100 Words Per Mile: Nesting, Healing, Resenting

I spend too much money on some baseball and basketball cards because I'm feeling sad.

September 9, 2021
4.00 miles
33:43

I’ve been landscaping a lot in the front yard. Cutting roots, digging out rocks, setting a border, planting bushes. Just little bits at a time, but I’m almost finished and I realize I’ve been nesting. While my wife has been fretting about the inside of the house, I’ve gravitated to the outside. I’m trying to 1) make things presentable for our new roommate and 2) finish as many projects as I can before she comes.

There’s always been a part of me that’s had a fondness for yard work. It’s annoying and time-consuming, but similar to when I was a dishwasher, there’s something to seeing immediate progress and feeling pride in a job well done.

Unlike writing, which is not only delayed gratification, but indefinitely delayed gratification. Even as the word count and pages pile up, nobody sees the progress, and as long as it remains in a Word Doc, the progress is actually all theoretical.

There’s no practical use to the landscaping I’m doing. It looks really nice, and it reinforces this idea of home, but it isn’t like I’m reinforcing a fortress. I’m not digging out a moat to keep enemies at bay. But I think I’m following that same instinct. Now that our little girl is only six weeks away, everything feels compressed. I’m mulling a few upcoming races (I miss getting a medal, really) and while six weeks is a long time, it all feels really fragile. She’s not likely to be born tomorrow—but she could be.

I’m being a little disingenuous with you reader. I’m skirting around some emotional truth. It’s hard to know what I’ve shared and what I haven’t, but recently my best friend of fifteen years had a son. Incredible timing, right? Except we haven’t been friends the last year and half or so.