You may have noticed a distinct lack of words from this wolfish one, and with good reason. Last Monday night I began to develop what would turn into a major back pain event, an event that is still in some ways dragging itself out. The culprit, I suspect, is a pinched nerve and some resulting muscular spasms that were brought on by a combination of neglect and failure to accept that I am not 18 years old and can't expect myself to heal and forgive quickly.

A large chunk of last week was spent on my back with heat and ibuprofen and in the avoidance of both sitting for a long time and standing for, well, any time. Over this weekend, it both lessened and intensified into a very small spot that now feels like a superball is stuck under the skin, so bunched up is the meat of me in that area.

I've had back problems since I entered the double digits. Yes you heard me. My back has been going out with frequency since I was around 12 or 13, around the same time that my arches gave up the ghost and fell.

"I can't come over and play, Charles. I threw my back out."

Both things, as I heard then, were factors of some uneven growth caused by preemie lil Willie being born more than a month early and almost perishing. And that was fine.

Then...

Now I am sick of feeling this way. And I don't have to feel this way. The poor, and I mean constantly and regularly poor medical care and advice of my teenage years in Ohio is easily 25 years in the past. Now I am preventing myself from doing the things I want to do by perpetuating both my bodily neglect and my suddenly intensified body image issues. Not going to continue.

I'm not stating a decision here or a new era of something. I'm just saying that today I feel like I should do something to make me happier to be in this flesh more often, because I'm fed up with not doing so. It's not this way all the time, or even more than half of the time. But it's this way enough. It's over the limit that I consider acceptable and healthy. And when it stops me from doing the work that my mind, heart and spirit need and want to be doing, that's extremely unacceptable.

I'm also not berating myself for anything that happened in the past or any ideas I had of myself in the past. Those things and what they brought about have allowed me to be the person I am now, and have only bettered my sensitivity and my understanding. I'm just saying that I want to bring the whole into holistic, and not treat my body like the a younger brother that you leave behind on the playground to play with the big kids.

Other than this, I've had a great weekend. We held our first marriage conversation Thursday night (imtboo, trochee and I), which started me off in the direction of both thinking about the nature of relationships and also about the kind of ceremony that I'll be performing (officiating) in six months. And then I had a kickass, supercool, laugh-filled time Friday helping imtboo shop for (and narrow down) wedding dresses.

Friday night and Saturday, I spent processing, but not the bad kind of untangling psyche and issues processing, the good kind of something is happening and I need to shut up and observe it processing. In the heart of this time came emails and comments and phone calls that supported the movement and the transformation I was experiencing. I was content to let it happen around me and do nothing but watch it.

Today was supposed to be my creative space, and I suppose I should say something about how that is going. It's going well and not well. It's going well in the fact that I think this is really the key to the organization of and flow of my life, and I'm very eager to keep working at the approach. It's not going well in that I seem to be spending more time creating and honing the space while I'm in it than doing much actual creating of anything. But honestly, that's what I expected. This approach is new to me and is going to take some doing to make it mindful and second-nature. So I stick with it and show up, and it's starting to form something that I can better get my hands around.

But in the midst of all this, I'm beginning to get a sense of who I am and where my work here lies. And I'm not entirely sure that the things I create and the time that I spend creating them is the important thing. Stepping into a priest archetype this year, formally, for the first time in my life is showing me the ways in which I fit and have always fit that archetype. And though creation is a natural expression of and companion for that path, I'm beginning to see it now as serving as a tool of both my spirituality-based work and of my normal inclination for and desire to engage in play and imagination. That places it in a new position, and that placement is rippling through the creation space concept in interesting ways that I'm not quite sure I understand yet.

Stay tuned.

Lastly, two good pieces of news. Soon, The Blonde Swedes will be continuing their podcasts and I am excited to be the new mixer, production guy and poster of the content. That's a meaty project I can sink my teeth into.

And then, finally, hats. Yes, hats. I am lucky to have people in my life like liralen and writeanya who took the time to knit me hats for my winter walks and to keep me healthier and more stylish. Interesting enough, I think they fulfill two very unique purposes for me and I'll be wearing both of them around town in the coming weeks, as winter exhales into spring and spring lingers into summer.

You can see them Here and Here.

My big huggy thanks to both of them.

And that's all I have. I must go tend to the back in hopes that it decides tomorrow to be happy. I'm pretty happy right now, so no reason it shouldn't be too.