March turned into April turned into May...

 

It's hard to imagine we were still 
wearing coats when all of this 
started... 

... and somehow we have arrived here, July 1. The year 2020 is half over, and it's like it's almost like it never really began. I find myself simultaneously saddened and relieved that I have not felt compelled to continue to document these days, COVID numbers, and deaths. 

I've done my darnedest to turn inward, to channel the obsessive energy and feelings toward something more productive. Reading books. Creating books. So many beautiful, wonderful books. And yes, even writing (more editing, rewriting) books. 

Miscellaneous Notes from a Pandemic Year:

April 13: "Writing about the character 'who done it' made me like the guy quite a bit; now I have mixed feelings about pinning the deed on him."

April 15: "Man, I've missed pizza."

April 20: It's time to think about what will we be. Not, "How do we preserve what we were?"

Notable in May: Started using InstaCart for grocery deliveries. Do not miss shopping.

May 24: Reading my own cards. Ace of Wands - An opportunity to take a fresh, new, exciting action; 10 of Swords - Surrender to unpleasant or unfortunate circumstances; The Empress - This is a time of great abundance and wonderful creativity, good energy abounds and is available for you to use and enjoy; 21 The World - the successful achievement of a goal, doing what you set out to do. Feeling pride and enjoying rewards. Feeling that all is right with the world; 5 of Wands - Trying to work together with mixed results. (Tarot of Pagan Cats, by Lo Scarabeo)

From a note to a friend: "I keep writing and making books because I can't think of anything else that would continue to motivate me to get out of bed each morning."

May 28: "I want to send the governor of Kansas, Laura Kelly, a thank you note for being such a good role model and leader during this time of COVID."

May 31: "I have managed to celebrate [my birthday] through COVID stay-at-home, controversial re-opening, protests over our society's treatment of people of color. The world really does seem to be on fire. 

George Floyd. 

Ahmaud Arbery. 

Breonna Taylor. 

James Scurlock. 

Christian Cooper." 

Note: I also had four different kinds of birthday cake (spread out over a couple of weeks). 

"I must learn to speak out. I will not let people think I am complicit by my silence."

June 5: "I went to my first protest today."

June 8: "Outside me is all 😁 while inside me is all 😧AHHHHHHH!"

June 10: "... so productive. But I feel like I am in some alternate universe and I want to live in mine again."

June 20: "There is a part of me that just wants to take care of people and feed them good and healthy food and talk them into going on nature walks every day. But the other part of me wants to retreat to my cave and make art and be joyful and stop listening to all the noise in the world."

June 24: "... excited by all of the possibilities..."

German Chocolate 50th Birthday Cake

The Great Pause

A friend (eventually several friends) shared this article today that I absolutely loved. Read the whole article. Read it twice. There are so many gems here. Kernels of truth I have been seeking for much of the week. And now I have the words to write on sticky notes, to paste upon my wall of wisdom, to write in the margins of my paper journal, to inspire my own writing and moving forward.

"...The Great Pause...the curtain is wide open...what would happen if the world simply stopped. Here it is. We’re in it." 

Julio Vincent Gambuto

The hubby and I walked the nearby river trail this morning. The birds were singing. The dogs were beyond-silly-excited to be out in the wilderness with so many smells to smell. It was a good start to a brilliant day. The sun is shining. The breeze is blowing. I love coming home to a spring-chilled house and feeling no need to grab a sweater. The blood is already warm and coursing through my veins. My brain feels alive from the activity. I had a leftover pork chop and mashed potatoes and cauliflower for breakfast. It was a perfect morning, pandemic not included.

This, the third (more or less) week of our confinement, I feel as if I've made some progress. A new routine, of sorts, seems to be guiding my days. And I must admit that we are fortunate in so many ways. I know that so-called isolation must be easier in a house full of people. I know that our second isolation pod (the office) is a luxury not everyone has.

I've been working on the novel daily (yes, daily! It has been a while). I've been working on Meadowlark publishing projects most afternoons. Bookkeeping for the law office remains a feature of my days, though the pace has certainly changed. No in-court time for hubby. No in-office appointments. The phone still rings, but everything is different.

That said, I've also continued to experience moments of what I can only describe as intense grief, though they aren't as frequent as they were in previous weeks. As a family we are beginning to have more conversations about this. Everyone is working through their own disappointments. Today was supposed to have been the second day of our trip to Oregon. I subscribed to GeoGuessr last evening and worked a few "road trip" blues out of my system.

I wish my sister lived next door. I heard from my sister-in-law last evening and found myself longing for the long, quiet days of my youth on the farm. Grandma Skaggs and Aunt Gerry living right next door. Cousins just down the road. But mostly, I was struck by how easy it was to have a phone conversation with someone I love. It's not something I do much of these days. We have so many modes of communication, but that voice on the other end of the line--that was a good, good voice to hear.

"...take a deep breath, ignore the deafening noise, and think deeply about what you want to put back into your life. This is our chance to define a new version of normal, a rare and truly sacred (yes, sacred) opportunity to get rid of the bullshit and to only bring back what works for us, what makes our lives richer, what makes our kids happier, what makes us truly proud." 

Julio Vincent Gambuto

So many gems. What if this is us--whole communities of people--defining our new normal. A better normal. A sweeter, softer, slower normal. There are some hugs I'm looking forward to giving and getting. But I'm also collecting some gems from this. Some of them are going to stick.

Dogs took us for a walk on the Cottonwood River Trail.

_________________________
NYTimes has us at 1,271 with 51 deaths, 4/11/2020. Lyon County has 26 cases. 

Stopped Counting

Last week was both better and worse. I had large chunks of productivity interspersed with great periods of feelings of doom. The sun came out, but then the skies grew cloudy again. It was almost shorts weather for a day, and the next morning icy pellets fell from the sky.

My friend Cheryl shared a 50 random sentences writing exercise with me toward the end of last week, and it has become my daily therapy. Though I'm not following the exercise to the letter, the idea of it has given me a useful method of processing. I get to create a personal record of this time, and having a 50 sentence target gives me space to expound on it, yet the hurry to get the sentences written quickly helps me to get the thoughts out and move on rather than dwelling for hours and writing myself in circles. I blame Cheryl (this is what we have writing buddies) for getting my words flowing again.

I am dwelling on the novel-in-progress again. That, and doing jigsaw puzzles with my husband.

Life is good.

Stay home; stay healthy

Second 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle in one week!

!

__________________________
NYTimes has us at 853 with 25 deaths, 4/6/2020. Lyon County has 23 cases. 

Closed Because We Care

Activities:

• Morning walks with the dogs. Afternoon walks, too. The frequent rains have messed with our walking schedule. And this morning I slowed us down because I felt compelled to read and take pictures of all the signs along the way.

• The girls and I have been re-reading Harry Potter together. I'm reading quite a bit these days, though probably not more than usual. I am drawn to anything that isn't current events.

• Making plans for Meadowlark Books. Feeling like I've taken a bit of a stumble here. March and April were supposed to be months of book releases and poetry events. 

• Preparing for the first board meeting via ZOOM of the Kansas Authors Club. We've talked about holding virtual meetings for years. I guess we needed the prod to figure out how to make it happen. I, for one, am going to miss the road trip and visiting with so many of my writing friends over lunch.

• Yoga. Stretching. Core Strength.

• Watching Star Trek - Picard, one episode per night. I love him.  

• Book keeping, bill paying ... a lot of the usual going on at the law office, but more relaxed with the doors locked. All clients are now scheduled for phone consults only. And our days are shorter. I didn't go in at all today, and I may or may not go tomorrow. I haven't decided yet. Sometimes we play ping pong at lunch, which is also usual.

• Texting. More texting than usual, with a wider variety of people than is usual for me. Been getting some nice notes by email, too. Not much by phone. I've never liked talking on the phone much. But I have talked to my dad and my sister this week, which is a lot for us.

• Whole family eating evening meal together, and everyone is taking turns cooking, so only have to prepare a real meal one out of every five days.

• Board games. Maybe every third evening or so. Love playing board games with the kids.

__________________________
NYTimes has us at 171 cases as of 9:07pm, 3/26/2020. Lyon County has 3. 

"...everything is coming together and unraveling at the same time."

(from an email exchange with a friend, W.D.)

I woke from a dream this morning where I was shopping at Walmart and an enormous grizzly bear came charging in through the doors, running directly toward me. As I opened my eyes, I was thinking, "As if the plague is not enough. Now I have to worry about bears!"

My sister suggested (via text) that the bear was not a sign of me stressing about going to the store, but a symbol of me as the bear. "Go get 'em," she wrote, and I liked that interpretation better than my own.

Reminders I have had to give myself today:

• There is nothing new to feeling anxious about grocery shopping. I've never liked to shop. Except for books. Books are the one exception.
• Going shopping usually wears me out. The fact that I was feeling fatigued post grocery trip does not mean that I was showing signs of any virus. I was just darned happy to have the task of shopping over and done with and I needed a rest.
• I may gasp at the emptiness of the shelves, but let's be honest. This is still a place of abundance. There are people all over the world who would have been shocked to see all the food that was available on the shelves today. And people in my own community for whom all the abundance on the shelves doesn't really matter because they can't afford it.
• Strategizing for the shopping trip was kind of a kick. List making via store layout is my groove! M came along to make things go more quickly. We knocked out lists for two families (us and the Oparents) in only slightly more time than we usually do for one. 

But let me take off my rose colored glasses for a minute (a blessing--thanks, Mom--and a curse). 

Life. Is. Different.

I am scared. And I keep having to remind myself to breath. And to stop gritting my teeth. 

I am heartbroken for my daughter, who had her last days of college classes without even knowing they were her last days. Who won't get to experience the big hoopla of walking across the stage for her college graduation.

I am angry on behalf of all three of my kids, whose plans for the immediate future have been thrown into all kinds of topsy-turvy unknowns. Though they are survivors, and I know none of this is going to break them. It doesn't stop me from mourning for all that will be changed for them.

I am afraid for the people who are close to me who might get sick, those for whom this might hit the hardest.

I ache for the families my husband works with, the calls we've been getting this week, the couples who were already struggling to successfully co-parent, and now have this wrench of (sometimes further) job instability thrown in, and additional worries about the fates of their children when they can not be with them.

And though there's plenty more stored up inside my brain, that's as much as I can allow myself to express right now. Because I have never found much comfort in focusing on my fears and my afraids, my angers and my aches. Drawing attention to them simply makes them too, too big.

And so I say, enough for now, and I look again at all the good I see in the world.

My community is an amazing, special place. And it will surprise me in the levels of amazing and special it reaches. I will continue to contribute to it, to lend my strengths, and try not to to detract too much by my weaknesses.

M's mural continues to grow. 

I am tempted to call this entry: Quarantine, Day 3

Wednesday Morning Walk - Bridge over the Cottonwood River
Gloomy morning, but the company was good!

When R and I lived in Houston, we had the pleasure of living there through one significant hurricane watch. It was fascinating to me. They gave away hurricane tracking sheets at the grocery store checkouts, and we watched the grocery store shelves empty in the week leading up to landfall. In the end, the hurricane resulted in a lot of rain for us, some flooding in the downtown area, and things returned to normal fairly quickly.

The whole experience was so bizarre to me. This sitting and waiting and worrying for something that was on the way, and might or might not hit us hard. I told my co-workers, who were terrified at the thought of a tornado, that I'd take a tornado over a hurricane any day of the week. In the days leading up to a tornado, life goes on as usual. Sure, the storm itself can be spooky. Terrifying, even, depending on how close it gets. But we didn't worry ourselves into a frenzy over it. Fast-forward 24 years and social media makes a lot of storms feel more like that hurricane watch in Houston than the tornadoes of my youth in Kansas. And this... pandemic, which still sounds like such a storybook word, though my goodness how our language has changed in the last 24, 48, 72 hours... this is like that hurricane watch, but on the big screen.

Stay at home-social distancing guidelines, in theory, shouldn't impact my day-to-day life all that much. The office is just us, the same people who live at home, so going to work doesn't generally involve hanging around with others. On a full day, I might visit the post office and the bank, hit the grocery store on the way home. I did all of those things on Monday and Tuesday looked somewhat similar. Today I ventured off to Lawrence to bring the big furniture back from K's dorm room. The entire drive, I kept thinking about how normal everything looked. The grass is getting green, the days are getting warmer. But when I got out of the car--to get gas, to help my son carry his stuff to the car, to grab a drink for the ride back from the grocery store--it was so clear how much has changed in such little time. It's mostly an internal shift, a state of mind (though there were far fewer people out and about than I would usually see in Lawrence on a typical Wednesday afternoon).

I am so rusty--or maybe it is that the distractions are coming fast and from so many directions--that these few paragraphs have taken me most of the day to construct. I'm not seriously calling this a quarantine journal, but when I made a list of self-care possibilities, the daily, or near daily blog post kept returning to me as something that I once found very satisfying. It was also very satisfying to spend some time on my long-neglected website, tidying things up for a few hours.

No promises. I am here today. We will see what becomes of it tomorrow.

Because if the world is going to change, there ought to be a record of it, no?

March 16, 2020 (an actual journal entry, written in the morning - entered here with minor revisions on 3/17/2020)

Beginning last Wednesday, the day my son left for spring break, COVID-19 came to the top of the Kansas news feed as the outbreaks in NY, Washington, and California were really warming up. We here in the center of the country were coming late to the realization that the timing for sending our young people off for spring break might not have been ideal. As they returned, what would they bring with them?

The colleges reacted first, with KU and ESU announcing extensions of Spring Break by one week with plans to then move to online class formats. At ESU, the initial date was "until April 10" when things would be re-evaluated. Pretty quickly, we started hearing that it would likely be through the end of the semester. Through about Friday, I was feeling rather thankful to live in a small community, thinking that the cities would feel the worst of this and that we would be somehow sheltered. But I was also looking at the calendar and beginning to, at least mentally, cancel upcoming travel and event dates. There was much upcoming on the family agenda. In April our family of five (four living at home) had three destinations -- M was to attend a conference in Houston, E has plans to visit England and Wales with a friend, and R and I were looking forward to a trip to Oregon. March and April were filled with book events, as well.

I did travel to Iola, Kansas, on Thursday for the debut of Meadowlark's newest book, All Hallows' Shadows, Book 3 of the Pete Stone Series, by Mike Graves. Iola had selected Mike's first book, To Leave a Shadow, as the winter community read book. In Iola, we were already fumbling with handshakes versus bumping elbows. Social Distancing was not quite to the center my radar, but I was thinking quite a bit about for how long and how often I was washing my hands and reminding myself not to touch my face and doing my best not to touch any unnecessary surfaces when I was out and about!

I spent too much of Friday and Saturday reading articles about the virus online and attempting to stay off Facebook as the energy there was making me feel quite ill. I spent a lot of time contemplating my "nobody tells me what I can and can not do" contrarian roots. I wrote the following note in my daily to-do log: "Hospital capacity is the real chiller with this virus, and this means our small community will stand no benefit over larger cities. Our only hope is to lie-low and hope that we can slow the spread of the virus so that its pace never fills our hospitals to capacity, so that our doctors never have to choose who gets the lifesaving equipment, the beds, the medications, all of which may quickly run in short supply."

This sounds like hysteria to a calm Kansan's ears. We are the people who stand on the porch so that we can see exactly where in the sky the tornado is dangling. We are accustomed to taking responsibility for our own well-being and nursing our own family members through cancer till death-do-us-part. We know we are capable of long days of backbreaking work, and that we are capable of doing with less if we need to. It's hard to imagine a future where our grocery shelves aren't always lined with an abundance of food--or toilet paper--and where we can't just pop in to the quick clinic or make an appointment with our doctor when we feel a little under the weather.

Even though we have neighbors for whom these things have been a going concern, we live lives of such abundance that it is hard to really see, to take seriously the plight of our poorer community members when we are working class ourselves. We know what it is like to struggle to get the bills paid, yet we have managed to take care of ourselves just fine--thank you very much--so far. Why should any of that change?

In the coming weeks, one of two things will happen. People will stay home, possibly hoard toilet paper, and we'll see the needed break in the cycle of spread of this virus. It will still get here, but hopefully slowly and with little loss of life because our hospitals will be able to take care of those who are most affected and most of them will recover. If this virus does not hit us hard, we will have succeeded. Fingers crossed.

The other possibility is that we are going to learn that our efforts were too little, too late. As surreal as the events of the last 3 to 6 days have been, the feeling that our world has been turned on end--our cancelled concerts and potlucks and book signings--are going to seem mild in comparison to what's ahead.

I don't like to imagine what it might be like, but I know that we will adapt and learn to cope. In the meantime, I am making a list of "take care of me" items. I can still take walks and do yoga. I can still turn up the music and dance like nobody's watching! I can check in with my sister and my son and the rest of my family and friends through this marvelous technology I call a phone. (Hey--it does more than take pictures!)

I can use this time to write and publish books (or at least get books ready to be published). I can catch up on the family photo albums. I can pretend it is spring and deep clean my house (wait, it almost really is spring!)

Here are some images I came across on Facebook that I thought were beautiful for this time and all times.

What To Do In a Pandemic (Animals) – by Ricardo Levins Morales
Please visit his website and like his Facebook page.
IMAGE via URL to artist studio page - shared with attribution as requested by artist.
**Attribution is important, as is permission!**

Reaching out , though it may disrupt our comfort...

Mostly written 2/15/2018

I lost a friend to suicide last year. Not a day has gone by since that I haven't thought about her, thought about our relationship, thought about all that I did and did not do. Though I called her friend, the truth was she could be a difficult person to be around. I struggled between the feeling that she needed me and feeling like I needed to protect myself/distance myself from her. In the end, I'm sad to say, distancing myself won out. In my mind, I told myself that I remained there for her, that I would not turn her away if she needed me, but I stopped reaching out. It was a hard thing to do. I am a person who naturally reaches out. I am a person who delights at getting together to visit with others, old friends and new. I'm not your go-to person for daily phone calls or lots of face time (generally), but I do value my friendships and I love getting to know my fellow humans, story by story.

I stopped reaching out to my friend, and though it took a bit of time, she stopped reaching out to me, as well. Our coffee dates dwindled to none. Our email exchanges grew less frequent and finally stopped altogether. The night before she killed herself, we were commenting on the same post on Facebook and I almost send her a private message. I knew life had been difficult for her. I knew some of her past issues were even more and bigger issues in that moment, yet I stopped myself. I chose to maintain the distance between us, perhaps thinking I just didn't have the time to welcome her back into my life right at that moment. I honestly can't be sure of exactly what I was thinking. Time has a way of of distorting the reality as we grieve. I only know that I did not reach out. And now I will never have that chance again.

These words come out today (heaven knows, I have started and stopped writing so many stories about my friend in the last six months) as I think about a young man who took a gun into a school in Florida yesterday and turned his pain, not against himself as my friend did, but against so many others. And as I am wired, as a person who spends time collecting people, story by story, I find myself thinking about how difficult he must have been. He likely had friends, at least once upon a time. People who cared about him deeply. And I wonder how many people from his life are sitting there today, wondering if there was something they could have done that would have changed things.

There are so many conversations that need to be had here...

But I keep coming back to another moment, just before I entered the fifth grade. I was on a family road trip that summer, reading Blubber, by Judy Blume, from the back of the station wagon. I was so moved by that story that I wrote a letter to a girl I went to school with. You know the girl. I'm sure you went to school with her too. Maybe she dressed funny. Her clothes weren't always clean, or her hair was a little greasy, like she was always a day past needing a shampoo. Or maybe it was something less obvious, like she had red hair, or she laughed a little too loudly, or her allergies meant she was constantly carrying a tissue. I think most of us have had experiences with this person. I think most of us have BEEN that girl/that boy for at least one moment in our lives.

For whatever reason, real or make believe, sometimes we encounter people who are difficult to reach out to, either something about them physically or something that stretches us mentally and emotionally. We pull away. We put distance between us when maybe what would truly be helpful--what would make a difference--would be to reach out.

In my grade school experience, the explanation (on the part of those of us who were not friends with the girl) was simple childhood immaturity. Some of us were trying on bullying behavior. Some of us may have actually been bullies. I don't know. Some of us were just desperately trying to fit in and would do anything, even if it meant shoving someone else out. Some of us had true issues to be angry about and did not yet understand that things were not improved by targeting an innocent victim.

That girl that I got to know was quick with a smile and incredibly bright. She didn't even hold a grudge, as far as I could tell. She and I became friends, at least through our junior high school years. I saw less of her in high school, and as adults we've seen each other a few times and have had our quick catch-ups and conversations as people who knew each other once-upon-a-time do. I don't know much about her life, but I spent enough time with her to learn some of the difficulties of her childhood, and to know that her smile grew even bigger as we left our grade school years behind.

I'm not excusing the horrible behavior of children or claiming that I made a significant difference in one girl's life. I'm simply remembering a moment that was hard, a decision I made that may have made my own life a little uncomfortable at that moment, but now that I am looking back I have no regrets about it. I reached out when I was ten, and it was totally worth it.

Yet as an adult, I didn't reach out... and I have been sorry every day for six months.

Since my friend took her own life last year, I've developed kind of a running dialogue with myself. Not that I had a clue just how bad it was for her. Even when our friendship was the real deal, even when I knew more about the ups and downs of her life, it honestly had never occurred to me that suicide might be one of her options. Call me naive. It feels arrogant to think that my presence would have made any difference at all to her, but it certainly would not have hurt me to reach out to her, to show some kindness.

I hear my inner voice quite loudly these days, saying things like, "Stop. Take a moment. Just say hello. Listen for a few minutes. Reach out. Give a little."

I don't know how to save the world, but I know how good it feels when people notice, when someone takes the time to say hello, and ask how my day is going. And there is no reason to avoid being that person who notices, who takes the time, who asks...

It's so easy to build a bubble and exist only on the inside. I think it is almost dangerously easy to do so even more these days, with communications like those on Facebook taking place of real life interactions.

The night before my friend took her own life, I almost sent her a private message. Instead, I pulled back. I was more comfortable with the distance between us. I told myself that she looked like she was doing well. Judging by the things she was sharing on FB (and we all understand how truth is reflected through FB) I thought she might even be finding some happiness. I reasoned with myself that my presence might actually disrupt her current life, that my reaching out might just bring up old hurts and make everything harder for her again.

I'm not a fragile person. I've long recognized that I have a stamina of optimism that has always carried me through the hard times. Sometimes, in fact, it has taken me years of distance to see how truly low some of the most difficult parts of my life have taken me. At the same time, my empathy for others who are struggling, especially while they are struggling, has too often sent me running the other way. When my mom died, I promised myself I would never walk away from friendship because of cancer. When a friend got divorced, I promised myself I would not walk away just because I could sometimes recognize her struggles in those my own marriage had seen. When my friend took her own life, it became very clear to me that I had walked away for the excuse of maintaining my own comfort, my own happiness.

And what does this have to do with dead children in Florida? I am reading the gun debates and the mental health debates and... while I think there is merit (on both sides) in so many of these arguments, I wonder if the answer isn't a bit simpler, a bit more personal.

Maybe we make a difference when we stop putting ourselves first. Just reach out when you see someone in pain. Endure a moment of personal discomfort and ask the next person you see about their own discomfort. Maybe replace every ranting FB post you write with a genuine conversation with the next person you meet on the street.

I don't know where to end this rambling post.

I don't know when I will stop feeling guilty about the friend I didn't reach out to.

And I know, know, know it wasn't my fault. It wasn't my responsibility to fix things for her. I don't need to be comforted about this fact.

I just need to decide that I will stop focusing so hard on my own comfort... I need to recognize my strengths and utilize them. I need to think more about the influence I might have on someone else's bubble, rather than fear a disruptive presence in my own.

Wherein I Finally Determine What My Tattoo Should Be

Not my Tattoo!

In conversation with a new friend yesterday, I admitted that I had spent the last twenty years planning my first tattoo. I’ve come up with several possibilities, but I always end up dwelling on whether each design is something I really want to define me for the rest of my life. As well, getting a tattoo feels like it would be the ultimate act of rebellion, and though my mom has been gone for twenty years now and, let’s be honest, it would be pretty easy to hide one from my dad (especially if I did not blog about it in a public place or, say, post photos of it on Facebook once it actually happened) it seems funny that I would feel that way about a tattoo, when I think of much of the rest of my life as a gradual act of rebelling against what I was taught I should do/be/become.

Here I am, approaching my 50s, many years-clear of any of the traditional institutions of my youth that would have considered a permanent marking of the body unacceptable (though happily, not the people) and a tattoo still feels . . . well . . . Taboo.

I honestly don’t know that I’ll ever commit, but in my head, I am someone with a tattoo. I am also someone who wears long, flowy, colorful skirts and big dangly earrings that catch and reflect the light and chime softly when I move. (And I move like a dancer, by the way, rather than a person who relies on roll-bar technology in her shoes to keep her upright.) In my head, I am a person who can tell you what phase the moon is in, I know the Sanskrit names for all the yoga poses, and when my life comes to a halt at random moments to leave myself post-it notes of inspiration, I do so in the most beautiful calligraphy.

Living Timelessly in 2018

Gratuitous Bookstore Cat Photo:
The Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas
I have always wanted to start a collection
of bookstore cat photos. Maybe this will be
the year I actually do so.

It's a new year and I have not made a single mistake in writing the number 2018 yet. A good sign, as it seemed as often as not in 2017, I would pause before writing the date to contemplate the year. 2010? 2013? Where exactly in time was I?

I did make resolutions this year, and no, I'm not going to talk about them here. You will see the results of them if I succeed. You won't if I don't. Enough said. Once upon a time I called myself the Queen of New Year's resolutions. Then I spent several years saying that last year's plan worked well enough, I'd simply keep on doing the same ole' same ole'. This year I'm somewhere between the two, and I've committed to checking in with my family on working toward some long term goals.

I am trying something different this year, and seven days in, I'm fairly pleased with the results. For many years now I have been a diligent tracker of time. Perhaps a bit of a side-effect of a freelance lifestyle, or simply a need to document how I spend my time to give myself a record of progress made, I can go back many years and tell you how much time I've spent on "job" related tasks, such as working for/in my husband's law office, and working for the farmers market (a job where, though I was technically an employee, I was the only employee and pretty much the boss of me and how I managed my time). I can tell you how much time I spent on freelance work, most years broken down by the type of work I was doing (writing for pay, writing for fun, ghostwriting, editing, and other). In recent years, I've even tracked time spent on some of my volunteer commitments, not because I felt like I owed the communities I volunteered with any certain amount of time, but because I felt I owed it to myself to make sure that I was spending at least as many hours on me as I was on other people. I have a tendency to put myself last in line of importance, and by tracking these hours, I got better at making sure I was putting in time for myself, as well.