Staying Shut In

There was a time when I’d simply get up, shower, dress, have a bite to eat and then head outside for the day. Now, I stay inside as if waiting for something to happen, something that has never come.

As a kid I seemed to always have a notebook in hand, everyplace I went. Since I spent a lot of my time alone, I spent much of my time off in my mind, exploring my feelings and putting them on paper.

Many times this came out in the form of a free-verse poem. Slowly, I moved away from writing in verse, told wasn’t a masculine craft.

I went with this line of thought even though I knew soldiers and cowboys often communicated how they felt and saw their worlds in a poem.

It was nothing to put a couple of pencils and a note pad in a pack and head off to the woods. But that was in my younger days, a child and teen.

As I’ve aged, I’ve replaced those daily outings and adventures with work, worry and stagnation. And it is entirely my fault as I have done little to assuage the waste of precious daylight by remaining enclosed in a room in a house.

Nightly I talk with God, asking that He help me get outside, I tell Him I will do better at finding myself out in the air, wind rain, snow or sunshine. But daily – I fail to help myself.

Now the sun is waning, heading for the western horizon, and I sit in my living room and lament its passing. I have done nothing once again and I don’t know what it is in me that refuses to exercise my spirit even with a casual walk through my neighborhood.

Could it be my nagging fear of loneliness and how as an adult I misused it?