Alone

This morning, for the first time in a long time, I realized I had no freelance work lined up for the day. Things have been slow lately—much slower than usual—but I generally have something on tap to keep me busy for a few hours. Not so this morning, and I fell into my usual freelancer’s despair of ever having work again. “Why can’t you just enjoy a nice Friday?” Andrew asked, and, indeed, I wished I could. There are only a few more weeks where I’ll be alone for an entire day—once the baby comes, it may be years before I’m totally alone for any real stretch of time. It’s a strange, unnerving thought, and it did make me want to revel in the quiet day, reading and writing and just noting what it’s like to be alone.

An hour later, however, after I read the paper and ran an errand, a couple of new assignments came in, and the day turned into just another workday. But as I sit here now, working, I do have a sense of something coming to an end. The quiet, the aloneness. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll remember what this time was like—this time of having time, or at least of having time alone.