Distance to Empty

        I noticed my car's odometer yesterday when I turned it on to return home after another great session with the creative writing group I facilitate.  9999 and holding.  I've had the car over a year and I'm only now reaching this milestone.  Demonstrates how much of a homebody I've become.  And, this even includes two vacations---to Yosemite and Mendocino from Los Angeles.  In my commuting to work days I would have reached this level months earlier.  Even in my commuting around this valley in earlier days, I would have reached this level months earlier.  I just don't get around much any more...well in my car.
      This morning when I sat down to write, I noticed the additional information on the odo.  I was not moving, going 0 mph.  I was sitting in park, and I had 96 miles to go before the car was empty.  Is there a message in the picture? 
       I've felt rather stuck in the past few months, as if I am not moving.  I am, indeed, parked in the past and not feeling the possibilities in the future.  Okay, odo, I get it.  I still have some distance to go before empty.  For my car, 96 mi to empty depends on how I drive.  It is the minimum I will get if I tool around town in stop and go traffic.  If I head out on the highway, looking for adventure, and whatever comes my way, well, I find the distance to empty will actually go up as I get better mileage on the open road at a steady speed. 
      I take at least two ideas from this.  One, obviously, head out on the highway.  Two, go at a steady speed.  Perhaps not full speed ahead, but ahead.  Let's say on the open highway my car gets 30 mph (which is the minimum it does).  This might up the distance to empty to 115 miles.  My car, when full, notes the distance to empty is about 350 miles.  115 is approximately a third of that distance. So, if I push the analogy envelope, the metaphor envelope, I see this as approximately a third of a tank of life.  That's a ways to go still.  God willing, in good health.
    In that creative writing class yesterday I wrote a kind of eulogy to my writing, a resume of my writing life over the years.  It was a strange piece, but I realized that it was a kind of way of building myself up as a writer.  I wrote of the poems and essays and short stories and books that have been birthed through my creative process and how they hide in boxes and drawers awaiting light.  I vowed to give it to them, to bring them a place in the world that is no longer hidden.  I want to continue my daily blog writing, if it serves no one but me.  Still, it is in the world.
     I joined a writing class online and my first assignment is to write a 55 word story.  It's still wandering around in my mind.  It's a good exercise to limit and to look at words.  I wonder how skilled I am as a writer.  Prolific, yes.  Skilled? My inner critic debates.
     I think there is some sort of interesting connection to looking at my odometer yesterday,  an uncommon occurrence, what I previously wrote in class before I looked at my odometer, and how it hadn't left my mind and became my muse this morning.  I don't profess to understand the connection, I do, however, observe and note its presence.  I'm still trying to figure out life.  In my odometer metaphor, the learning for me is, I have miles to go before I sleep.