impossible again: more with less, fewer people, smaller budgets, louder egos. But the memory of walking out with a cardboard box still stings.
Darkness returns.
When I wake again, the faintest dawn filters through the basement windows. The cat is back, pressed against the front of my thighs, purring quietly beneath my hand. He’s a warm, respirating security blanket until the motorized feeder hums from the kitchen above. Then instant liftoff. He rockets upstairs like a furry missile leaving behind a tiny sonic boom.
I hear the dry food clatter into the metal bowl and think of those social media videos with the caption “what my Maine Coon Cat thinks he sounds like” accompanied by the roar of a tiger or the bellow of a Jurassic Park T Rex followed by the actual plaintive mewing. I wonder if the dry cat food thinks it’s a thundering avalanche, cascading down a mountainside to lay waste to the alpine towns below. But it’s just Grandma Mae’s indoor weight-control kibble, and I roll onto my side, smiling at the sound of the cats crunching happily above.
But sleep doesn’t return this time, though. My mind begins sorting what comes next: the job hunt, the healthcare paperwork, and all the other details of reinvention. I reach for my phone and begin the morning process. Wordle (nailed it in two: VIRUS for the V and I, then AVOID for a clean win). Then Strands. The Apple News crossword. The LinkedIn games. Everything but mini Sudoku. I’ve never liked Sudoku.
The house is silent as I pad up the stairs, accompanied by the lingering ache of the charley horse. The sky is lifting from black to a soft gray, and snow has started to fall. I curl up on the couch, lights out, drapes open, watching the flakes drift down. They coat the grass like powdered sugar dusting my grandmother’s poppyseed cakes.
I know I need to write, to get moving, to face the day. But there will be time soon enough. For now, the world has gone still again, and the snow falls, quiet and new.