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Illness costs more than the time it takes
Valley fever took years I could name. It also took the version of me who would have lived them. She would have built her own systems, known her own car, learned the basic competences of running a life. I’m meeting her absence now, ten years later, every time I find another thing I quietly handed off and never reclaimed. The grief isn’t for the time. It’s for her. I keep trying to become the person she would have been by now. I have to stop. She isn’t ahead of me, she doesn’t exist.
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Every choice arrives as if it’s the first one
The tire blew this morning, and I overspent because I had no memory of the car I’ve owned for seven years. No record of where the tires came from, when they went on, what I paid, what I learned. The decision should have been easier this time. Without memory, every time is a first time.
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I want to arrive
I find myself in this loop. I want to be seen as an expert. Successful. Arrived. But my mind tells me that I’m not an expert in anything. If I want to be respected, I must be credentialed. What a funny belief that gives my power away. And even funnier – I’m not the only.
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Rules that help build the work versus rules that are just permission slips
A woman I follow keeps a five-year journal and switches ink color every month. I caught myself admiring the discipline, but then I caught what it might also be. My morning pages have rules too. Some of them are why the practice has lasted. Some of them, I’m less sure about. The page doesn’t need a system to exist. But maybe I need one to feel like I’m allowed to be writing on it.
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Form follows volume
I keep wanting to know the structure before I have the material. But the structure is downstream of the volume. Right now, the only task is to capture the words. The shape of the work becomes clear later, or it doesn’t, and either way the capturing is what makes the difference.
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The mistakes you skip in childhood you pay for as an adult
I grew up so fast I didn’t make all the mistakes I should have. I’m making them now, as an adult, and paying interest. That’s why I do my best to notice the impulse when I want to fix something for my child. The mistakes are his, not mine to fix.
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Writing is transcription, not lightning
I was waiting to feel inspired. I thought writing meant waiting for something to descend. The actual job is quieter than that. You sit down. You write what you’re already thinking. That’s it. Just your thoughts on a page.
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We invent noble reasons to walk away from what bruised us
It took my whole life to admit I might be a writer. I put it out there. The world consistently didn’t get it. I told myself I must not be one – real writers feel divinely inspired, and I never did. That story let me walk away without admitting I was walking away because it hurt.
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Deciding isn’t healing
Everything is moving in the direction of healing, and still I’m surprised by how stubbornly my body holds on. I keep thinking I’ve already decided. Why does this keep coming back? My mind has closed this chapter, but the body keeps its own calendar.
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The body knows what to do once you stop fighting it
Last night I felt energy gathering around my lungs and moving up along the left side of my throat. I almost reached for it – to understand it, to name it, to fix it. Instead, I thought, it’s just grief, let it be. Then I fell asleep. The body was already doing the work. The fight was the only thing in its way.