The Time Between
Источник: https://barbaraoneal.substack.com/p/the-time-between
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I can’t sleep. I feel both restless and hollow, as if everything inside my creative center has emptied out—no color, no movement, just stillness. It’s a strange sensation. Earlier today I traced stencils into a book of fairytales. Even working with the paper I made myself felt dull and unimportant, and honestly, beyond me.

 I sit down to write a simple journal entry and can barely summon a paragraph. I drift from desk to table, pick up my iPad, my phone, do a puzzle, scroll TikTok. But underneath it all is a quiet awareness: this is just the post-blues. The post-book, post-travel, post-surgery, post-medication blues. And now, tonight, it’s become the can’t-sleep blues.

 I did walk on the beach. We drove to Coos Bay yesterday and I visited a positively magical romance bookstore that is clearly a passion project for the owner. It’s a beautiful shop with beautiful editions and I really can’t think of things I love more than a bookstore with an owner so devoted to displaying and selling books in such a devoted way. 

 

 This is Shelby, the owner of It’s Romance bookstore. She could be a character in one of my books, truly. https://itsromancebookshop.com/pages/about 
 I bought books, of course, and will go back to get some Christmas presents.

Usually, at this stage, I’ll do a bunch of small, puttering things to put myself back together, but even something like folding laundry has proven impossible with one hand. A deep longing to write is tugging at me—to express this feeling somehow. 

 So what wisdom is there tonight?

 This is normal. This is part of the process, part of the cycle, part of the healing. The emptiness is a threshold, not a failure. The only thing to do is be here with it. Don’t rush it. To write well, I can’t write all the time. I have to give the girls some deep rest. 

 Tomorrow: paint something. Not a collage. Not an unfinished piece that will nag me. Start a painting. Something from Morocco. Just one thing. One stroke, one beginning.

 Let that be enough. Soon, I will be able to tell you more about the best love story I’ve ever written. 

 Soon. 

 What is happening for you, my friends? Holiday cooking and travel? Rest time? Snow? Not sure I’m going to get over missing snow, but maybe I can go visit it sometimes. 

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