I’ve been so uninspired lately that I have to think it is some kind of depression. It’s a combination of things: the recurring snowstorms, the sinking economy that is making things bad for business, the ongoing estrangement from my stepdaughters, which has become a hopeless status quo.

If I think about just these three things, I want to crawl under a handmade quilt and go to sleep. And the third one is so painful, I wonder that I don’t walk around every day with red-rimmed eyes. Somehow we keep going — each day the sun comes up, one of us makes coffee, and there is music.

We are busy. Dave has some kind of extracurricular activity almost every day. I hold myself back more. I always needed a lot of quiet time and feel hungry for it now.

During my first couple of years in Switzerland, I would occasionally go a whole weekend without exchanging more than a word or two with anyone. I read a lot, visited museums, walked for miles and spent time sitting in cafes. I don’t remember feeling lonely or homesick. Reading “The Stories of John Cheever” during that time, this quote seemed very true to me –

“Homesickness is nothing. Fifty per cent of the people in the world are homesick all the time. When you’re in one place and long to be in another, it isn’t as simple as taking a boat. You don’t really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don’t have, or haven’t been able to find.”

So it’s funny now to realize by this definition, I am a little homesick. I’m longing for something in myself that I just can’t find right now.