92: Biding Time

I am naturally an impatient and anxious person. When I see that something needs to be done, I want to drop everything and do it, even if the thing I'm currently doing is something that I'd previously dropped everything else for. This is great if you need to get a hold of me via text message, but terrible for my own focus and mental well-being.

It also makes late winter an exercise in patience. We've been experiencing a sort of false spring in Chicago this past week, long enough and warm enough that the bulbs are beginning to push their little green rabbit-ear leaves out of the ground. My rhubarb plant in the backyard is waking up into blazing pink spheres on top of the soil, which will unfurl into leaves that look like loose heads of neon lettuce. I've seen geese flying north. In my head, I want to push everything back underground for another six weeks; the temperatures will be going back down below freezing in a matter of days, and I want to tell the world it isn't time to wake up yet. My hands, however, are itching to go out back and start planting something.

I split the difference this past week by cutting down the old dead wildflowers that I'd left untouched after last fall. The ground's still a little too cold to dig out the stumps of the arbor vitae bushes we cut down last fall, but the moment it's warm enough, I'll be replacing the stumps with lilacs and roses. I have a garden in the side yard to plot out, and grandiose plans to turn the front yard into a pollinator garden. The ideas are germinating, thick and fast; I just have to let them run their course.

What I wrote:

For Bright Wall/Dark Room, I wrote about the friction between faith and science fiction present in Danny Boyle's Sunshine.

I also had the opportunity to write a pan of Argylle (Kevin referred to this as "taking one for the team").