Yesterday I told Dan’s sister that I was considering throwing myself off the roof of the house. She didn’t look startled at all–perhaps she’s already figured out my melodramatic melancholy tendencies–and replied that I’d probably just fall in a mud puddle, which is true, because for the last week, it has been raining, sleeting, snowing–all manner of precipitation!–here in Arizona. Odd, for a desert.

But how else is one to react upon returning home, home being here, Cottonwood, this depressing, sleepy little rural town, from Hawai’i, a warm wonderland. How is one to react other than to threaten suicide?

See, I didn’t know either.

I ended up on the south shore of Kaua’i last week with my old friend Bonnie, who I’ve known now for more than half my life. Bonnie has the highly enviable vocation of travel writer, and has been tempting me for years with invitations to join her on this escapade or that. Always, until now, that is, my sad answer had been, “No, I can’t, I have no….” (a) money, (b) time, (c) will to live. Though choice (c) remains true these days–as does choice (a), let’s be realistic–I decided what-the-heck, and jumped on a plane for a nearly free trip to paradise.

I can’t say there is much better than five days in constant 78-degree weather and 75-degree ocean water, surrounded by sweet-smelling breezes, coconut-oil massages, fresh sushi, and a seemingly endless supply of papayas. And I was happy, in a way, to return to my fellow, and my puppy, and my sort of mind-numbing daily routine of attempting to get people to hire me, interspersed with dish-washing, doodling, and yoga-practicing.

Even before Hawai’i, the adjustment to life in rural Arizona was much harder than I had expected, in various ways that I guess I didn’t anticipate, so enamored was I of the westward-ho push out of New York, a place so burned into my sense of self that I sometimes feel an entirely different person here. The shorter, grayer days (something else I didn’t anticipate — but what did I think, that this was San Diego?) have taken their usual toll, too, dulling my senses in their usual way, and keeping me in bed much later than I care to mention.

And there is always this sense of guilt that I am not doing enough with this time, this quasi-sabbatical. That I should be making more, doing more, hiking more, getting out and doing… what? I suppose that what is also, in part, updating this blog, which has existed now for more than six (!) years, and has been woefully neglected for at least half of that time.

Well, then, it’s a new year, as they say, and I’m edging perilously close to thirty years of age. I can’t promise a new leaf, but I’ll try.