Category Archives: Thinking

October, Retreat, Thinking, time

October 2025

A different kind of shutdown.

I am always a little short of breath in October. The month arrives a few days after another birthday and there is an sense of urgency to hurry up and get ready for the changing season ahead: from writing submissions to swapping out closets, packing away the cottons for wool, light quilts for down puffs, figuring out if my pants fit from last February and OMG closed shoes. And not to mention the blousy, overgrown garden beds. Writing has taken a way-back seat in the face of the tasks.

The result is I spin in circles and never feel like I have actually accomplished anything, the day is so short, the lists so long.

This week I booked a few days to myself in Vermont at my daughter’s empty house, another year older not wiser, lugging mountains of newspapers to catch up on, two laptops (in fairness and gratitude I was given a beautiful new Airbook for my birthday and I don’t trust it yet), four books to choose from, too many sweaters and several knitting projects. That old adage there are only so many hours in the day seems pretty obvious. But my instinct called for a reset, and my old instinct said pack it all, get’er done.

As I sit in the stillness of a sweet house set between a mountain and a river I am drinking tea, breathing the crisp air, and have some take-aways.

  1. There is in reality so much time.

After I unpacked the car, put away the food, unlocked the front door, dragged a chair onto the stoop, boiled the kettle and made a cuppa I sat and didn’t think about anything except the gift of this week and that my time was my own here. I bet this took all of fifteen minutes and it was NOT a waste of time. In fact, I felt it expanded the hour.

2. What I really needed to do (and drive four hours to realize) was just think.

The best writing — the blogs, the essays, the flash memoir, the submission bio’s — happens to me in stillness. That’s when can let my brain receive a sentence. That’s when I run with it. All this tasking has shut it down. It has taken two days of staring into solitude to realize I can just let the season change without my help.

3. There are no cider donuts to be found here. Vermont, come on. Stillness requires donuts.

I am heading out to the store now, stopping along the way at a few farm stands, really needing nothing just meandering the county, looking at the land breathing. Then I will get back to things. Maybe.

Don’t put your phone in your pocket. Look at the sky for a while. Drink a little hot beverage. Think about the colors. Or lack of color. Or the birdsong. Or your gratitude that the trash truck is whining down the street doing its job. Or the dog that is not yours is barking at nothing. Apply no judgement. Feel the time. It is all yours.

And somebody tell me where to get a cider donut, stat.

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Anniversary, Thinking

What has become of me.

Chocolate pudding is the answer. In my former life it wouldn’t be. But it is today.

Here is what I am thinking about:

How are you are the most important three words I can say to you as we head into the one year anniversary of this pandemic. Don’t think this is obvious — if I ask this, right at the start, bang-out-of-the-gate, I am paying attention to you on the other end. I have been meeting this question with silence, the good kind of silence, the solidarity let’s-just-float-this-in-the-air kind of silence. We know. Been said. Now, what are you reading?

Digestive biscuits are comfort.

I have submitted a number of personal essays to thirty publications since December. I am still a long way off from the normal numbers — I should make that one hundred submissions to publications by the end of the year. For perhaps one acceptance. Know that about people who write.

I have inherited a dog and this has saved me. From her sweet good mornings to the long walks she takes me on. When I stroke her ears I feel my blood pressure fall and I am flooded with gratitude. She leaves soon. I will have to figure that out.

We heal. Hips heal. Bellies heal. Hearts heal. Fingers-stuck-in-the-running-blender heal. I am frankly so flipping tired of being on the healing journey. But I know the gig: do what I can. Make what I know. Feel what I feel. And I know people are key to healing. So I am missing wholeness. Hugs ahead.

And: I am starting to think about the after. Even though I am on the last tier of the vaccination schedule and may miss the summer until I am twice-shot I am starting to lie awake and think, what will I care about? What do I NOT want to lose from this year? I have gained a new sense of time — perhaps from peeling away the ‘shoulds’ or the ‘have to’ or the schedules. Suddenly at 4:45AM I love that I am awake with fresh tea and a book — why not, all I have is time ahead. Somehow, while we are all still working like crazy and meeting deadlines and answering texts don’t you feel that our days have been peeled, the shell parts pulled off, the soft middles getting some air. What has become of me that I taste and smell and relish the small stuff and it is enough?

I do not live in yoga pants. Period. I dress in what I love. I wear bigger earrings as the week progresses. There will be bling tomorrow. There’s that.

To be safe I have to pick. Not who or what I love the most. Just what I need to take care of myself. Now that is not a novel idea, before or after. Remember that.

And lastly, pudding. I ate the remains of a glass ramekin full of home-made chocolate pudding with a cream floater for my snack this morning. It was pure comfort. Today that is the answer. I am ok with that.

February 18, 2021: I sat in an isolated corner of Tartine Bakery yesterday and marveled at the still life of my table top. A trashy novel, a sugary biscuit, a shot of adrenaline, and the bent mask.

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