I’m a list maker.
Notebooks full. To-Do’s for writing, for work, for home. Finish reading this, fill out the form for that, clean and prep and buy a basket of candy. I break my list into columns, underline and circle and mark specific notes with a triple shot of exclamation points–!!! (For crying out loud, DO NOT FORGET THE CANDY). On occasion (on necessity), I fold the list so that the right edge meets the left edge just shy of the spirals–a crisp fold, a new space. For a sub-list, perhaps. A core list. A circumventing list. A list addressed with my favorite pen, lately a Paper Mate gel–brown, not black. Not even red. Because this list is different. This list is serious. This list, is art.
The day job, kids’ activities, that book I long to read, an evening to binge on my favorite TV show, some days just a fear of failure. Reasons vary but the effect is always the same: it can be difficult to set aside time to write–just write, whether the goal is to revise an old piece or simply to engage with the page and create something entirely new.
I post on this blog every Wednesday as a matter of course. Often this space serves as a way to share resources and new books and wise words from fellow authors; on occasion it works as a journal: a tether between life and writing, a place to sort through all that keeps me sane (though “sane” is relative, last night I was less-than-so as I slammed the blender into a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, baking at a time when I could have been meditating). Today these words are more life than writing as I sit in the airport waiting to fly home to see family, to help a sister, to love a nephew. Today it is about the sunshine pouring in the window, about this moment of gratitude for good health, for family. About a strong cup of coffee on a strange table fashioned in the form of cheese–reminders that home is in two places and my heart is stitched into the binding of both.