Winter Competition - IWSG

It's the first Wednesday of the month and time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. To read more writers in support of other writers, click here!

Ah, January.  My least favorite month, really. Around here, real winter, true winter, sets in right after Christmas, with cloudy skies and breathless cold.  And worse, ever since I became a mother, the month has always seemed filled with fits and starts.  Having taken time off work for Christmas, my little family would slog back to work and school, only to encounter snow related school closings or illness, the stress of unplanned time off compounding the letdown of the holidays.  While I’m off the hook on some of that now, I still dread the arrival of the first month.  Perhaps it would be different, if, as it is for my Australian sister, the New Year ushered in full summer and blooming roses instead of a harsh and frozen earth.  But it’s likely I’ll never experience that. Schooled in my own long history, I wake up on the first work Monday of the New Year, dreading the four weeks to come.

I know this though.  I just have to get through it.  So this past Monday, as I have on every work day for the last four years, I got up an hour early in order to write.  I had a bad, toss and turn night, and on waking at 5:45, a ghost of a thought slipped through my brain.  What if just today, I didn’t get up early?  What if just once, I turned over?  

Even in my sandy-eyed, drag-myself-to-the-shower exhaustion, a gem of pure pride sparkled up because that weasel of a temptation hadn’t gained a toe-hold.  Instead, I made myself oatmeal with all natural peanut butter and banana, drank my orange juice, wrapped myself in a down comforter and sat down at the computer.  After reviewing the last chapter I’d finished over the weekend, I began the next.  Five hundred and thirty-six words later, my “time-to-get-ready-for-work” alarm rang out. 

The score so far? Liza one.  January zero.