TINY REFLECTIONS

I’m Still Here Telling Stories

It’s been a minute

Barbara Andres
3 min readAug 3, 2023

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Emerging from a long winter’s slumber. Photo by author.

Originally published by grainofinfinity on Dec 13, 2019.

I haven’t been publishing lately. I have my reasons: work, home, school, volunteer commitments, yes, but also, I just didn’t wanna. Maybe it’s because, well, one day I woke up and I’m 61. I’ve been tired. Tired of searching for meaning. Of finding a thread sticking out that might just BE that meaning. I’m tired of pulling the thread, worrying at it, shredding it, tangling it up, and creating a godawful mess, then finding out it wasn’t attached to anything but a ball of lint in my pocket. Not worth the effort, so why bother?

Why bother? Because I’m a writer. I write when I have something to say, but why not also write even if the prancing squirrels in my silly brain escape and scramble cross-eyed and willy nilly their way down a page for all to see. I write even if one person reads me. I write because something I say could mean something to someone.

And if one person is reading, I need to let those squirrels fly. Why? Because insights trapped in my head help no one — least of all, me — if I leave them there.

A squirrelly story

Plunkett the grey fox squirrel lives high up in the juniper tree in our yard. A few…

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Barbara Andres

Muddling through, one story at a time. Grab a cup of tea, pull up a chair, and let’s get curious together.