Well, it finally happened.  I guess it was bound to happen at some point in my blogging life. I finished a post. I kind of loved it, and when I hit published, all words disappeared and seem un-bring-back-able. I’m a little sad, so this may not be nearly as clear as what I had hoped, but here goes:

November’s darkness is comforting. I awake each morning to darkness and enjoy the feel of my the cold floor as my feet touch ground. I enjoy the quiet darkness. It gives the morning a feeling of stability, a blanketed world, safe and serene. It is a little unnerving since daylights savings time, however, to leave the house as the light is fully out. Low but brilliant, it lights up the damp greens and yellows, the orange and rusts. All of the light mixing beautifully in the wintering sun that seems so close sometimes, but feels so far away. The insane similarity of standing still on a cold morning, peering through a stained glass window and expecting the yellow light to be warm when it kisses my face.

November feels like insanity. Not a negative madness that is unstable, but more of an unrequited optimism which is never negated, but never fulfilled. Not the definition you might find in a dictionary, but more of an insanity often attributed to Einstein, and sometimes Mark Twain – that insanity that is a doing something over and over again and always expecting a different outcome. The world of November feels cold and steady, as if each attempt at something new is met with the dirge of day to day, and any expectation of momentum is lost on seemingly unchanging, frustratingly solid work, school, education, and life in general. Like beating repeatedly on a granite wall with a soft ad pliable mallet meant for bells. The granite, as expected, doesn’t give to such a weak, albeit steady, attempt at change. The mallet may break before the rock does.

This sounds as though I’m discomforted or depressed in the darkness of November, but in reality, I find it comforting. Instead of being frustrated and losing hope that change will ever happen, I feel as though November is a darkness meant for building strength and stability – for providing a safe place to try and fail and try and fail and try and fail again, without ever losing hope. I’m comforted by the closeness of the dark, the softness of the sun, and the beauty of the colors. I have hope in the repetition.

So, as I return to my November: A month for me of writing a novel (#nanowrimo) in which I am desperately behind word count, of beginning to plan for speaking to adults as well as students, of attempting stability at home and at work, of planning for the quickly arriving holiday season, of reflection and refocus in the midst of failure and hope, I’m just going to keep swinging this mallet. A mallet meant to evoke long lasting tones that fill the darkness and space inside our souls. Perhaps somewhere in the granite, I’ll strike that bell and the ground beneath my mallet will initiate the earth quaking ring that resounds in my soul, and the dark world will reverberate with the change.

Keep swinging friends, and take comfort in the waiting and foundations being built in the darkness.