beautiful distance.

I practiced freewriting tonight with my eyes closed. It was wild. I did it on the computer so that I could let my fingers find the keys in the void. It took them a moment to remember, like eyes adjusting to the dark. The whole time I kept thinking, This is wild. This is really wild.

Not seeing the words as they came out of me created a beautiful distance. Freedom. Every word was pitched into the black canyon where even I couldn’t find them (unless I opened my eyes). There was no echo.

I’ve been reading Terry Tempest Williams’ When Women Were Birds. It’s wild, too. It’s so good. What else can I say? At one point, she describes her habit of writing sentences on top of each other. Over the space of a line or two in your notebook, you can write hundreds of sentences. The words become indecipherable, just a tangle of lines and splotches. There’s no getting those sentences back.

Writing is vulnerable. Self-expression is terrifying. Not everything you need to say or write needs to be heard or read.

list of things.

All weekend I’ve been trying to make a list of things I love to do. It shouldn’t be this hard, should it? It seems like the things I love to do and the things I should love to do get mixed up. And there are things that I don’t love to do in the moment, but once I’ve done them, I’m glad.

Maybe some of it boils down to fear?

Par for the course. I didn’t know what that saying meant until just a few years ago. Crazy, right? I asked someone, and he told me. It has to do with golf.

To make the list a bit more tangible, to coax it out, I decided to make it a list of things I love to do in the fall. 

Seven Fall Things I Love to Do

1. Walk down a street full of fallen leaves
2. Drink a cup of tea in the evening with a book
3. Eat a bowl of soup for dinner
4. Roast a winter squash
5. Wear tights and boots
6. Sit on a park bench and write in my notebook
7. Walk to work and listen to a good podcast

I am very guilty of filling my day with things-to-do. But it’s good to have blocks of time that aren’t meant to accomplish anything in particular. Time that you can fill with your existence. That can be enough.

right.

I’m standing in the kitchen - half in tree pose, if you must know. My computer is perched at the corner of our tiny, wobbly butcher’s block island. Jacob was held up in a meeting, so I’m holding up dinner.

It’s not the right kind of moment to write. My brain is still full of work, even though I’ve been home for two hours. The dinner is half cooked, so I’m keeping one eye, just the corner of it, on the stove. I feel harried, rushed, unsettled.

But I am here, charging in like a wild bull, no matter what lies ahead and no matter what kind of mess I make getting there.

About a month ago, I read an entire book in an evening. It was The Maytrees by Annie Dillard. I’ve read it before and I already know I love it. But I was getting ready to loan it to a friend, and that evening, as I cracked open the first page just-because I had such an overwhelming urge to read it, straight through, that I did it. I stayed up until 2am in the morning, letting my heart break with all the loss and life and forgiveness and Cape Cod found in those pages. Read it, please.

briefly.

It has been raining for days here. Sometimes the rain gives me melancholy, but not in an uncomfortable way. Rainy days make for an honest reckoning. They are the right time to search for the sadness of the world and to find your piece of hope, whatever that might be.

I am at a loss.
I am inside my own head.
I am distracted.
I am exhausted.

Lists are a good place to start. Try starting. That’s always the right idea.

On gray days (or nights, as it were), I listen to this song and this song. They sound just right with rain falling against the windows.

here we are.

It is easy to let fear build you a cage and it is easy to think that the bars of that cage are real. They are not. This year, I choose to live without fear.

1-strength train regularly
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