Taking Joy Where You Can Find It
I’m writing you from my kitchen table today. I am nibbling on a bowl of blueberries, plotting out my day, staring out into the backyard, and reveling in the peace of nature. The cardinals swoop and dance on the feeder. There must be a bird of prey around for one is in the trees, calling in panicked bursts as relentless as a ticking clock. In the past few days, we’ve entertained the doe who was born in the yard last year and her twin brother (with his teensy antlers 🥹), a very pudgy groundhog, myriad birds, chipmunks, and squirrels, and a lone hummingbird—truly my greatest triumph of the past decade. The old house did not attract hummingbirds regardless of my diligence with the feeder; this lone ranger fills me with an obscene amount of joy.
Things are going well here. It’s been a cooler spring than normal, and I’ve taken advantage to write on the porch as often as I can, just for the change of scenery. And despite regular vaccinations and great diligence, we have just escaped a three-week bout of COVID. That horrible low-lying buzz of anxiety that’s been with me since late 2019 is gone; I didn’t realize how stressed I was trying to avoid catching the plague. Like so many of you, fear and avoidanc
e have been hampering my efforts to do many things, and now that it’s over, I could not be more grateful. Stories are flowing again (I will absolutely have Taylor #9 details next newsletter) and I’m deep in the #1000wordsofsummer challenge, in which thousands of writers band together for two weeks in June to write 1000 words a day. As any professional career author will tell you, that’s a Tuesday... but there’s something very invigorating about having public accountability with a large group of people who are all striving toward the same goal.
So while it’s been a quiet month, one filled with fevers and coughs and rewatches of Game of Thrones–(Oh, the foreshadowing...it is a sublime experience on rewatch, unlike the shock of the first go-round)–there have also been words, and get-togethers with friends (finally!), books enjoyed and projects finished. I am so grateful to be able to write you today, while the birds chitter and chirp around me, and share a bit of my world with you.