Late Fall Grays

As the month goes from the vibrant hues of reds, oranges, and yellows into dreary shades of brown and gray, so does my mood.  The news from around the country - OWS sheeple complaining about the cold, cop-killer literature found at protests, more disturbing info regarding Fast and Furious and the like - is more depressing every day and seems to match nature's mood as she prepares for winter.

It is the time of year when, along with the last minute Halloween costume prep (my kids seem to have decided mom is capable of whipping together any type of costume in very short amounts of time and test that skill every year) my entire being wants to go into hibernation mode along with the squirrels and bears.  Yarn and the thought of long days spent in front of a fire watching a marathon of Reese Witherspoon or Sandra Bullock movies call to me as do the stacks of books at the library - how many books can I get through this winter? - their siren call overwhelming.

Recently, I picked up a book on the "Staff Favorites" shelf at my local library called,  "Literacy and Longing in L.A." (Jennifer Kaufman and Karen Mack).  I'm only about 20 pages into it and actually may not finish it since the main character seems to mirror me a little too much.  When she gets depressed, she goes on book binges - reading day and night until the funk passes.  I can relate to that habit all too well, since I do the same. There's just something about books that soothes my soul - escaping into a world created by a fantastic author is so much easier than dealing with the realities of a hockey mama's world sometimes.  Through books, I've traveled with special agent Scot Harvath as he saves the country from another terrorist attack or with the Jewish slave girl, Hadassah as she, through her own life example of love, shows her Roman owners the way to Christ.  Even the "chick lit" books - "brain candy" to me - offer a moment to live vicariously through someone else's eyes, to escape the drudgery of the every day tasks required of a (ho-hum) stay-at-home mom of four.  I can burn through a "brain candy" book in less than a day and often do in the summer.  My choices are not limited to fiction, I also check out (and, in the case of Glenn Beck books, often buy) non-fiction books, usually political in nature, to try to understand more of what is going on right now.  My non-fiction collection includes "A Patriot's History of the United States" (I keep hoping my SwimGirl, now in American History at school, will pick it up but she has yet to do so), "Culture of Corruption" by Michelle Malkin and Jason Lewis's new book, "Power Divided is Power Checked" along with a variety of Biblical texts, biographies and memoirs (my favorites being by the sassy author, Jen Lancaster).

One of my dreams is to write and publish one of the many stories floating in my brain, but every time I sit down to write, the fear that the story will suck is overwhelming.  Sometimes I'll write a chapter or two, then read what I've written and think "Do people really talk like this? No." and scrap it.  I keep wishing for an invention that would enable the frustrated writer to connect a USB cable to his/her brain (maybe a port right behind one ear?) directly to the computer, so that everything that writer "sees" could be directly downloaded into the computer in whatever language desired.  Think of how much easier it would be to get those stories out!  Of course, there's always the chance of some rogue government taking the device and using it for nefarious means, which could create a lot of issues since there would be no way to know if what was being downloaded was actual memories or figments of a person's imagination.  Imagine being prosecuted for things you had only imagined! What trouble we would all get into. (Or maybe just me since my imagination has always been far crazier than my actual world.)

This is still a young blog, but I'm wondering if there's anyone out there who also finds themselves in the doldrums at this time of year and if so, how do you deal with it?