Beneath the Leafless Aspen

There’s a battle raging inside me, and I don’t mean that figuratively in the poetic, overly dramatic way writers sometimes lean on when we’re trying too hard to make a point. I mean an honest-to-goodness fight, elbows thrown, dust rising, the kind of scrap that leaves you tired even when you haven’t moved.

It’s been going on for a couple of weeks now. It started when a spark of creativity lit up in me like someone flipped a breaker labeled “GO.”

Suddenly, I was writing—no, pouring—words onto the page, completing fifteen to twenty stories and articles in about ten days. Ten days.

I wasn’t eating right, barely sleeping, and only remembering to breathe because my body insisted on it. I kept telling myself, “Just this one more idea, one more paragraph, one more story before this fire goes out.”

Turns out the fire wasn’t going out. It was burning me down.

By the end of that stretch, I felt physically sick. My hands were shaky, my thoughts were tangled, and even the soft hum of my computer seemed too loud, too demanding.

So I did something that felt almost violent: I turned the computer off. Not sleep mode—off.

A cold, hard shutdown. And then I walked away from it for a week.

That week wasn’t peaceful. It was more like withdrawal.

I found myself drifting past the desk, fingers twitching, mind drifting toward unfinished ideas. I’d catch myself imagining headlines, opening lines, and closing paragraphs.

My brain refused to stop writing, even when my body insisted we needed to take a break. It was like riding out the last tremors of a storm.

Eventually, though, things settled. I flattened out, and I could think again.

But here I am today, right back at the edge of that same pull. This morning, the urge to plant myself in front of the screen hit me like a tidal wave.

I wanted to sit down and hammer out everything in my head, every story, every scrap of thought. I could almost feel the old mania stretching its limbs, testing the hinges on the door I’d tried so hard to keep shut.

It made me think about Papa Hemingway. He wrestled with his own storms, his own extremes.

I’m no Hemingway, will never claim to be, but I can relate to that relentless internal engine, the one that doesn’t always know when to shut itself off for maintenance. The difference, I remind myself, is that I can see what’s happening.

I can name it, face it, push back when I have to. Awareness doesn’t solve everything, but it keeps me from walking blindfolded into the pit.

So today, instead of letting myself get swallowed by the keyboard, I’m making a different call. I’m going to grab a cup of coffee, strong, hot, the good stuff, and step outside.

The backyard is quiet this time of year. The Aspen out there has lost all its leaves, standing thin and pale against the sky like a piece of old bone, but there’s something about it that’s steady.

I need that steadiness right now.

I’ll sit beneath that bare tree, let the cool air sweep through the clutter of my mind, and give my soul a chance to breathe for me. To remind me that I’m allowed to exist without producing, without typing, without chasing a great sentence.

The stories will wait. They always do.

But my well-being needs tending now. And today, that means going outside, letting the quiet do its work, and trusting that the words will still be there when I’m ready to come back.