The sun is shining today, dipping in and out of clouds. The world is still blanketed in snow from three days ago, but it’s slowly melting. Everything dripping. The driveway is clear, but the sidewalks are not, and I’d love to take a walk through town today. But the untouched snow would hit me mid-calf, so I can’t make the trek and I refuse to walk in the road. Adam took the car and Lily to the science museum today; the other car is getting an oil change. So, I am home alone and car-less, …
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Writing Small: The Case for Ten Minutes a Day
Over the summer, I did a little experiment: I wrote for ten minutes a day for thirty days. It wasn’t a profound experiment, by any means—just something small to help grease the wheel. Most mornings, I grabbed a cup of coffee and went straight to the computer. I set the timer for ten minutes and wrote, mostly with no thinking. No rules except to write the entire time. I heard about this specific experiment from Devi Lasker’s interview on The Stories Between Us podcast. She recommends writing …
January 29
It’s Friday morning and my daughter has asked for a pajama day, which is fine with me because it’s been a long week and currently the temperature outside is 16 degrees. I have a prescription to pick up and a library book on hold, but I could easily stay home in my sweatpants all day. I make myself an extra cup of coffee and we make a plan to meet up at 10 o’clock to read side by side. Between now and then, I want to sit at the computer to write. I’m thinking about things like soul care and …
Of Darkness and Light
Over the weekend, the sun made its first appearance of the new year. Nine days in, and we finally got a glimpse of that bright winter light. A day later, it was blue skies for an hour or two. Today, the gray has melted into a bubbly blue-and-white sky and I feel like it’s my duty to plop myself next to a window and bask in a sliver of sunlight. If January were a color, it would be gray. Every day gray, every year gray. It’s no great surprise, but this year, being stuck in the house day after …
Letting Go: A Solstice Tale
“I don’t want to do the same thing year after year. I don’t want to get another year down the line and realize, like I am now, that nothing has changed.” —Journal entry from June 19, 2019 In the midst of melting snow, the winter solstice creeps in unassumingly. Why did I even think to look it up this morning, the first thing I did after rolling out of bed and bending to touch my toes. Years ago, a therapist told me that bending forward, folding yourself in half, resets your vagal nerve and …