December Sweeps - Day 326

Not sure I'm going to manage today.

I got up early, like I usually do on Tuesdays, and I have to admit that I started out my day a bit sour.  It was still mostly dark when I got up, and it stayed relatively sun free throughout the day.  I got to see my cousin and a couple other people that I like, and while that sometimes gives me a boost of positive energy, I began to mope a bit, knowing that Christmas time will find me, where the lovelorn lay . . . in a puddle of their own filth.  So that was fun.

Sit-ups Today: 150
Sittys In December: 2610

I couldn't shake the melancholy, which is gonna happen, especially around the holidays, and will dog me for the rest of my time, and I'm only a tiny bit ashamed to admit that I put on Marshal Latham's Christmas Journey Into... episode and took a little nap in the late afternoon.

I woke up as the sun was setting, and instead of continuing to sad-sack around, I got some library books from my mom to take back (she reads one every other day or so), and she had gotten me a meatball sub from Subway that I left in the microwave.*

But then, I came to the library, and on the drive over, I tried to think of a Christmas story I could write about the Noble Oaks Bed & Breakfast.  How do ghosts celebrate the holidays?  Does Mrs. Bice throw a little work party where the clerks and housekeeping staff (as well as the unseen cooking staff) get together and wish each other good cheer, all the while exchanging knowing looks about the ghostly presences that might be among them?  I thought about tying it to a story I began in February, where Natalie Whitmore tells Mason Bradley about her one true love and Mason arranges for a ghost to talk to her, but I'm not ready to tell that one yet (since Mason, technically, has to be out of the picture for that story to work).

But then I got another idea: I could do a "Lara and the Witch" Christmas story.  I sat down here in my usual spot--almost zero other people came to the library tonight, the last hour before it closes for the rest of the week--and just started typing, mostly in uncountable-as-words present tense spit-balling.  But then I came up with a premise that is best summed up in the following exchange:

"Oh, I got an idea!" Lara exclaimed, and ran over to Holcomb's side.  "You and me should exchange magic Christmas gifts!"

"You and I, Lara," Holcomb corrected.

"Who else?  We could each cast a spell for each other, something the other would like."

That idea filled me with joyous anticipation.  

Well, for the next hour, until the library started flickering the lights to get rid of us (maybe we're cockroaches to them), I wrote on it.  Not a lot of words, but a lot of fun that, amazingly, cleared up my sad, lonely mood.  Once again, my imagination pays me back for all those terrified sleepless nights as a child (and teenager).  I was creating something, putting together words in various orders in the attempt to create a tapestry that was uniquely mine.

I gotta say, it turned my whole attitude around.  I mean, yeah, I'll still die alone (and soon), but for the rest of the day, I had a much brighter outlook.  And when I went on my run, despite it being below freezing . . . it was the easiest 1.6 miles I've ever done (the whole time I was thinking about story ideas, and stories to record and put in collections, and all these ambitious feelings that are so much more welcome than the dour self-prognosis of lonely misery and eventual eternal darkness).

Not bad, day before the day before Christmas.

Words Today: 1016 (I  wrote more than this, but could only count actual prose and dialogue)
Words In December: 22,802

*Which is sad, because just one of those now costs approximately one U.S. stimulus check, precluding me from going to Subway ever again.