April 11, 2023
Gleanings
- I think about the moment I found out I was pregnant and how I counted the years until my pregnancy would turn eighteen which felt like a hundred years from then and now it’s here. That people talk about empty nesting but not about this weird transitional in-between existential crisis of WAIT IT’S OVER. HOLD ON… WAIT, WHAT!? Like… for example, no one really talks about the funeral procession that is college tours.
- I cannot tell you what a gift that little message has been to me. A touchstone of sorts. A simple gesture that serves to remind that someone crazy enough to ride his bicycle from San Diego to St. Augustine, loves me. Now, how cool is that? Pretty dang cool!
- Now there’s a word – unfiltered – that seems like it could be a good thing. It conjures up being unshackled or uncensored, freedoms we value in some contexts. However, our echo chambers of social media and curated streaming services lull us into a false sense of security that everyone is going to unfilter their messages the same we we would. At least I did. But, as I recently discovered, being unfiltered isn’t always desirable.
- Writing is my way of exploring and making sense of what I’m feeling in my heart. Once it’s all committed to words, I do a little editing and then post about one in ten to my blog. It is a privilege, being able to freely publish, but it is an absolute honour receiving all the feedback, the sweet (and snarly) comments and especially all the words of support and encouragement.
- I describe it like this to clients: You’re not just crossing unknown terrain, you’re creating the land as you go. And the first time across, the goal is to get to the end. Along the way you might drop flags in the ground, markers of places where you need to return and fine tune. Maybe add an oasis in this desert; get specific about the flora and fauna in this forest.
- And here I am, Sunday morning, ready to pull the covers over my head again. This time, not from a feeling of despair but rather a sense of deep contentment.
- I am the slowest moving tortoise, let’s call me a giant galápagos, but even the giant galápagos moves a couple of kilometers each day.
- Good writing has a lot to do with specific detail — it’s not just any blue cup that broke, it’s the blue pottery cup with the crooked handle that he found at the thrift shop and presented to her, down on one knee, when she was hoping for an engagement ring.
- When will I learn/ to trust what I see, what I feel/ what I know?
- My point is that the behavior is exactly the same! Assuming I am speaking to a fellow Old here: you did things for “likes” too! You brought the “right” book or stack of comics to be seen reading at lunch. You wore sunglasses when you didn’t need to, fished the band t-shirt out of the laundry, and went specifically to the graveyard with your sketchbook to smoke cigarettes.
