It's more than a spring blogging lull

I'm not sure what it is, but it's more than a lull, and it's more than just blogging. For the week or ten days following PukeFest '06, I blamed it on renewed exhaustion - once again waking in the middle of the night, once again nursing six times a day, once again trying to dig myself out of the hole of sleep deprivation. But Small Boy got sick over Easter Weekend, and if my calendar is right that was a month ago. He's sleeping through the night again. We're not nursing a million times a day. Things have settled back nicely into their more or less regular rhythm, and yet I still seem to be back there in April unable to focus on getting anywhere. From the outside, things have returned to normal. Wake, write, play with the boy, lunch, go outside somewhere, back to the apartment, dinner, bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Perhaps that is in fact the problem. I say rhythm, you say rut. Rhythm, rut, potato, potahto. I don't know. I'm feeling still and low. Maybe it is the stillness of a cyclist about to start a time trial, or maybe it is the stillness of a cyclist who has stopped riding. I don't know. I don't know where I am and I don't know why I'm here. But I can't seem to shift gears - I'm stuck here in my big chain ring grinding through the high gears when I'd rather be spinning. The chain won't engage.

In the meantime I'm hiding out, still and low. Maybe this is a starting gate and I just don't recognize it. Maybe I'm just resting. Maybe I'm just biding my time, like Jan Ullrich, just hanging in there waiting for my Tour de France to begin. I don't know. I hate this feeling, like wandering around in the mist waiting for a road to magically appear before me.

I've lost contact with the pack, and I'm losing ground. But I'm still out here on the road.

I think.