Kind of a Tumble

I'm not writing.
Obviously.
Well. I mean. I am now but I haven't been.
My inner world has been kind of a tumble and I write from my inner world. Sometimes I write in response to an event. I got a lot of mileage from some reading but my reading is a tumble as well. Mostly magazines and  a fiction that I'm enjoying but isn't stirring up any thinking.
It was different when I was in school. There was always something I needed to be writing. Class work. The book. It was something that needed to get done. Like washing the dishes, or dusting. Not exactly mindless. Certainly fun. Most of the time. Four years for the BA and two for the MFA. Writing was a constant.
There's a Sufi saying. Know. Dare. Will. And be silent. I don't know much and I'm not at all daring. I'm usually only willful when I'm resisting something. And for most of my life I was almost incapable of silence. I love to talk. I love good conversation. It's still true but it doesn't happen very often.
And really. When I'm in a tumble it's better to be silent. If I've learned anything from the last decade of depression I've learned that people get tired of hearing about it.
I return again and again to the Moyers talk with Parker Palmer in which Palmer coined the phrase "negotiating the tragic gap."  In my understanding he was talking about the point in life when you become aware of what you can not have, or accomplish. Like ... I'll never have a child. I kept hope alive until I was literally out of eggs. I was never in a solid enough situation financially to have supported a child. I'll never have that. I think sometimes we ( I ) give up on things too soon but age does draw a few hard lines.
Palmer says depression can be a way of pressing you down out of delusion and into an acceptance of reality. This has way more resonance for me right now.
I think there is useful information available when enduring depression.
But it sucks the language right out of me.
I'm pretty much over the series of unfortunate events. I've been able to get to the pool. I'm sleeping better. I've had some wonderful nights of sleep. I've never been able to construct gratitude but I am often grateful. I sit at my desk in a circle of plants. Green and alive. Leaning toward the light until they begin to bend over. And then I turn the pot and they lean the other way. I'm OK. But there are things I'm trying to accept. Things I probably have to accept. It's not going well. I't kind of a tumble.