what you are picks its way

    It was not intentional, but over the last couple of months I've taken an unprecedented break from writing. During that time, I packed up everything I own (relatively), and moved it all Up North. There were a couple of multi-state trips in rapid succession--and also a few trips by my parents--to move all my stuff into the same county where I'm residing, for the first time in...a dozen years? Maybe longer. I took a new job, leaving the one that I'd had for far, far too long to start in a totally new direction. I'm living with family temporarily, with intent to buy a house in the not-too-distant future.
     There are other things, incidental mostly, that have kept me from writing. I was sick for a week and a half. It's been extremely, unseasonably cold. I'm getting used to living in a place with different rhythms than those to which I'd grown accustomed. I work a different schedule, one that seems to affect my routine in every way.
     The bare truth, though, is that I wasn't in a good place for writing. Probably hadn't been for a while, but had tried to push through it. And though there are still things that aren't right (notably, that I miss some of my friends from that place where I was living, so very much), maybe I can at least get it down now.
     Have a happy new year.

[the title quotation is by Walt Whitman, from a selection of the poem 'To You' in Leaves of Grass, and reads in its entirety as below.]
The hopples fall from your ankles! you find an
unfailing sufficiency!
Old, young, male, female, rude, low, rejected by
the rest, whatever you are promulges itself,
Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are
provided, nothing is scanted,
Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance,
ennui, what you are picks its way.