(#5) feed the fire.

This is the end and the beginning. The new year is on our doorstep. I told you it was coming for me.

This felt good. It felt really really good. Whatever it is worth to you (or anyone else), today, with each word I type, I feel a bit stronger. I feel more myself. I feel capable and wide awake, so completely wide awake. Which brings me to my last reflection this year, the thing I most want to carry with me into the new year:

FEED THE FIRE.

Last weekend, on a rainy Sunday morning, J asked if I wanted to go to a museum. He said he needed something to fuel his creativity. So we drank our coffee and got on our bicycles and rode down to the Hirshhorn. There was an exhibit I didn’t like, and I’m still thinking about the strange film of black-painted spinning tops. But whatever I liked or whatever I hated, my mind was awake and alive and full of sparks. I was asking questions and being made to feel bored or uncomfortable.

The presence of someone in my life who says let’s go out and feed the creative fire has been transformative. Over and over again, experiences both simple and grand light me up, fill me with questions, stoke my urges to make something. But even when that ambitious person isn’t around to drag me out of my comfortable house into the wide world, I want to remember the good, the wild head-splitting good that comes from seeking out the experiences, the words, the sounds, the people who will feed the fire.

I’ve kept the fire going, somehow, though there are plenty of dark nights. The new year is coming for me. And I’ll meet it with this fire blazing.

(#4) this is a cycle.

Last spring, I found myself overwhelmed. My workload felt unmanageable, there was drama, both personal and professional, and on top of it all, J and I made the impulse decision to move (only a few blocks, but still).

I slipped, slowly but steadily. I found myself ordering pizza more nights than I care to admit. I started drinking Diet Coke during the workday, making me feel both amped up and able to work, but also anxious and like…...shit. I didn’t run. I watched TV when I got home at night. I felt like I wasn’t in control, or like I could only manage all of the chaos by abandoning all of the self-care that makes me feel good. And of course, mixed in with all of those feelings was pure guilt. Why couldn’t I manage the stress? Why couldn’t I whip myself into shape again?

But in a blur, the summer came. We moved into our new apartment. Work quieted down. I started riding my bike every day and training for a half marathon and eating salads at night. I stopped with the Diet Coke.

And this year, finally, through either age or experience, I learned that it’s ok.

This is a cycle.

All of it is a cycle. Life, hope, commitment, struggle, balance, peace, ALL OF IT. We can do our best, each of us, and that looks different for every person each day. And the drama of my spring is really inconsequential in the grander scheme. Greater struggles will come in my life, I know that they will. Greater loss, greater challenge, more juggling, more stress. But also more hope, more life, more experience.

I can do my best and no more. The weight of guilt won’t get me anywhere.

(#3) the idea in your head may not be the thing you need to create.

This summer, I sat up early one morning thinking about a comment someone made at work, the exact quotation which I’ve forgotten. What I do remember is that the comment either implied (or said outright) that people who live in poverty cannot afford to eat healthy foods. And I remember struggling to make sense of that belief, struggling to orient myself inside of that world. I didn’t believe that it was true, but what if I was wrong?

So many people think that poverty means that you don’t have enough money, but more than that, it means you don’t have a support system. You don’t have someone you can turn to when money gets tight, when you get laid off at work, when your partner gets sick or dies, when your car breaks down and there’s no one to watch your kids. It's about isolation. I’ve been very poor at times in my life, but I have never lacked that system of support, the family and friends who I know and trust without a doubt would take care of me if I needed them to. Which means that I approach poverty as someone who has not experienced it.

It has never sat well with me that the values I hold are only available to people with means, that a personal value like wanting to buy local or organic food can only be held if you have a certain socio-economic status. It doesn’t sit right with me, but it is basically true. But does poverty mean that it is pointless/hopeless/not possible to be concerned with nutrition? All of this to say that I struggled with it.

(#2) negativity is consuming.

I’m not usually the one to flaunt the nitty-gritty personal details of my life, especially not around here, but sometimes the details are needed to make a point. Last weekend, J and I had a fight about something very insignificant. Granted, if you know me, you can probably imagine that fighting with me isn’t an aggressive affair - more silence than shouting.

At any rate, we had just seen The Imitation Game, the late showing, after spending a strangely warm evening walking all the way downtown, and to the National Christmas Tree, and then to the theater. As we walked out, me misty-eyed (as I usually am after any movie ever), J began to offer his critique. He thought the movie was fine, but he had thoughts (as he usually does) about what could have been better.

After four years, I know this is just something that he does. He is a passionate, working artist and everything we see or experience is fuel for that. He doesn’t critique a film because he likes to wallow in maliciously deconstructing the work of others. He does it because that’s what artists do, especially artists like him.

I told you we had a silly fight, but I haven’t explained it yet. We left the theater, J started his critique, and I interrupted him with, Why do you have to be SO NEGATIVE all the time? He stopped talking.

(#1) it is time to find my voice.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been writing here somewhat stream-of-conscious. Not exactly so, but I’ve been writing fairly unedited, writing it and pushing the publish button all within the space of 15 or 20 minutes. In fact, I have almost always written that way in this space. My intention has not been to write on particular topics, or on a certain schedule, or to amass hundreds (or dozens) of readers. My goal has always been simply to make myself show up, to shake off my monkey brain, and to write hard.

Which is why the last five posts of this year will feel a bit strange to me - but I think they're right. 

The little ambition that I set at the beginning of this month (my invisible-to-you goal) was to top 50 posts here this year. The first two years of this space, I hit 49 posts. Last year I squeaked in at a dismal 29 posts. Considering that the challenge is not the time it takes to write (remember, 15 or 20 minutes), it was so disappointing to see that I could barely average two posts each month last year. 

This year has been slow as well. Not much more than one post each month. In September, with the fire and passion of setting birthday goals, I hung up a calendar reminding myself to write every day. I have not been writing every day, but I have diligently checked the boxes when I do write, down to this very day. So at the beginning of this month, I made it my goal to come roaring back into this space and to log more than 50 posts for 2014. It’s arbitrary, of course, but what isn’t? And really, it’s all a mental game. I wanted to prove that more than three years after I told myself, I KNOW I SHOULD DO IT, I was still doing it.

it's coming.

The end of the year feels so close, like a wild animal chasing at my heels, straining to catch my leg, waiting to swallow me whole. But it isn’t fear or dread that I feel at the coming year - I can’t quite place my finger on how it is that I feel. It’s as if, as much as I’m ready to take on the year, the year is ready to take on me. It’s coming for me. And I don’t know what yet that means or what it will bring.

Monday morning on another strange, part-vacation week. The skies are gray and while it’s light out, it’s a half-light that only makes you feel cold.

There is more more more to say, but the clock is ticking and I need to put on my shoes and brush my teeth and get on my bike and go to work. And there is always more to say, whether I can drum it up inside of me or whether it sits trapped, or waiting, or both.

some piece of gold.

How little can I write and call it a post?

That’s my thought while I’m eating my oatmeal and drinking my coffee and sitting on the couch with wet hair pressed against the back of my neck.

Followed closely by: Who cares?

Do you want to know what I was really thinking about this morning? We had a full-length mirror propped against a wall in our bedroom, and a few weeks ago I moved it and managed to crack it down the middle. So yesterday, we finally got around to picking up a new mirror, a cheap one from Target. It’s the sort of funhouse mirror that makes you look tall and thin. And this morning, while getting dressed, while fully aware of the illusion, I still felt a boost of confidence. I caught myself thinking, I look good.

Which got me to thinking about how my entire day is so often, so easily, shaped by what I see in the mirror in the morning. I know that I have the power to shape my world through my perspective. And it all lies within my own control.

By the way, I’m firmly holding to my belief that the more bullshit writing I wade through, the more I force myself to sit and just write whatever is in my head, the more I show up when I don’t want to, the more likely I will uncover some piece of gold. I’m not expecting a breakthrough or for it to suddenly become easy, but when I sift through it all, I might find something worth keeping.

And in the process, I build up my tolerance for discomfort, my ability to say to myself, Shut up with the excuses and just write.

perspective.

In the last day and a half I’ve been reading The Art of Possibility (and will finish it before the night is done). I had heard about it from several people, and randomly enough, one of the co-authors (Benjamin Zander) is the director of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, which I sold subscription packages for during the long, penniless spring I spent in Medford.

It’s a difficult book to put a finger on, to sum up, or even to explain how I feel about it. But I like it. They’re naming “practices” and concepts and versions of the self, and I’m a bit lost trying to keep track of what is what. Nonetheless, the mere act of reading the book is entering into my subconscious and making me feel a sense of hope. It’s opening my eyes to all of the ways that my own perspective shapes my experiences, my struggles, and overall, the world that I live in.

I woke up early this morning, while J slept in, and I drank the better part of a french press of coffee while I read this book in the armchair tucked behind the Christmas tree and under the window, while the sun came up. Then we set out early in the day and drove to Virginia to visit two Goodwill stores on the hunt for records. We hit the jackpot in Falls Church, coming home with Phil Collins, Merle Haggard, Carole King, and a John Denver album sleeve that actually contained The Who (and though I do like John Denver, The Who is better). And there was also The Firebird, which we saw live last month, and which I’ve been thinking of since, and which I’m listening to right now.

For lunch, we found a strange little Afghan restaurant tucked away in suburbia, mostly empty, with dingy white tablecloths and a very young server wearing a bow tie. It was perfect and delicious and we talked about the next week and the next year while we ate.

I nearly didn’t write tonight, nearly talked myself out of it, but I overcame that and a hundred other distractions. Not to write something magnificent, but to show up nonetheless.

a blink or a dream.

It’s Friday night at the end of a lazy week. I’m not usually clamoring to go out, but I almost have a touch of cabin fever. We had dinner reservations for tonight, but in a wave of money-guilt (and still feeling full from Christmas-all-day-cinnamon-rolls) I cancelled the reservation.

As two people who are together making just enough to get by in this city, we always face the weekend dilemma of having fun vs. not spending any money. What do people do for fun….for free? On an average weekend night, we’ll go back and forth, and finally end on a carton of ice cream from the nearby bodega and a movie at home. Or, like the true book-nerds we are, we’ll lay on the couch and read books.

I am always amazed by the way that a day facing a computer screen can just pass in a daze. I was the only one in the office today, and as I do most days, I stared at a computer and typed things. I spoke a handful of words all day to the cleaning assistant when she stopped by to empty garbage cans. The day felt like a blink or a dream. I hate days like that, days that pass by as if you haven’t lived them. 

But the good news is that the night has just begun, I have a drink in one hand and soon a book in the other, and soon J will get home and will (hopefully, but probably not) be full of good ideas of what we can do for fun tonight. And Aretha’s Gold is blasting on the speakers, which makes just about everything right.

in-between week.

I finished reading The War of Art yesterday, and it prompted a flood of questions and urges and ideas. The book itself is a little ridiculous, especially the third of three sections, which talks an awful lot about praying to the Muses and angels etc etc. But even still, it manages to issue a rallying cry to do your work and to fight the forms of resistance in your life.

I finished it yesterday morning, while listening to Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia, which I’m listening to again now.

And for the hour or so after, I thought about what the point of this writing here is. It’s part journal, part freewriting, part stream-of-consciousness, part soapbox. What is it? It’s my practice. It’s the place where I remind myself that I can show up day after day, or even hour after hour if my goals demand it. It’s the place where I dull my nerves and my fear of success and failure and being good and being bad.

It's that awkward time between Christmas and the year’s end, the time when I find myself reflecting and planning. The time when we feel prone to eating a lot of cheese and cookies (just me?) because the fresh start will come in the new year. The time when we feel prone to laying around and blowing through episode after episode of that one show we finally got hooked on. But it can also be that time when we take stock of the past year and lay the groundwork for the next. I think I will only set one resolution again for 2015, because it felt good to see just one thing through the year. It was a touchstone to remind myself what one of my priorities is (and by extension, what the rest are). I don’t know what that one resolution will be this year, but I have this in-between week to figure it out.

connecting.

I’m listening to records today while J is at work and the cookie dough is chilling in the refrigerator and the rosemary simple syrup is steeping on the stove. It feels at once trite (so hipster of me!) and honest.

I find meditation in the ways that work for me. One way is building rituals around art and creative acts. Another is doing things that connect my body to my head, because I’m the sort of person who finds those two things very easily separated. That’s also why I chose to get on my bike in the rain at 7:30am this morning to buy more coffee creamer and lemons and eggnog for the cinnamon rolls we’re having for breakfast tomorrow. So whether its the act of pedaling and feeling my sleeping leg muscles crank into life and feeling cold drops of rain on my ankles and the back of my neck or whether its the act of placing a wheel of vinyl on a turntable and watching the needle touch the groves and feeling the scratches and life in my own bones, these things connect me to myself and to the earth.

It’s gray and quiet today and I’m going to decorate some cookies and listen to more records and I’m going to finish that book that I said that I’d finish last night. This life is good.

a small part.

Do half-formed memories come back to you at strange times?

I was addressing a stack of envelopes today at work, in that comfortable dozy state that comes when you’re doing something simple and repetitive, and suddenly I was transported to a stretch of road north of where my parents live and where I lived for four years in high school. It’s a rolling stretch with fields on one side and a sub-division of new houses on the other. I rarely went into the side streets off that road, but it was the shortcut to the highway that I’d take back and forth to college, so I’d drive it then. And I remember one time stopping at a garage sale at a house on that street with my mom. I think I bought something, but I don't remember what.

At any rate, its strange to be instantly transported to a place that played a small part in my life. Suddenly I remember all these details, or maybe I create them, but either way the landscape seems so rich.

I really have nothing better to say today. It was a little warm and damp out, work was quiet and busy, and I’ve just washed a pile of spinach to throw into a frittata when J gets home from work. I’m listening to the All Songs Considered Holiday Special and wondering whether I have the stamina to read an entire book tonight, because I want to.

philosophical.

I just finished reading David Shield’s Reality Hunger and I don’t know exactly how I feel about it just yet, but I do know that it drummed up a real sense of fear and crisis in myself, not much related to the topics he takes in hand. For various reasons, it made me question my resolve, my ability to face myself, to stare into the abyss, and to write from that place. It made me doubt my own honesty with myself. It made me think about how I used to think about truth and how I don’t think about it much anymore.

All this while listening to a background of some cheesy mix called Santa’s Got Style (which I’m thoroughly enjoying, by the way).

I haven’t thought deeply about writing much this year. I’ve thought a lot about what I could write about and I’ve stared at blank pages and blank screens, but I used to ask a lot of philosophical (read: probably pointless) questions about the mechanics of it and the point of it and so on. I haven't done that much lately.

I also have been out of the kitchen for what feels like forever, but really more like a week. So tonight I dipped into one of Heidi’s cookbooks for a rye soda bread that went from bowl to out of the oven in an hour. Alongside that, I chopped an assortment of vegetables lurking in the refrigerator, including sunchokes, carrots, an onion, a leek, a handful of garlic cloves. They all went into a stockpot with butter and olive oil, followed by a few cups of veggie broth, a bay leaf, some thyme, and a scoop of yellow lentils. After it was all soft and cooked, I pureed half and we ate it as a chunky, earthy soup.

healing tea.

As is usual, I’m sitting facing the blank screen with what feels like a blank head.

This past week and my attempts to write twice each day haven’t felt exhausting, per se, but the interesting, cultural, thoughtful parts of my life feel a bit quiet lately. What else does one write about besides experience - things seen heard touched felt read watched listened to?

My body has a way of shutting down after a long week, and true to form, halfway through the day, the hint of a sore throat appeared. I’d already logged enough hours this week that I could come home a bit early. And I love being at home when the light is rising and falling. There’s something comforting in the sunrise and sunset from inside your home. I’m turning lights on one by one, lighting a few candles here and there. Long shadows are laying against the brick buildings that surround our apartment.

I could hustle up a to do list, clean out the refrigerator, scrub the (shamefully) dirty bathroom, do a load of laundry when our building is empty and the machine is free. But I’m not. Instead I’m simmering a pot of my cold-fighting tea and getting a book out, although I may just take a late afternoon nap. Here’s to the weekend and to rest.

whole.

Last night, feeling completely socially and otherwise burned out, I got home from an evening work event, ordered completely unnecessary Thai food, and sat on the couch for the next three hours watching TV (by TV, I mean watching a show on a laptop) (Jake has been trying to get me to watch this, which in theory I should like, but it’s still a little over the top for me).

When I sat down, I said I need to turn my brain off for the rest of the night.

Somehow I always think that when I’m exhausted, emotionally taxed, burned out with work, that the old American pastimes will make me feel better, i.e. eating and laying on the couch and watching TV. There is always that one second of relief, but like any mind or body numbing activity, it doesn’t actually make you feel better it just makes you not feel anything.

So of course, climbing into bed at midnight, I felt lazy and empty. I woke up this morning feeling the same. So I did the only thing I could do, which is tidy up the kitchen, throw away the takeout containers, make a pot of coffee, and write.

I’ve set some goals, or projects, for next week, for my at-home-holiday. Nothing incredibly taxing, but everything I am jazzed up about right now.

It’s Friday morning, which means the long week is closing, and I can give myself up to things like nature (encouraged by a mini-trip we’re taking tomorrow!) and words and creative thought. In the thick of it, even when I forget, I still know: those are the only things that make me whole.

go there.

The year when I was fourteen, I didn’t have any friends.

No, that isn’t how I meant to start. It just popped into my head when I started thinking, The year when….

We can’t write about things like that before work and before breakfast and even before coffee.

But let me ask you this: how do you feel about small talk? Isn’t it exhausting? Surely that can’t be the only first step to more meaningful conversation. I worked at an event last night and I made small talk about home states, about Minnesota, neighborhoods in DC, and dogs. It was fairly harmless, but it all has a way of making the world (and myself) feel very empty.

I have an idea for a podcast (it’s the thing to do these days, I think) where I talk to complete strangers and I start the conversation with: Tell me what you think about god. Followed by: Tell me about something hard in your life. Then perhaps followed by: Tell me what you think about art. Of course, I’m not much of a talker - but I’m a great listener. Think of the connection you would form with people if conversations always started that way.

I don’t run across people who go there very often, but when I do, I try to hold onto them. Maybe if I worked a bit harder to be that sort of person, we would all find each other?

different.

This year, for the first time in six years, I won’t be traveling at Christmas. J and I decided that budgets/work/schedules this year meant that we just couldn’t make the trek back to Minnesota and Wisconsin to be with family. As of this moment, we actually have no plans (none at all!) for Christmas day.

This city gets pretty quiet around the holidays/whenever those lawmakers are taking a break. In my head, I pictured a late breakfast (maybe cinnamon rolls?) and some lazing about and maybe a walk down to the Capitol with travel mugs of hot chocolate to see the tree.

It’s at once a huge relief and a bit of a bummer to not be traveling this year. Airports are not my favorite. I’ve had more than my share of cancelled or delayed flights because travelling to the Midwest in December always = lots of snow. But I’ll miss seeing our families, playing Scrabble and cribbage, seeing two wild little nephew boys open their presents, eating all of that good Midwestern food (and cheese cheese cheese!).

On a whim, I got us a big Christmas tree this year (taller than me!) so that our tiny apartment would feel full of holiday cheer. I baked cookies in a fury. I made vegan eggnog (which didn’t go as well as one might hope).

So this season feels a bit strange around here this year. I’m definitely listening to Christmas music non-stop at this point, and I plug in the Christmas lights every moment I’m at home, but it still feels a bit distant. Not in a bad way (or in a good way), just different this year. So here’s to a few new traditions, whatever they'll be, and to taking the holiday season easy.

five.

I have five minutes, and that isn’t too short a time to say something. It’s a sunny day, and from where I sit I can see heavy rays of light peeking over the next building, and Rat the Cat perched in the window watching the morning birds. I can see the odd assortment of books and papers that collect themselves on the table, on the shelves, on the floor, on the corner of the couch. I can see the wilted plants outside the window, on the fire escape, probably wishing I would just put them out of their misery (except the parsley and rosemary, which seem indifferent to the change in seasons).

It’s been a long week already and it will be longer still. Today will be long.

But there are wonderful things to look forward to - this weekend, next week, and months and months into the future.

And there's simple goodness: I slept well, I am safe and loved, and I’m drinking coffee with cream in it, so I feel special.

wallflower.

Today is a gloomy day, overcast with cold rain steadily falling. Someone wise pointed out that Christmas is next week. I have always felt at home on a gloomy day, not that I enjoy them per say, but I’m comfortable sitting still with a bit of gloom. I’m at ease being alone, tucked up in my home, quiet and brooding.

I wrote a letter last week, and it was only two pages long, but my hand cramped up toward the end - a vivid reminder that I haven’t been writing much of anything by hand lately. But I’m planning out my 2015-writing-challenge-for-one and it will mean getting back on track with my forlorn, empty notebook.

Can I tell you something about myself? I never want to go out. There’s always a part of me that wants to duck out of plans, that wants every evening and weekend to stretch on in comfortable silence (or relative quiet), where I can do whatever I want, even if it means just being in my own head.

I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. I love lounging around with a few friends at home, but I’m never the one who wants to go to (or throw, god-forbid) a party.

This is something about myself that I haven’t made my peace with, not just yet. I’m trying to find the right line, the right balance, between stretching myself and letting myself be exactly who I am. (Another wise friend told me, Everyone gets to be exactly who they are.)

bike love.

In April of this year, I started riding my bike to work every day. I had bought a used bike months earlier and it sat, patiently chained to our front steps, waiting for me to work up the nerve to ride it in the city (see #21). I can’t remember what exactly gave me the push, but J did a practice ride with me one weekend, and the following Monday, I did it.

Like most things we’re afraid of (at least for me) the anticipation is far worse than actually living out the thing you feared. For the first few weeks, I had to swallow down the lumps of anxiety before heading out the door. I caught myself lying in bed at night, obsessing over how I would change lanes in that one tricky spot around the park or what would happen if I hit a pothole in the dark and wiped out. But in the moment, riding my bike every day, passing car after car stuck in traffic, is the most liberating and exciting part of my day.

This sums it all up.

In other notes, if you were ever a fan of the Dear Sugar columns, back before we even knew who was writing them, then GET THIS NOW NOW NOW. Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond (the original Sugar!) are hosting a Dear Sugar Radio Hour. I listened to the first episode after work on Friday and it was the perfect start to the weekend.

But the weekend is over, and its Tuesday morning now, and the week marches on.

another day.

I have another post for today, one that I started on Friday and started on Saturday and started on Sunday. It felt so urgent all week and I just couldn’t get it done. Yesterday was wide open. My plans were to do some Christmas baking, pack up our Christmas gifts, and listen to lots of Christmas music (Alternating between this and this because I have no shame.)

I bought some soy coffee creamer over the weekend. Cream in the coffee feels like vacation to me, because I usually drink it black. All weekend I was pouring cream into my coffee and feeling special.

J and I biked down to Jimmy T’s for breakfast yesterday and managed to roll up just as a table by the window opened. We had huevos rancheros and an egg sandwich and mediocre coffee and super sweet grapefruit juice. We talked about the what next in work and life which is…….well, it’s unknown. It’s good. It’s scary. It’s wild. We tried to make quick business of running some errands after breakfast, which wound up meaning that we biked down to the organic grocery for the bulk nuts, then to CVS for the Drano and a gold Sharpie (an obvious need at this time of year), and then to the regular grocery store for lasagna noodles.

We finally got home and settled into work, J on some writing that needed to be finished, and me on baking all the things that I wanted to pack into boxes and mail away for Christmas. A few hours of lighthearted baking suddenly stretched into the night, and when I briefly thought that I had put too much coconut oil in the melted chocolate and it wasn’t going to harden, I nearly lost it. J needed quiet, so I was listening to my Christmas tunes in headphones. The Drano down the bathroom sink made the whole apartment smell like chemicals instead of sugary Christmas goodness. This isn’t the sort of day you find in the so-lovely internet world, where everything is polished and perfect.

here and there.

I’m starting in from the void (it feels). What did I see today? What did I hear? What did I think? It was all soft-focus and quiet, which I don’t mind at all….but then what do I write about?

I thought a lot today about what it means to surround yourself with things and people and experiences that support you, and what it means to build your life around joy.

I am planning a little writing challenge/retreat-for-one next year. I may or may not incorporate it into this space, I’m not sure yet, but I’m excited to start.

I have a project idea that is just brewing and brewing in my head. It would take a little money and a little time and I’m starting to ask myself, seriously, how I can make it happen.

I feel full, to the tip-top, but not with words. So a few here and there can be enough.

something different tonight.

I want to write about anything but writing. But really, I just want to write. Per usual, my thoughts feel scattered and elastic and just-out-of-reach and I keep finding a little thing here and a little thing there to do. Fold the laundry, make an omelet, hang a picture. I’m always so productive at the moment I tell myself to write.

What if I wrote about something different tonight? What if I wrote about how I used to believe in God and now I don’t? Even writing that sentence puts my stomach into knots. It is the biggest and most oppressive on my own list of things that are difficult to talk about. I don’t know who clicks their way through here these days and I don’t know who is reading. On this topic, there is bound to be some disagreement. I know very well, and deeply, that I've hurt some in the past. So I live in fear of hurting or offending anyone anywhere ever. I’d rather be the opposite, but fear can be a tricky thing to release.

I’m listening to the first Fleet Foxes album tonight, because it is certainly the time for it, and also I may have mildly overdone the Christmas tunes over the weekend. White Winter Hymnal always takes me back to the winter in my tiny bedroom in Wellfleet. It was adjacent to the dining room and must have been a pantry at some point because it barely fit a twin bed and a dresser and it had no heat. There was always sand on the floor, scattered over the blue green industrial carpet, because it was Cape Cod and the vacuum cleaners rarely were working in that house. There was always sand in the sheets as well, and each night I’d pull back the blanket and brush the sand out. In the winter, when it was very cold, I’d pile on my layers and crawl underneath a thick comforter and bury my head into the pillows. White Winter Hymnal takes me back there.

thinking on.

Well, November has come and gone.

I just looked back at my calendar to remind myself. What happened? How did all of those days fly by? How did I forget to come back here?

It happens, forever and ever, the waves crash and melt away, they rise with intensity, they fall back with peace.

Things I have been thinking about lately:
-money (savings, paying debts, making plans)
-possessions
-simplicity
-family
-the road
-the unknown
-the future

I always get the urge to write something when I see something that I wish I had written. Or I hear of someone making something that I wish I had made. Today it was this, one of my very favorite blogs, and her amazing announcement that she is writing a book on simplicity. I thought: How wonderful! And then: I wish I was writing that book.

I started reading this little book over Thanksgiving, which I happen to love, mostly because it speaks directly to me and my organizer brain. I’m not sure it would be the best read if you’re not already prone to or longing for tidiness. But it does have me fairly jazzed up about the idea of filling my life only with objects and possessions that bring joy. J and I are already minimal people, partly because we live in a small space, but I think we could do more to hold on to things that bring joy and let go of those that don’t.

TV.

I made stuffed peppers for dinner, which I’ve never made before. I stuffed a dozen poblanos with black beans and cornmeal and onions and cheese and packed them into a pan full of spicy sauce. They’re in the oven right now.

That, friends, is the first thing that comes to mind on this quiet Monday evening.

Jacob and I don’t have a TV, mostly out of laziness and poverty. We lived in a furnished apartment for two years that had a big flat screen TV in it. We didn’t have cable, but we could hook my laptop up to the TV and watch Netflix or movies we rented on Amazon. When we moved in June, we gave up the furnished apartment and the TV along with it.

Don’t get me wrong - I still watch TV, only on a laptop hooked up to a speaker. We are not purists. Jacob has been working a lot of nights lately, and I’ve been on a raging bender watching every episode of The Mindy Project. Many Friday nights will find us on the couch watching old episodes of 30 Rock. But there is something freeing about not having a TV as a feature in our (very tiny) home.

A few months ago, Jacob brought home a nice little radio that sits out in the living room. It is usually tuned to our local NPR station or the local classical music station. I’ve always been a regular NPR listener, but in the months since the radio came, I'm off the hook. I turn the radio on when I get home, and unless I’m the mood for a podcast, I often find myself listening to the radio through the night and into the evening. I even find myself listening to Tom Ashbrook. I don’t know that having a radio in the background is any better than a TV, but I like it.

cardamom.

Like I said, I don’t usually write in the morning. But I woke up to the alarm clock blaring NPR and it felt like there was so much time and nothing to fill it with but writing.

Last night, I made a little dent on each of my end-of-year goals. I finished a book. I ran 4 miles. I wrote a blog post. I did 10 minutes of freewriting and made a list of creative projects and ideas. It felt amazing, like the night stretched on for days. Maybe that’s why I woke up itching to make more progress.

Habit-forming is such a trendy topic, and I’m especially guilty of falling down the deep dark hole of self-help articles and life-hacks and how-to-be-better books. I have some opinion on all of that, but I don’t know what it is exactly, other than feeling something weary of it.

It rained and rained yesterday, and now it’s cloudy and cool. The light is just coming up but not breaking through the clouds. Rat-cat is sleeping in the open window. Jacob is sleeping in the bedroom. I’m drinking a cup of coffee that is half Peet’s and half Turkish coffee I found in the back of the cupboard, because the bag of Peet’s was mostly empty. It tastes like cardamom.

This is really the first year of my life that I’ve been a morning person, and I can’t explain it. I can’t imagine going back. Mostly because I can’t imagine living in a world now where I don’t have time to cook and eat a giant breakfast. Eggs, peppers and bok choy yesterday. Steel cut oats with raisins, butternut squash and pecans this morning. It’s my favorite meal.

these are very common.

The rain has been coming down all afternoon, and its warm and muggy and October. I’m waiting and waiting for fall, but its slow in arriving this year. It isn’t that I need the pumpkin lattes (I hate Starbucks) or the buckets of apples or even the warm sweaters and tights and boots. I need the air of regeneration. I need the re-start. When the heat and light of summer drop away, my inner slate feels wiped clean and very hopeful. I’m always planning things, big and small, although small more often than big, and now is the time for planning. I’m making list after list.

Here’s a list:

-green cabbage
-Kennebec potatoes
-radishes
-celery
-scarlet turnips
-red beets
-baby eggplants
-mixed sweet peppers
-red bok choy

Those are the vegetables in my refrigerator right now.

dangerous.

I opened a new blank page on Sunday morning. I was going to start by writing, I never write early in the morning. But then I felt the need to make pancakes, and then coffee, and then I needed to shower and get ready for a wedding, and predictably, I never wrote.

It is so much about dulling the nerves, and I forget that. The nerves make me want more time, different time, later, after this and the other thing. They make me think instead of just doing.

On Saturday morning, when it was misty and rainy and cool, Jacob and I biked over to Jimmy T’s for breakfast, but the line was too long, so then we biked over to the library for the book sale, and Pound for coffee. We started talking about goals, and I told him that I’ve been thinking that I need to be better about setting goals for my personal life, or really my life as an artist. Because it’s very easy to fall in and then quickly back out of the writing habit when it feels like nothing is on the line.

I write at work on a calendar, with deadlines, with my paycheck figuratively hanging in the balance, because my job is to write things that make people want to give us money. At home I write from the gut, I most often write when I feel like it, and its rarely dangerous or urgent.

I petered out so quickly on this project. Why? What made it feel so terrible? What could I (should I) do differently? How do I fix it? How do I make it feel right for me? Is it supposed to feel right? This is a dark question hole that could go much deeper.

on a tired night.

The honest truth is that I had a cold last week, and I didn’t write. It’s Sunday evening, and I’m sitting cross legged on the couch, with one of my knees bumping one of Jacob’s (because our couch is small). It’s chilly, and the windows are all wide open, and I could close them, but I haven’t. Instead I’m drinking tea and a massive broccoli rice hotdish is baking in the oven.

On Friday night, Jacob and I started to watch Seven Samurai because he’s been talking about it and I made a resolution to watch more classic films. It’s three and a half hours long. We both fell asleep an hour in, not because it was boring, but we were tired, and I had a cold, and I was drinking a giant hot toddy (because of the cold). I wasn't sure I even wanted to watch it, but now I'm anxious to finish it. I’ll report back when we actually make it to the end. But on Friday night, sleep was more important. 

We went to Rose’s Luxury last night to celebrate Jacob’s birthday with a few friends from New York. We put our names on the list at 5pm and got a table at 10pm. I normally don’t go for that sort of thing, but...it’s really good.

And now here we are. My brain and body are tired and empty. The week and weekend were long and full. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. But writing is writing, even when it’s vacant and pointless and bad. Being present is worth something.

passive consumption.

The edge is lost, quickly. For me, it is lost on any good habit, but especially writing and running. Falling behind, or failing to practice, generates a sense of hopelessness. Why bother now? It also lets the fear creep back in. The fears sound like: it’s hard, I don’t have time, I suck, no one cares. So, without any time to decide otherwise, I’ve pulled out my computer and started to type.

I slept in because we stayed up until 2am watching the second season of this show (and shamefully eating a frozen pizza. Even as an adult, I can’t seem to remember that no good ever comes from eating after midnight.) So now I’m up and its warm in the apartment, because the sun beats through the all east-facing windows in the morning. I’m drinking coffee, but not eating breakfast. Jacob has left for a meeting and the gym. I’m listening to this because it’s beautiful and so epic-sounding and good for introspection.

I’ve talked myself out of my long run this morning, because there isn’t enough time before a friend comes into town. I have a list of things to do. I’m feeling guilty about the things I won’t do. I’m feeling scared that I won’t be able to finish the half marathon in a month if I skip another long run. But this is all real.

Yesterday, Jacob and I drove up to Politics & Prose (which I so desperately wish was nearer by. Driving across town is no small feat in this town).  We went to hear a reading by Steve Almond and Gregg Easterbrook from their books on football. I know little to nothing about football, and generally don’t care. We mostly went because I’ve been a nerdy-fan of Steve Almond for awhile, and I still think about his Week in Greed series two years after he wrote it. At any rate, it was just what I wanted/needed, although disappointing to see the empty seats in the room (and frankly, the ratio of older white women to….everyone else who was there).

the drop.

Last night, after my birthday dinner of a dozen oysters + hushpuppies + mac/n/cheese + one pulled pork taco, Jacob had to run into CVS to pick up a prescription. We both had our bikes, and he had brought me flowers, so I stood outside and waited, holding both of our bikes and the flowers. I stood in front of the automatic doors and listened to them open and close over and over, whether people were walking by, or I was twitching, or no one was making a move.

It took longer than he thought it would. It was dark outside. Right as he ran in, a crowd was dispersing. It was a crowd that was begging cigarettes off of strangers, pulling luggage with all of their possessions, drinking or drunk. A woman walked, stumbled, slowly past me, so close. I heard her mumble, and then clear as day, I don’t stand in front of the CVS and steal no more. I DON’T! She was holding a cup.

I'm not sure how long Jacob was in CVS. It felt like a long time, but I think it was mostly because of the people I saw, so many wild stories walking around on two legs. I can’t even remember the pieces of conversation I heard because they were overwhelming, like standing on the shore as a storm rolls in, and the wind is filling your ears and nearly pushing you over. I felt that rush of human life on the corner in front of CVS.

and this.

It's really strange to think that this is my third birthday in this city. I've belonged to this place, but not in the same way that I've belonged to other places. It's also strange to be facing the last year of my twenties. Life feels full, and hopeful, and exciting. I'm not sure that I ever imagined what my life would be like at this age. But if I had imagined something, I'm doubtful that it looked like this. I'm not sorry. I wouldn't change a single of the unexpected chain of events that brought me here.

And now, here's what last year looked like:

1-strength train regularly (even though I quit the gym, which was the best.decision.ever)
2-read at least one book in a day (a marathon reading session)
3-start buying ethically made investment clothing
4-become informed on the production of chocolate and coffee
5-watch one documentary each month
6-blog regularly (and define what that means for me) (like I do every year)
7-knit a sweater (just do it!)
8-take a spin class
9-stop nitpicking, nagging, and expecting perfection from others
10-cut back on TV
11-go on urban hikes
12-run a half marathon
13-send birthday cards
14-write some fiction
15-make handmade gifts
16-go to book readings and other literary events in my city
17-call people more often
18-make one writer friend
19-go camping in Shenandoah National Park
20-submit one essay somewhere anywhere
21-re-conquer my fear of city biking (on my new bike)
22-learn to use our fancy camera and start taking pictures
23-buy more local produce via the farmer’s market or a CSA
24-use less plastic (especially: produce bags, ziploc bags, and saran wrap)
25-practice positive self-talk
26-eliminate most/all bad chemicals that I put on my body
27-take a real vacation/trip somewhere with Jake (other than visiting family)
28-put compassion and love into the world

this is hard.

On Saturday, we went on a hike. It wasn’t too long or too far, but for about a mile and a half, it was steep. We were puffing and sweating and looking up and only seeing more to climb. It was well worth it, but there was a few moments on that ascent when I felt myself thinking: am I doing this for fun?

For some reason, in the midst of that slow climb, this blog post came back to me. I remembered to be present for all of my this-is-hard feelings, to accept them, to acknowledge that yes it’s hard and uncomfortable, but that isn’t always bad.

Don’t let yourself run. Your mind will want to run from the hard thing, because you have an ideal in your head that life will be comfortable and easy and pleasant. This ideal obviously isn’t reality, because putting off the hard things by focusing on the easy and pleasant only makes your life harder and more uncomfortable over time. So focus on the hard thing, see your mind wanting to run, then don’t run.

Climbing mountains isn’t the only thing that feels hard to me. There are so many things that scare me, and as a person prone to anxiety and fear, facing any of those fears is hard.

But, for what it’s worth, I’m stronger than I often give myself credit for. We are stronger.

The hike was hard, but it wasn’t that hard.

the anti-to-do-list.

I didn’t write last night because:
-I went on a long run
-I had a load of CSA veggies to unpack and clean
-I needed to get ready for a weekend camping trip

I was tired last night, and I was still up until 10:30pm doing my chores. I can be pretty terrible at relaxing, especially on weeknights, because I always see all the things that need to be done (dishes, laundry, cleaning, organizing, food prep, and so on). It’s sort of ridiculous - a simple life for two people in a tiny apartment shouldn’t be that chore-laden.

A friend (HI LADYFRIEND!) has started setting aside one weeknight each week as her putter-around-the-house night. She doesn’t make plans, doesn’t go out, and gives herself time to catch up on whatever needs catching up on.

I’m less prone to doing things on weeknights, meaning most often, I’m going for a run, maybe a quick errand or two, and then I’m home. But in turn, I self-impose a huge amount of stress, because my mental list of chores and things to do always feels urgent. Like things I need to do. They all carry the same weight, which is the weight of guilt, which is the weight of I can’t enjoy doing other things while there are chores that need to be done.

I know its wacky. I’m something of a control-freak, and I impose it most on myself. Writing it down here is making me realize just how wacky it is.

All this to say that I’ve been thinking about giving myself one night each week (or maybe one each month?) where there is nothing on the to do list. There aren’t veggies that need to be washed and prepped. I don’t need to make something for dinner (or something for lunch the next day). I don’t need to worry about dishes or the ever-growing layer of dust on top of the bookshelf. I don’t need to sort and file the random collection of papers piling up on the table. I don’t need to write or feel guilty about not writing.

It would take a little more planning on my part to clear a night like that, but just imagine the beauty of a space where you never have to think I really should be doing...

Of course I don’t mean that I want a life of leisure, bon-bons on the sofa, etc. etc. But it would be wonderful (and I think good for me) to ease up a bit on the self-inflicted stress, and to give myself a little bit of creative wiggle room.

This weekend, I’m camping. And getting mentally ready for the last year of my twenties (truly). And spending quality time with the dude I love. And not doing any chores, because in camping-life, there are no chores.

p.s. I’m working on my birthday list right now.

p.p.s *spoiler alert* A weekly/monthly anti-to-do list day might end up on my birthday list.

p.p.p.s HELL YES I can write two blogs posts in one day if I want to. And HELL YES I can put a big X through yesterday on the calendar, because the first blog post counted for yesterday. Because HELL YES I make the rules.

strong.

Last night, I ran seven miles after work. I ran to the White House and back. Casually.

Two years ago at this time, I was about to run a 5k race for my birthday. I was laboring my way through one and two mile runs, trying to get ready. I showed up to that race on the morning of my birthday, and I honestly didn’t know if I would be able to run it. (p.s. I did finish it, with one handsome cheerleader running by my side.)

Running is both the most difficult and satisfyingly logical thing I do for fun. I am not a natural-built runner. I work hard to get to a place where I can casually go for a seven-mile run. But the simple math of running is incredible. Put in the miles, put in the hours, and little by little you can go farther. You can go faster. Your breath comes easier. It’s the best teacher of patience and the payoff of hard work.

Sometimes before a long run, I get irrationally nervous - like the way I feel before I have to give an important presentation or have a difficult conversation. My logical brain knows that if the run is too hard, I can walk. But my irrational brain just gets scared. I often unknowingly give myself a mantra to get my feet out the door, because without it, I’ll just pace around the apartment and retie my shoes and go to the bathroom again and change my shirt and check my email and….so on.

I’m doing my best.
I can go as slow as I want to.
Even one mile is better than nothing.

Last night, it was I am a strong woman. There was some magical *oomph* in that thought, because it stuck in my head the whole run and all night and still today. And I’ve realized: I've never thought of myself as strong before. Which is bullshit, because I am a strong woman.

I need those reminders every so often to see myself without the veil of judgment, to be honest and kind to myself, and to own what I am and what I’m capable of. Can you imagine the difference - if I go through life thinking I’m weak, or if I go through life thinking I’m strong? Those are almost two different people.

The point being: I am strong.

knot.

I’m sitting with a complicated knot of emotions today, and for no particular reason. Just living life, going to work, making decisions, carrying responsibilities. This knot of emotions gave me the urge to drop everything and make something which gave me the urge to sit down and organize all my scattered lists and notes of things to read and listen to and do.

But instead of clearing the path first, I’m just plowing ahead.

I actually literally cleared a path once, by myself. Years ago, the first year I lived on Cape Cod, I did conservation work with the Town of Provincetown a few days each week. One of my projects during that year was working a small plot of land called Nicky’s Park. I built some benches and installed them. I built a sign and installed it. And I cleared the small loop trail. It had already been worn down to a single track footpath, so step by step, I walked it with a shovel and a loppers and dug out roots and trimmed the dangling thorny vines.

The park wasn’t very accessible. There wasn't parking, and it was hidden off a less-traveled road. The loop was a short walk. There was a pond. I was mostly there alone.

I haven’t thought about that spot in a long time. This was before the time of always having headphones and music with me, so I spent plenty of time in my own head there. I did a lot of becoming that year. Becoming myself. It was thrilling and uncomfortable.

wonderful.

Let’s start with the things I did before writing tonight:

1. Do laundry
2. Listen to a podcast
3. Make an elaborate dinner
4. Do core workout
5. Clean off the top of the refrigerator (And discover a carton of raspberries that’s been up there for THREE WEEKS. How did that happen? I can’t answer that. They didn't look like raspberries anymore.)
6. Fold laundry
7. Order panniers (!!!) for my bike
8. Do extensive bike forum research on why my rear rack doesn’t fit on my bike
9. Drink a second beer
10. Give Jacob a pep talk on his future as an artist

And finally, creeping past 10pm, I write.

experience.

I had a meeting yesterday at work, a Saturday meeting. While I don’t love the idea of being at work on a Saturday morning, the bike ride to my office without any rush hour traffic is almost worth it. Week after week, I bike to work, and I feel more comfortable each time, but there is a degree of anxiety that doesn’t go away. There’s the tricky spot with the construction. There's navigating the street where the bike lane ends and I have to merge into the lane. Inevitably someone honks at me or yells that I should get off the road.

On a Saturday morning, its a freaking joy ride. I can relax and enjoy feeling my own legs power a machine and I can look around and notice people and trees and houses.

I work east of the river, as they say around here, so my ride includes a bridge. I pass over a wide river, sometimes populated with ducks or rowing crews. At my back, you can see the Washington Monument and the US Capitol.

As I came over the bridge yesterday morning, in that quiet space, a huge flock of birds, gulls I think, flew over my head with a rush. I didn’t even see they were coming until they lifted over the edge of the bridge. The air was still and silent and it was starting to rain. I was caught between, in too many metaphorical ways to list. I didn’t stop, but I let myself coast and I looked up, briefly hoping that I wouldn’t get poop to the face.

I am so used to reflecting on people, the encounters that make up every day life. Those are the stories that I build myself into, and the stories I think to tell. Deep in the city, I rarely think of any other narrative. But yesterday I remembered to look everywhere, to listen to everything, to notice indiscriminately. Experience is my currency. It’s all in front of us, waiting.

kidding, not kidding.

My old standby for habit forming and breaking: the calendar with rows of empty boxes waiting to be crossed off. If I can quit smoking this way, surely I can build a writing habit this way too.

aggressive.

I hesitate to make absent promises (to myself) because I’ve done it before. I hesitate, but to HELL with that hesitation. I am back, and I am here to write aggressively and often. To write until it hurts. Why? Because I feel aggressive right now. I feel an aggressive need to gather up my writing and write more and shred it all into a million pieces to rain down over me and then piece it all back together. I feel wild. I don’t look it, but I feel it.

I have written a lot this year, but not HERE and not for me. I’ve written very little for me. Enough. There’s no matter of finding the time or finding the energy. This, this place, this act, is the single most important and potent fuel for my life as a creative. This is it. If I’m not here, I’m a different sort of person. My becoming is frozen, paralyzed.

Without THIS I become complacent, passive, comfortable, weak, content (to a fault). I’m a person who goes to work, then comes home, then watches TV, then goes to bed, on a loop, forever and ever, until the end. That complacent cycle has a certain appeal, a little bit of glazed eye comfort, but it is quickly replaced by terror and emptiness.

Life is enough. The self unactualized is not enough.

In twelve days I’ll turn 29. In 111 days we’ll turn over all those metaphorical new leaves to begin another year, 2015. I am beginning to think of it as the year of change because I suspect that’s what it will be. I hope. All in a good, wonderful way.

the years.

I had a complete meltdown last month about my inability to write something the way I wanted it. The idea, more a feeling, was clear in my head. On the screen, the words were choked, trite, didactic, TERRIBLE. From there, I had another glass of wine and started freewriting. Halfway through, I closed my eyes and filled page after page in the darkness of my own head. And somewhere in my brain, those typing classes in 6th grade paid off, because I hit a surprising number of the keys correctly. What I mean is: for the most part, you can read it.

I feel like I wrote here just the other day, but an entire month passed. A month full of visitors and trips and running and food and work. It was late summer, and it was good. My swampy home (a.k.a. our nation’s capital) was unseasonably cool and not-humid. It made for plenty of glorious bike rides to work, especially on those days when everyone (read: Congress) was on vacation, and traffic was light.

It’s September now. The fall is coming. I’m ready for things that are new. I’m ready for that soul-cleansing dried leaf air. I’m ready for the rebirth of the season. And let me tell you this: I love writing here. I love what this place is. I love looking back and knowing what I thought and what made my heart hurt and how I’ve changed. Three years. It's nothing, but still....it's something.

a new thing.

I love for my writing to be tidy. I crave organization and structure and plans and I have to learn, over and over again, that those are all ways to kill the creative impulse, and especially to choke out the good stuff.

I wrote a lot here when I started, for many reasons. I wrote several times a week. It was desperate. It was the clearest and most direct outlet for so many things that were pent up in me, struggles and thoughts and emotions. It was fairly anonymous, which is enormously freeing. It was the only way that I knew to move forward. It terrified me, which meant that it was right.

Over the years, I’ve come and gone. I’ve written in bursts and then let a solid month fly by in silence. I’ve had the epiphany lately that the expectation (and ensuing feeling of failure) is stifling. Can I tell you something ridiculous? I have this massive electronic to do list (I use Toodledo if you’re curious about such things). One of the functions is that you can create a recurring task, which is really handy for things that I need a monthly or weekly reminder to do. But for the last year, I’ve had “write a blog post” as a task that recurs every other day. OBVIOUSLY I have not actually been writing a blog post every other day. It’s totally mad. I don’t know what purpose that task serves other than to make me feel like a failure who falls short (every other day). So yesterday I deleted that task from my to do list.

I’m still here and still strong and I want to release the guilt from this place. I’m doing that by building another place with a clearer structure and purpose, one that I’m desperately wildly excited about, a place where the schedule fits. (Here’s the moment where I say: I have a new blog! Can you handle TWICE AS MUCH of me? I hope so.)

broken rituals.

It’s a summer evening. I’m sitting cross-legged on the couch, sans pants, because that is my animal instinct on how to manage the heat and any heat-induced rage that might follow. There are the sounds of cicadas mixed with the rush of the fan and the rumbling of the HVAC next door. Cicadas are my favorite summer sound. (Even more after listening to this!) For whatever reason, they always transport me to the summer I lived in St. Louis as a child. Summers were hot there, too, and we had an enormous yard at our second house and an enormous yard at our third house. Those yards were a wonderland for a kid with plenty of imagination. And whatever I spent my nights doing was soundtracked by cicadas.

It’s been nearly a month now since we moved. Like it or not, in our old place, I had formed a weeknight ritual. Walk or take the bus home, make dinner, feel exhausted, watch TV. We don’t have a TV in our new place, and although I can just as easily dive into Netflix on my laptop, it feels less obvious. So the ritual is happily broken. I’m biking home from work now (which is the best! I love it! I love it so much! I want to bike everywhere all day every day!) and there are little projects to be done around the apartment, and everything about the new space is inviting me to cook and to write and to read. Even with the best of intentions (believe me, I have them) sometimes a circumstantial nudge is what I need to get back on track. 

We’re choosing to keep the air conditioning off in our apartment, to save money, to save the earth, and I think now also as a badge of honor signifying how tough we are. There are moments when it feels a little much, but the answer is easily enough: sit down and stop moving, take off the pants, and eat/drink something cold. For this reason, I’ve switched aggressively to salads this summer, more than I ever have before.

journal.

The beauty of journalling, of writing a lot, writing all the details of your life, is that it helps you drill down into awareness and presence. It lets everything, the everyday-ness of life, each thing, become valuable. Everything is worth taking note of.

I used to journal a lot when I was young. I don’t remember when I started, but I have a stack of old journals in a shoebox in the closet that date back 15 years. In some ways, I struggled with the same “I-must-write-I-can’t-write” tensions that I feel today. But I still wrote quite a bit, and I carefully documented feelings. I wasn’t the sort to record each thing that happened in a day, but I never failed to capture the emotions.

Those journals, all of them, are incredibly transportive for me. I can open any page and almost before reading the words, the feelings come back to me in a rush. I was always excellent at journalling in the midst of heartbreak and loneliness, so those are the themes of most journals. My most recent journal more or less ends three years ago, just after I met Jacob. I burst in for an entry or two each year, but really I stopped journalling the moment our relationship began.

There are reasons. Jacob is my biggest writing fan and believes in my ability more than I ever have. With his encouragement at my heels, I started writing and sharing my writing outside of a journal, something I had never done before I met him. And journalling, for me at least, has often been the way I hold loneliness at bay. I have always been a lonely person, even when I’m not alone. Somehow a journal is a witness to life when it feels like no one else is watching.

spontaneous.

Last month went by in a blink. I’ve been barely reading and writing, save a two-hour late bus to Durham that got me halfway through this book. I’ve been overwhelmed and busy, and I’m not the sort of person who wears that life well. I stay up too late, I have anxious dreams, I start drinking Diet Coke even though I gave up on that toxic stuff years ago. Balance and peace in my life are sacred, and when I can’t protect them, I don’t always cope very well. But here we are.

Last month I powered through some very long work weeks, a major work event, two weekend trips, my re-entrance into bike commuting, and last but not least, a spontaneous move. Jacob and I found an apartment that is a) on a park, b) cheaper than our current place, and c) not a basement. For the last two years, we’ve been living DC-style in an English basement apartment. It’s cozy and it’s been a good home to us, but there are no windows and…...there are no windows. We couldn’t pass on the chance for cheaper rent + windows, even if it meant moving at literally the busiest work time for both of us.

Our basement apartment came furnished, which means we’ve been on the market for most things. It’s turned into a joint late night craigslist addiction, which is tiresome, but also thrilling when you manage to nab an awesome wood dresser for $30 (among other things).

After moving the last of the boxes and running one million errands last weekend, it’s done. Everything’s been unpacked or temporarily hidden from sight, so now I can chip away little by little at a) finding places for everything b) buying a few more pieces of furniture and c) getting some stuff up on these soaring white walls. I’m scratching odds and ends off my list and making lists on top of lists, because that’s how I do.

two.

I wasn’t planning to write here today (although I was planning to write in the way that I always do, the planning and failing way). But so far this year, I’ve only pulled off one blog post a month. I want more. Today is the last day of April and by god I’ll put up more than one post this month.

I’ve been listening to hard rain all day. Leaves have collected at our front door, which is at the bottom of some steps, so the drain is blocked and the rain is flooding the steps. There’s a bird out back that I can’t see, but he’s been chirping away. I don’t know many birdsongs, but Jacob said this morning that it was a chickadee because it’s saying “dee-dee-dee.”

I was listening to some spring pop, then some Beethoven, and now good old Langhorne.

Most blogs that I read these days are full of beautiful pictures. It’s such a thing. It’s a thing that makes me think this will never be a blog blog (athough I’m not sure I care) because a) I don’t take beautiful pictures, although I try sometimes and b) most of the time I forget to take pictures anyway.

Jacob and I had a blitz day in Philly last weekend. I finished a work meeting at noon, and we hopped in the car with sandwiches and made the two and a half hour drive north. There was traffic and it was sunny and beautiful outside. By the time we got to Philly, the sky grayed and it rained. We parked in the scariest parking garage I’ve ever seen, but not because there was a shortage of parking garages. We joked the entire afternoon about how we managed to find the scariest parking garage in the city. There were two elevators, one was broken. A sign was taped to the wall that said 4 person max. It was because the elevator was the size of a roomy coffin. But these are the things you remember.

stories of people.

Meet me where I am. I spent the evening wandering, walking further than my tired feet wanted to go. I came home and put on a long, flowy skirt, because the wind was blowing and it was warm and blooming and spring. And I walked some more.

I had chip-dinner, which is a real and valid thing. It involves walking to the corner store and buying a bag of chips, fully knowing that I will eat most or all of it for dinner tonight. I walked in the door and felt guilty that my splurge-y, single lady dinner wasn’t vegetables! or fruit! or whole grains! I eat all those things all the time and sometimes, sometimes I need chip-dinner.

All of the stories in my head tonight are stories of guilt. I’m not sure why. They are stories of people I saw on the street today, but they are cut through with my own emotion. Those people have stories that exist in the world, but I only know them through the lens of me.

The man this morning, clearly mentally ill, who kept wandering off the sidewalk and into traffic. The man with the small grocery cart, sitting on a bench, a weathered white beard down to his belt, smoking a stub of a cigarette. The other man who dropped his cigarette and picked it up, put it right back in his mouth. The man in the wheelchair, still and stark, head hanging low. The woman on the bicycle and the car that honked at her even though she had the right of way. That other woman who left the doctor’s office after me, and I held the door for her. She put her sunglasses on as she walked through. I see these people in the context of suffering, brokenness, loss. Why?

eavesdropping.

There are so many other things to be doing right now. There always are.

I give advice freely, party because people ask, but partly because I have a grand delusion that I know the right way to do things (all things). I give advice, but I don’t often follow it. Last night, in some conversation with Jacob about something that I don’t remember, as we were walking down K Street after hours, when it was quiet, when he was pushing his bicycle and I was carrying a bag of cat food, I told him, There’s no such thing as: I don’t have enough time. There’s only: I choose to spend my time on something else. I was trying to say something important about priorities, I think, but I am struck now with how rarely I own the hours I have.

Sometimes I think I’m not really a writer, because sometimes I go a long time without doing it. But then, on days like today, when I know I’ve waited too long, when it is literally blasting, beating and bloody out of my chest, then I know.

I've been saving up snips of things, things I’ve read and seen and overheard and felt. They are a wave, an army, a storm on the horizon. They are nothing more than my observation, but keen observation is worth something.

I read this piece on eavesdropping last week, and I’ve been thinking of it since. Not only do I eavesdrop every chance I get, but I write down the things I hear. I can’t help it. These strings of conversation feel so precious to me. I want to preserve the wild, grotesque, common, hilarious, and human things that people say. I want to acknowledge them. I don’t want them to go unheard.

fears.

I’m reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit right now. It’s beating me over the head with the thing I know, THE THING I KNOW, the thing I have always known: creativity is fueled by practice, by doing, by making your art a habit. For me, by making writing a habit.

I know it.
I KNOW IT!

Early in the book, Tharp poses the question: what are your fears?

Everyone has them, and everyone who is creating and making has them. Fear makes you feel alone, but it is one of the few things that is common among us.

I tried to make a list. It looked like this:

List of fears in writing

1. I don’t know where to start.
2. I’m not any good.
3. Things I want to write will hurt or offend my family and friends.
4. People won’t like me.
5. I don’t have the energy (alternatively: I don’t feel like it. But is this a fear?)

and the new year.

I don’t remember if I set new year’s resolutions last year. I like thinking about resolutions on my birthday, but the new year feels more like a time for deep breathing and a clean slate. I am so driven towards growth and change (although sometimes equally apathetic and stuck) that I can overwhelm myself easily. I can get all Ben Franklin and convince myself that if I cross enough things off the list, I can be perfect.

Anyway, this year I decided to set one goal and a single word intention (loosely inspired by this nifty workshop that I’ve never done, but have heard is great).

My goal is to read more - at least two books a month. I can only seem to count 15 books I read last year (shameful!). Reading is one of my favorite things in the world, but I let it slip on my list of priorities. This year, I'm bringing that business BACK. You can see what I’m reading in that little widget-gadget on the right. 24 books this year! (Even more, I hope).

I haven’t picked my single word intention yet, and when I do, I’ll probably keep it just for myself. I’m brewing plans to create an art/mixed media journal where I can do some reflecting. It feels very right and necessary to set an intention this year. Last year felt too slippery, like it all just slid through my fingers and I was never quite awake to it. I was awake, but I would like to be more. Living with intention and mindfulness.