So Much for the Hammock

I came out to the country with my clothes, some food, and a whole set of expectations I didn’t realize I was carrying. I had this picture in my mind of quiet days, fresh air, and long stretches of time to write. Out here, the trees are tall, the land is big, and it’s easy to believe you’ll finally get a moment to breathe.

The first night, I wasn’t alone. Shanna and Christie were here with me, and the house felt warm and familiar. We talked, settled in, and it all felt like the beginning of the peaceful stretch I’d imagined. They left early the next morning, and I thought the quiet would settle in right behind them.

I imagined myself in a hammock with my laptop, Aleister curled at my feet, Tim nearby, all of us easing into something calm and simple. I could see it so clearly before I even got here.

But the day had other plans.

Tim couldn’t come the night before because the next afternoon he had to take Aleister to the vet. By the time they finally made it out here, the sky was already shifting. The storms rolled in that evening with full force — thunder cracking, lights flickering, the internet disappearing like it had better places to be. My peaceful retreat turned into a weather warning.

They arrived right in the middle of a meeting with my writing coach, which meant I was trying to sound composed while dogs barked, Aleister chased the cat as if it were his life’s mission, and the storm rattled the windows. My nerves were already stretched thin, and that didn’t help.

The next morning, I woke up with vertigo — the world tilting in slow circles, as if it had decided to sway without me. More storms came. I was still on edge. I snapped at Tim more than once, and the whole day felt tight and uncomfortable.

By the third day, things finally settled. The storms moved on. The animals calmed down. Aleister adjusted, even though he still goes after the cat every chance he gets. But the vertigo stayed, and the hammock I’d been dreaming about was suddenly a terrible idea.

And now, somehow, tonight is my last night here. I leave tomorrow afternoon. The week I imagined never showed up, and the one I got feels like it went by in a blur of weather alerts, barking dogs, and a world that wouldn’t stop spinning.

The version of myself I pictured — relaxed, grounded, writing outside like some peaceful woodland creature — never made an appearance. Instead, I got the version who clenches her jaw, who tries to hold everything together, who keeps insisting the plan should go the way she planned it.

It didn’t.

And somewhere between the storms, the sickness, and the spinning world, I realized how tightly I’d been holding onto the idea of how things should be. Expectations are sneaky like that. You don’t notice them until they’re slipping through your fingers.

But once I stopped fighting what was happening, once I let the week be what it was instead of what I wanted it to be, something softened. Not into perfection. Not into the hammock. But into something real.

And sometimes real — messy, inconvenient, unplanned — is its own kind of quiet.