Category Archives: on my mind…

My frantic ways

Posted on May 17, 2012 | 27 Comments

For quite a while, I’ve been wanting to write a post about pacing. Not the nervous, back and forth kind, but the kind that has to do with tempo, the rate at which we move and live and get things done.

A friend told me (diplomatically) that she admired my frantic ways, but she needed to move at a slower, more deliberate pace, with fewer people involved (meaning she had no intention of blogging her plans). We were on the subject because we’d been toying with a collaborative project and she had concerns about our different approaches. We decided to table the idea for the time being, but it got me thinking about how different we all are and how, despite what the experts might have you believe, there isn’t one right way to be.

Some of us want to play big, do more, commit to crazy deadlines so we know we’ll do the work. Others want to slow the hell down, breathe, focus on one major project at a time. Some of us are a little uncomfortable with stillness, while others are learning how to listen to it, lean into it, get quiet. And realistically, we’re probably all shifting between the two extremes all the time.

I’m going to write more posts on this because it interests me and because I think that all too often our stresses about pacing come less from ourselves than from our perception that others expect us to do more or less than we’re doing. We’re urged to think big, to take risks, to put our work out there and not let perfection be the enemy of done. But we’re also urged to take our time, be mindful, get quiet enough to hear our inner voice, focus on the journey. The truth is, whatever we feel we need to do for the sake of our careers or sanity, there’s always (a hugely successful, admirable) someone advising us to do the opposite.

It’s stressful. Or can be. Especially when you’re stretching yourself, trying a new art form, starting a new project or business or relationship. Figuring out what your most comfortable, optimal pace is feels critical to me. And powerful. And worthy of exploration in future posts.

In the meantime, I want to share a cool pacing trick I learned a few weeks ago during a conversation with my friend, Annika Martins (who is, conveniently, a kickass life-business coach). I was telling her that while I thrive on being busy, juggling multiple projects with multiple deadlines and having always a little more to do than feels manageable, I do periodically hit a wall. Overwhelm becomes panic, panic becomes burnout. I was asking her about time off, how often she thought I should take it, whether unplugging for a week each quarter seemed like too much to her, and she said, “I think you should take time off every day.”

I laughed. She wasn’t kidding.

She said I should set aside time every day that is absolutely just for me. “It might be 5 minutes or it might be 4 hours, but however long or short it is, that time is for you to fill however you want to.” I asked her, “What if I want to fill that time with work?” and she said, “The only rule is that it has to be a conscious decision, driven by nothing other than what you most want to do right now.” (Translation: I see your resistance, j, and I raise you my totally rational, inarguable logic.)

So I did it. That day, I read Yoga Journal for twenty minutes. The next day, I wrote about my childhood. The one after that, I planted padron pepper seeds in the backyard. Every day, I’ve done something in a block of time that is just for me, and I feel better, more grounded, less frustrated and, oddly, more productive.

I don’t think the important thing is how I fill the time, it’s how I go into it – fully conscious that it’s mine, that for 5 minutes, or 20 minutes, or an hour, I’m doing exactly what I want to do, no justification necessary.

It’s a tiny thing, really. So tiny and simple that I can’t imagine why I didn’t think of it on my own before this, but I didn’t. I wanted to share it in case you hadn’t thought of it either.

Got thoughts on pacing? A suggestion for my daily block of j-time? Sanity-saving tricks of your own? I’d love to hear them.

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Getting all grand and everything

Posted on April 26, 2012 | 43 Comments

I absolutely ADORE the idea of doing something in grand fashion. What would my day look like if I expected things to happen in a grand fashion? Or if I took steps to make them that way?
~ Havi Brooks, The Fluent Self

~~~~~

In the midst of some really exciting things, some of which will be unveiled here soon (in grand fashion, of course). Stay tuned!

In the meantime, feel free to tell me about your grand thing. Bonus points if it involves cheesecake, wine or a baby hedgehog.

(Or you can just say hi. I like that too.)

xo

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Brushing up against the edges

Posted on March 22, 2012 | 39 Comments

As I write The Love Essays about my year of loving fearlessly, I find myself, time and time again, brushing up against the edges of what I’m willing to reveal. (And by brushing up against, I mean crashing into.)

I hadn’t originally worried about that. I thought I was writing a sort of guide, a “here are the lessons I learned” summary, in which I would expand on the ideas I’d expressed already in blog posts. But as soon as I started doing the actual writing, I knew it couldn’t be a guide for two reasons.

First, I’m no guru. Learning how to be fearless in love was and is an ongoing process. There are times when I truly do amaze myself with my willingness to be vulnerable and present and open and brave, but most of the time, I’m just stumbling along the path like everyone else , determined to stay the course, determined not to retreat. The truth is, I spend an awful lot of time trying to find my way back after I’ve wandered spectacularly off course.

Second, the real shit, the most important things I’ve learned, happened behind the scenes of the love project. The project first nudged, then flung, me into new territory, and that’s where the real learning happened; where the most necessary, elemental shifts in my heart and life took place. As soon as I started writing the essays, I knew that if I wanted to talk about fearless love honestly, I had to go there, ready or not.

*****

There is a big, ongoing discussion in the literary world about truth in nonfiction, and it fascinates me. I’m not really talking about the Mike Daisey “is it reporting or is it theater” question, though that is interesting to me too. I’m talking about the more personal concerns of memoir, the kind of stuff that Sari Botton gets at in her regular Rumpus column, “Conversations With Writers Braver Than Me.”

She talks to literary nonfiction writers about truth, boundaries, the dangers of writing about real people, the vulnerability and fear inherent to writing yourself faithfully onto the page. I love the honesty in these interviews, from both Sari (who often crouches her questions within the context of her own difficulties) and the authors she talks to.

In her interview with Stephen Elliot (Rumpus founder and author of The Adderall Diaries), Stephen talks about how very different two versions of the same story might sound. He says both versions can be true because “true” is such a liquid thing.

In our most personal stories, which so often intersect wildly with other people’s personal stories, I think that may be right. And unnerving.

In her Powells Books blog post, “The Thinnest Possible Screen,” Cheryl Strayed writes:

The beautiful thing about memoir is also the thing that makes it the most appalling: It’s actually you on the page. And not just you, but you on a literary teeter totter that asks you to carefully balance the weight of fearless self-revelation against the wisdom of graceful omission, of the factual and actual against the loosey goosey art of spinning a good yarn, of the difference between what those you write about would say about themselves against what you have to say about them, of what you can verify and what you are pretty sure you remember from a decade ago, of what really happened against the experience that’s inevitably altered and informed by your own very particular consciousness.

*****

These questions of honesty, truth, fearless revelation and art matter to me. They always have, but especially now, when what I feel is a need to honor the year that I’ve been through, while at the same time dig deeper into it through my writing. I want to be truthful about my own experience and respect the privacy of the people who were there with me. I’m not writing a memoir. I don’t know how many people will want to read the essays when I’m through, but it’s important to me that I get them right, that my decisions about what to put in and what to leave out are based on love and respect, not fear.

In many ways, this is new territory for me, this nakedness on the page. But maybe in the most essential ways, it’s what I’ve always done, what most artists do, I guess. Our journeys start with the doing (the living, the loving, the aching, the joy), and end when we attempt to make sense of it with our art.

Then, if we’re lucky, it starts all over again when what we create resonates with others and we are pulled back into the physical world, back to the doing (living, loving, aching, joyful) part again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In case you missed it, I interviewed the crazy-talented and very generous Cheryl Strayed for Used Furniture Reivew. We talked about these questions of truth, but also motherhood and love and wildness and Sugar and her favorite books and what she’s reading now. Go, read the interview, and then her memoir, WILD, which is brave and inspiring, and the first book in a long time that I couldn’t put down.

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Body math

Posted on March 8, 2012 | 72 Comments

I felt awful. Inadequate. Less than human. So I ate. A lot. Then I’d feel worse. So I’d eat more. Then I starved myself. Attempted to throw up when I did eat. I punched and punished my body. I HATED it.

The quote above is from Allyssa Marie Milan’s piece, “One body’s journey: Removing the poison, growing through pain,” which I read Monday on Roots of She and have been thinking about ever since. In her post (which you should read), Allyssa tells about the cruelty she’s endured because of her size – insults yelled from cars; trash hurled at her on the bus, at the lunch table, in the classroom; sneers and snickers from the clerks in clothing stores.

She tells about an incident when she was fifteen, four older teenagers in a jeep, slowing down to tell her she’s way too fat to be wearing a skirt. I read that and for a minute I was so angry I had to stop. In the pause, I imagined Allyssa – or maybe it was half memory, myself at fifteen – humming inside, alive and reckless and wide open… and oh so easily crushed.

~~~~~

I keep thinking about how narrow our definition of physical beauty is, how in our obsession with a crazy sort of body math, we consider the ratio of hips to waist to chest, the proportionate length of arms and legs, cup size independent of everything else. We miss the more complicated geometry of necks and shoulders and elbows and chins, the astonishing mechanics of wrists and ankles, the disarming logic of certain smiles.

I don’t know how easily we can change what we’re attracted to, but I know our brains are malleable. I know an old brain can learn new tricks, and so we can begin by teaching our brains to tap into our hearts when we gaze out at the world.

~~~~~~

I wasn’t fifteen. I was nineteen. That’s when I began starving myself.

In the morning, I would buy myself a bran muffin, bring it to my desk, and cut it into eight pie-shaped pieces. It was the only thing I allowed myself to eat all day, so I spread it out, a piece every few hours. The goal was to have pieces left over. The more pieces I threw away at the end of the day, the bigger my internal gold star. Sometimes, I threw all eight pieces away,  and on those days, despite the raging fatigue and headaches and chronic stomach pain, I felt happy.

Sometimes, self-preservation would kick in and I’d cook myself a meal. Rice or soup, lettuce inside a tortilla. Occasionally, I’d keep the meal down, but not usually. Usually, overcome with guilt, I’d force myself to vomit it back up, most of it undigested. I cried through the whole process – making the meal, eating it, vomiting it out. I cried as I hurried back onto the scale to see what damage I’d done.

This went on for almost two years, until finally I got sick and went to a doctor and he told me I had an ulcer. He explained to me that our stomachs produce acids, especially when we’re under stress. If we eat, the food in our stomachs gives the acid something to break down. If we don’t, the acid goes to work on our stomach walls. (Or at least that’s how I remember him explaining it to me.)

“Do you eat?” he asked me, suspiciously.

“Of course, I eat,” I said, and then I went home and cried because I knew I was out of control. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought of food as anything other than the enemy. I already knew I was fat. Now I was sick, and part of the cure was to eat.

I was five foot six and 100 pounds.

As it turned out, that was the first step of my recovery, though it would take many years and many setbacks and many interventions for me to get to a healthy place. Even now I struggle with dangerous impulses. When I feel overwhelmed or scared, my first instinct is to stop eating. My second, and the one that always wins now, is to work through it on the mat or on the trail or with my friends or with my family. I ground myself in the physicality of my world.

~~~~~~

I regret the years I spent trapped in that place, hating my body, my appetites, my life, trying to – quite literally – be smaller, be less than. Reading Allyssa’s story, I felt such love and admiration for her. Such recognition and gratitude. I know it was a scary post to write, just as I know there will be people who read her and feel less alone. Less afraid.

I think there is power in sharing our stories, in letting each other in, in being vulnerable and broken open the way that I was when I read Allyssa’s words. I think this is how our notions about beauty and love and strength and vulnerability get changed. By sharing. By giving each other permission to be confused and imperfect. By telling each other again and again that it’s our imperfections that make us interesting… and, yes, beautiful.

What do you think?

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What we mean when we talk about art

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 50 Comments

For a long time, I considered fiction my art. My essays, articles, interviews, book reviews and blog posts were something else. Writing, but not art.

Then I read a post by Tara Mohr. It was a great post that, unfortunately, I can’t find now, but it talked about how she left the corporate world to pursue “her art,” and it was clear that she was talking about everything she does now, all the writing, speaking and teaching women to play big and believe in themselves.

I remember being struck by the phrase. Tara’s book is called 10 Rules for Brilliant Women and while I think any book that attempts to teach women how to own (and wield) their brilliance is important and worthy… is it art?

Not long after reading Tara’s piece, I read this from Stephen Elliott in the Daily Rumpus. “We were talking yesterday about how there are artists in every medium,” he said. “You can be an artist and a cook, an artist and a small business owner.” He mused that the definition may lie in what you’re trying to do and why, whether you’re out for a paycheck or genuinely trying to create something good, something meaningful.

And then I read this from Seth Godin:

Art is a uniquely human endeavor, and act of genius. Art is what we do when we do something for the first time, do it uniquely, and do it to touch someone else. The generosity is built into the act. Painting might be art, pottery might be art, customer service might be art–but none of them are art if all you’re doing is commerce, or phoning it in, or following a manual or a map.

Art is where we expose ourselves, because in addition to being human, we really have no choice but to accept failure. And it’s failure (or the potential for failure) that creates art. When we talk about emulating the bodhisattva, we accept the risk that maybe we won’t touch anyone, won’t shed any light, won’t make a difference.

The only way to do art, real art, is to embrace that risk. To do less is to hide.

That is beautiful and rings true to me. In her most recent column, Sugar at the Rumpus said, “I’ve written [the Dear Sugar column] as a body of work in a way more akin to a novel or memoir than a years-long Q & A. There’s a beginning, middle and end.” I agree completely , and there is no doubt in my mind that what Sugar has created is art.

As my notion of what constitutes art changes and expands, I find myself contemplating other questions. Is everyone who blogs “a writer,” everyone who paints “an artist,” everyone who takes pictures “a photographer”? Do the titles mean anything objective? Should they?

I’m drawn to the idea of art being about more than the finished product. I like definitions that include intent and meaning. Is my reluctance to call everyone who writes poetry “a poet” reflexive, or do we owe it to the poets who have studied and read and honed their craft not to place just anyone in their ranks?

What do you think? What constitutes art to you?

~~~~~

Some odds and ends…

First of all, I can’t thank you enough for your support and comments and enthusiasm over the launch of A Human Thing. If I’d scripted the day myself, I would not have written it as wonderful as you all made it. My gratitude knows no bounds.

If you haven’t actually watched the video I made, I hope you will. I’m proud of it, and it was, like everything on the new site, a collaboration. Lots of talent and love went into its making.

Finally, my review of Deborah Jiang Stein’s new memoir, Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus, is up at Used Furniture Review. Go see!

xo

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Blast off!

Posted on January 16, 2012 | 9 Comments

Heart art by the ginormously talented Pam Carlson

It’s Launch Day! Come play with me at the new site,  A Human Thing! I’ll be back here with a Zebra Sounds post on Thursday, and then every Thursday from here on out.

I’ll post at A Human Thing on Mondays. (Hint: If you subscribe to both blogs, you don’t have to remember my schedule. And I’ll love you forever. And an angel will get its wings.)

xo

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Three things (or 13, depending on how you count)

Posted on December 19, 2011 | 23 Comments

First of all, I want to thank you all for your response to my birthday post. I’d been so focused on writing something worthy of Alenka myself that I hadn’t realized just how much I wanted all of you to write her letters too. That is until you said you would, one after another, and gratitude swept through me like a crazy, big heart-swelling-tear-bearing tsunami.

It was my only wish and, thanks to you, it was, without doubt, my best birthday ever. I love you guys!

~~~~~~~~~~

Second, I’ve decided to make Christmas gifts for my family this year. I’ve picked four DIY projects that involve all manner of crafty shenanigans (and mysterious supplies that I’ve had to Google because the instructions assume a level of competency I utterly lack).

I have a week till Christmas, and two weeks till January and the launch of the new love project site, complete with a welcome video that Dillon is helping me put together (so, you know it’ll be good; he’s a professional). Given the time crunch and my fragile hold on sanity, I’m going to forgo the Thursday posts for the rest of December. Then in January, I’ll announce the new post schedule and probably show you pictures of my superhero-y craft adventures, and all will be right in ZS land!

What could possibly go wrong?

~~~~~~~~~~

Third…

For the past three years, every December, I make a list of what I believe. There is something very grounding for me in standing at the end of a year, having learned whatever I learned, thinking through exactly what it is I believe in.

Here’s my list, standing near the end of 2011…

  1. We are all connected. We hold each others’ hearts in our hands. Love should be our default position.
  2. We are also all capable of magic. It is important to perform some every day.
  3. Action is king. Dreaming and thinking and analyzing are good – even necessary to a point – but your life (your title, your heart, your surroundings, your point of view) changes only when you take a step. And then another. And then another.
  4. And while we’re on the subject, I know sometimes baby steps are all we can manage, and that’s okay. But every now and then, you need to trust your heart, even when you’re unsure and that scared little voice in your head says don’t move… Move. In fact, take a deep breath, cut that little voice off mid-objection, and just fucking leap.
  5. And speaking of that negative, fearful, mean little voice in your head, it belongs to a crazy person. Don’t listen to it.
  6. The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horrible and crappy. (Stolen unapologetically from Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo founder.)
  7. Creativity itself is an act of faith.
  8. Balance is overrated. If your goal is to be a force in the world, to live a life of service and meaning and big, fearless love, there will be flight, but there will also be some flailing, some falling, some unbelievably stressful crunch times. There will be imbalance. It’s okay. It just means you’re alive.
  9. There is power in letting go; it allows for evolution.
  10. People are surprising. It’s best to learn to love surprises.

Your turn. What do you believe?

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I was here

Posted on December 12, 2011 | 48 Comments

I don’t want a life without regret.

There. I said it. I know there will be push back. I know it’s a popular phrase, “no regrets.” It’s a brand and a bumper sticker, in addition to being a big, badass thing people aspire to. I’ve heard people say, “I have no regrets,” and I wonder about them. I wonder how that’s possible.

What does it even mean to live a life without regrets? And why would anyone want to?

I’ve written on this topic before, clumsily, hitting all around what I’ve wanted to say, attempting to make a case for regret, just as I’ve made a case for the value of a broken heart. I’ve never quite found the words. But last week I watched Kathryn Schulz’s TED talk on regret and she said this…

Here’s the thing. If we have goals and dreams and we want to do our best, and if we love people and we don’t want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when things go wrong. The point isn’t to live without any regrets, the point is to not hate ourselves for having them… We need to learn to love the flawed, imperfect things that we create and to forgive ourselves for creating them. Regret doesn’t remind us that we did badly; it reminds us that we know we can do better.

I’ll go one step further. Regret often reminds us of the risks we were willing to take – however ill-advised, however misguided. There is magic in that, in daring to be wrong, in caring about someone or something enough to be hurt, enough to be stupid. There is beauty in our awkward, floundering progress to become the people we aspire to be, our best selves.

But beauty (especially the imperfect, searching kind) and regret aren’t mutually exclusive.

If somehow you’ve managed to live a life where you never hurt someone you loved, where your own stupidity never caused damage or loss, then you’re lucky and amazing, but I have to wonder what kind of life have you lived, how engaged in the human process have you been?

I have regrets, little ones, and the big, ugly, gut-wrenching kind that I’m not brave enough to blog about; the kind that result from the actions I took, and the kind that are all about what I didn’t do, what I didn’t say, the moments of opportunity I let get by me.

My regrets don’t remind me that I’m imperfect; I’m painfully aware of that already. They remind me to pay attention. They’re like “I was here” signs painted indelibly in places I shouldn’t have been, places where I got hurt or hurt someone else, places that fucked me up but also taught me truths about myself and the world that I might not have learned any other way.

I don’t have, and don’t aspire to have, a life without regret. What I aspire to is a life so full of passion, creativity and daring that failures are as inevitable as successes, and a life so full of love for what I do and for the people who do it with me that I can’t help but feel the pain – and yes, sometimes the regret – of things going wrong.

Okay, your turn. Tell me about a life without regret. :)

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You can almost unwrap this one

Posted on December 8, 2011 | 19 Comments

So, as you know, I’m building a new website for the love project. In my head, it’s gorgeous and inviting and provocative, one part sanctuary, one part celebration, one part “vibrant, proudly imperfect site of fierce inclusivity.”

I wrote that in my notes. I’ve written a lot of notes because, as it turns out, learning self-hosted WordPress and site design principles,  FTP, HTML and CSS, social network and mail service interfaces, and all the other critical site-building things I didn’t know I didn’t know, is only about half of the work I’ve had to do. The other half has been about getting clear with myself what my purpose is (and isn’t) and what exactly I mean when I talk about fearless love.

Here’s a picture I took of my desk this morning when I sat down to write this post. I thought of taking the picture because in the midst of all those papers, off to the side, was my green Love Project notebook (which you can just see) and on top of that, my camera… two things I’ve been carrying around religiously for a year.

I’m really excited and nervous about the new site. I feel as if I’m wrapping the biggest present I can give, and I’m hoping you’ll love it. But it’s not exactly like that. I think the new site will be OUR site. So much of what I have in store is collaborative and experimental and holy-shit-I’ve-never-done-anything-like-this- before. I’m hoping we’ll build something amazing and unique… and fearless. Together.

I have faith in us.

~~~~~~~~~~

And, I have stuff to share with you!

First, Hannah Brencher is a beautiful, stunning force to be reckoned with. Fortunately, she’s all about love and building a better world, so “reckoning” with her is really enjoyable. A week and a half ago, she rocked my bloggy world with this. “Lady Gaga, she was born this way. Me? I was born for this.”

About a month ago, she asked me to participate in her December letter-writing project. It’s called The 12 Days of Love Letter Writing. If, in this month of crazy go-go-go activity, you’d like to pause, breathe, connect meaningfully with someone who needs your support, this is your project.

We’re on Day 4 of 12 right now. You can join in any time. Read the stories of the recipients each day on Hannah’s blog, write what you are moved to write in support of them. On December 15th, I’ll share the letter I’m writing now to one of Hannah’s 12 beautiful recipients. I’ve been working on it for two days; it’s one of the hardest letters I’ve ever written. Yesterday I cried. I’m so grateful to Hannah for asking me to do this.

~~~~~

On a lighter note, I had so much fun being interviewed by David Cohen, host of the Blog Talk Radio show, “Be A Beacon.” We talked for half an hour about writing, success, art and – of course – love.

My best friend, jb, and I have a tiny blog called A Month Of Sundays, where each week we exchange snapshots of our lives. I’m sharing it here because I absolutely loved her last entry. You will too. Go see.

I went for a walk and took pictures for you. They’re posted here.

~~~~~

I have nothing to do with these incredible pictures, but I LOVE them.

xo

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An unwieldy post

Posted on December 5, 2011 | 38 Comments

I know it’s jolly and decorated and comes with happy sing-along music, but December is always a little weird for me. I’m one of those people who stands at the end of each year looking back. Did I achieve what I hoped to achieve, did I do some new stuff, some big stuff, some scary stuff? Did I write enough? Read enough? Pay enough attention to my relationships, my workouts, my skittery inner workings, my world?

I think a lot of people do this, evaluate the year that has passed, but my anal annual habit of taking stock always carries with it an underlying sense of urgency. I think it’s because my birthday is in December, and so there’s the whole aging thing, that sense of having only so much time to finish the 79 things I want to do before I die (which of course is only a fraction of what I want to do because it doesn’t include the everyday things that sustain me, like yoga in the morning and writing brave, doodling, stargazing, petting dogs, holding hands, making love, hiking trails…)

In December I always feel a little tangled up inside. Caught in my compulsive past-future analysis, both pride and disappointment are inevitable, so are hope, and fear, and wild optimism. So are the many handwritten pages I will fill trying to sort through the perfectly imperfect mess that is me.

Add to that this year, the love project.

Which reminds me… in the comment thread of my last post, Meg noted that it was the “start to the end of the 2011 Love Project,” and I felt a pang of sadness and worry, like when someone dear moves far away and you tell yourself, “Relax, it’s not like they’re dead,” but you also know, in your heart of hearts, it is a little bit like that. There will be, even with all the high-tech ways we have to keep in touch, a glaring, physical absence in the space they used to fill.

It’s the start of the end of the 2011 Love Project, and even though I’m excited by what’s to come, I’ll miss this. The Love Project has changed me. I’ll write more about that later this month, but it reminds me… I never really wrote a “here’s what happened in November, the month of giving” post. Oops! You can read my summary here.

And that reminds me… I need to formally announce December as the month of volunteering. I’m happy to say that the first three organizations I checked into are so full of volunteers, they don’t need additional help. I think that’s a good thing, but it does add to my December discombobulation.

Which reminds me… I did say yes to one beautiful, big-hearted volunteer request. I’ll tell you all about (in the hopes that you’ll join me) on December 15th…

You’ll be happy to know that that doesn’t remind me of anything except how unwieldy a post can get if the writer surrenders to each new thought like a dog rolling over for a belly rub. I should delete the last few paragraphs and regrasp the (admittedly tenuous) narrative thread I’d established in the opening lines, but I won’t. This post is an outward indication of my scattered, jumpy, harried, ambivalent, inner state.

I’ll be fine, don’t worry; it’s just December.

Tell me about December for you.

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