Snow billowed outside the window and I snuggled under the blankets with a burst of joy before reaching for the phone to confirm the news. Snow Day!

In the living room I heard Clay Pigeon’s “Wake and Bake” on WFMU, a show Chris listens to daily. I like Clay too but this morning he took up the space in my head making it hard to think.

Chris was deep in his morning yoga routine, his mat rolled out in the living room in the tight walk space between bedroom and kitchen, like always.

Not wanting to waste a precious minute of my free day, yet feeling I already had, I stepped over him to fill the espresso pot, then stepped back over him to make the bed, then stepped around him to get my notebook to capture an idea floating in my mind, then nearly forgot the coffee until I heard it burble up. All the while thinking I should’ve gone out to the café like I usually do.

“I feel so unsettled!” I said.

“It’s displacement behavior,” he said coming out of a twisty pose.

“What is?”

“What you’re doing. Animals do it when their routine is disrupted.”

I identified with the term instantly even before I understood it.

“They all do it,” he went on as if to assure me this behavior was normal despite the fact that he wasn’t exhibiting it.

Displacement behavior, he explained, happens when an animal is ambivalent or unsure of what to do, leading to self-soothing behaviors such as drinking, eating or grooming. It indicates conflict and anxiety.

According to Wikipedia, it can occur when animals “are prevented from performing a single behavior for which they are highly motivated.”

This hit home: I wanted to write and was afraid to write. I had time and was afraid of wasting time.

“What you need to do is sit down and think about your day and make a plan,” Chris said.

But I am not so easily placed. The eggs were whipped and ready to scramble. The milk hot. The coffee ready to pour.

“I’ll think while I eat,” I said, turning to two of the most self-soothing activities I know, eating toast and eggs, and reading the long luxurious sentences in a P.D. James novel, in this case, A Taste for Death.

Once my hunger was satisfied I settled down to write, a single behavior for which I am highly motivated, but which often brings up conflict and anxiety, making me feel ambivalent, inadequate and unsure.