A photo of my kids walking through Bloedel Reserve, Bainbridge Island, 2021.
There's so much going on right now, I feel at a loss for words.
Each thing I'm processing or working on separately, but I've yet to bring it all together.
I've started several different musings about each, but I think in keeping them apart, it makes them more difficult to conclude.
I wrote about planning for a vacation next week, and how hard it is as an Autistic mother; and how every little hitch in real life thwarts the plan and leaves me feeling empty, back at Square One.
I wrote about how I'm getting tested for another autoimmune condition and for Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS), so I've been on this extremely limited low-histamine diet for almost six weeks for testing this Friday. And I'm terrified for next week's vacation-food situation (on top of the Celiac Disease restrictions), and terrified over bombarding my system with histamines again for another round of testing the following week.
I wrote about writing by hand and my complex over my short weekly emails when fellow newsletter writers (somehow) crank out a thousand-plus word emails.
I wrote about my hopes for the summer with writing, and how those hopes got knocked down a peg as I can't seem to write for even twenty minutes without interruption; and how maybe I should place more stock in the upcoming returning-to-in-person school year than in the summer.
I wrote about social media and how much better my life has been without it. But how I'm likely cutting opportunities off when it comes to future marketing and publication interest. (Thankfully there's still the option to hire someone to manage a social media presence later, at least.)
My brain went in so many different directions these past seven days, and I only covered about a quarter of what was going on. And after everything, I realized what matters in all this:
Although, at the moment, nothing I wrote really stood out on its own, I captured all of it in writing.
They're all unfinished bits and pieces, but I got them down and out. I can explore them further if I want or need to, or I can just let them go. They're no longer pervasive thoughts demanding my attention, they've been recorded. I can release them.
It’s freeing.
As a part of my self-education process, I’m reading The Writer’s Portable Mentor by fellow Seattleite, Priscilla Long. In it, she suggests keeping a hand-written notebook (or e-ink writing tablet — how I roll recently) of exercises. On my Supernote tablet, I have a file called “Freewriting (Non-Fiction),” which has become the start to all my email musings of late. I visit the file at least once a day and take a moment to think about what’s really on my mind. Or, I’ll read some fellow newsletter writers’ pieces for inspiration and just write.
Eventually I stumble onto something tangible and explore that further. Sometimes it takes a day, other times it can take weeks to chip away at that tangible-something, but it’s captured and released from mind until I’m ready to look at it again.
I highly recommend this practice.
My best,
Sara
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Here are 6 more things:
- I just finished reading The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and loved it! It’s beautifully yet simply written (at a distance — not too emotionally intense — just what I was looking for this week), and an easy, quick read at a bargain. It’s a story of a curmudgeon, widowed bookseller who finds love (and possibly reignites his humanity) in an unexpected way.
- How did we get so stuck on this? On social media, The New York Times.
- The mental benefits of being terrible at something, Outside.
- 2020 was the year of lost friendships, Harper’s Bazaar.
- The bubblegum misogyny of 2000s pop culture, Vox.
- “People who keep journals have life twice.” —Jessamyn West