awake.

Let’s get into it.

Things feel big lately--big projects, big changes, big decisions. BIG IDEAS. I close out each day with a fair dose of mental fatigue and a wired brain that still can’t sleep. My old self, who used to crawl into bed at 10pm and wake up fresh and ready at 6:30am, now waits for J to get home from work and crawls into bed at 12:30am or 1:00am. And then crawls back out at 6:30am. This Cape Cod summer has been amazing. I’ve spent plenty of time at the beach (and have the white-blonde hair and tanned skin to prove it), I see and smell the ocean all around me, I’ve eaten a LOT of ice cream cones and clam strips and oysters…..but this summer has not felt anything like a vacation.

I’m navigating some combination of very excited and very scared right now, but I think it’s exactly how I should feel. I feel wide awake.

I’m writing a lot, and for the first time that I can remember (ever ever ever), I have projects that I’m working on. I have projects! Writing projects! I’m working on a couple different essays, and the ideas keep coming for more.

I’m finishing a notebook this week, one that I only started in May. I don’t know if I can even capture what an accomplishment that feels like.

I’m in the weeds of forming opinions, thinking critically about things, making decisions.

And I’m also taking in an embarrassing amount of Grey’s Anatomy, because I’m a person who watches crappy TV sometimes and enjoys it.

We have barely more than two weeks left here in Wellfleet. I can’t believe how it flew by, and I can’t believe how much it felt like things happened and changed. Chicago is waiting for us, and whatever else (grad school, new career, marriage, la la la). Like I said, things feel big.

clarity.

What a whirlwind lately. The claims on my daily allotment of hours are swimming in my head. It’s good (it’s good!) but also leaves me feeling like I can barely scrape out 30 minutes to sit down and write here.

Since last weekend, I’ve been thinking about this interview with Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn for On Being. I’ve listened to it a handful of times. I tried to explain it to J last night: it’s so heartening to hear from people who have made lives out of art for the purpose of being better people in the world.

Towards the end of the interview, Abigail talks about her experiences as a sensitive, empathetic child - how she often felt darkness because she was so attuned to the feelings of other people who were feeling darkness. And now, she's realized that her music can be a container for those feelings, that she can feel them deeply but also let them go.

Right now, my writing isn’t so much a container for feelings as a place where I’m forced to confront them. But I think that’s the first step in the right direction.

At any rate, it’s a kickass interview and worth a listen. It's a bit of clarity in the madness.