Tag: dailyprompt

Intentions for 2024

January 1st, 2024
My biggest challenge in life seems to be having too many things I want to do and not enough time to do them all. Because of this, I rarely get bored, but it also means I’m constantly making decisions: do I do this or do I do that. Do I read or do I write. Do I write or do I draw. Do I exercise or do I journal. Do I blog or do I transcribe diaries. Do I hike or do I read. Do I read or do I garden.

My latest hobby is drawing, and I have specific ambitions with that. I want to play with pen and ink drawing to make pretty entries in nature journals. I like flipping through my little sketchbook and seeing pictures instead of reading lots of words, and I love the meditative act of drawing.

Of course, this means more physical books to store on a shelf. My shelf of diaries and written word journals is now overstuffed: I cannot fit any more notebooks, composition books, or now, sketchpads on it.

To help me overcome the constant challenge of choosing what to do with my time, and also, to help me accomplish my goal of creating a beautiful nature journal, with botanical sketches and drawings of little birds, I’m going to set only two intentions for 2024:
1. Draw. Take online drawing courses, do tutorials, draw with graphite, dabble in colored pencils, and progress to pen and ink. Early in the year, start a nature journal where I draw something that strikes me or fills me with wonder at least once per week, preferably once per day.
2. Transcribe 20 of my old diaries so I can empty some shelf space for sketchbooks. I found an app that can transform handwriting to typed text, and I will use that so that I can keep images of my handwritten pages while also transforming it to searchable text. When I found the app, I had originally set a goal to transcribe 45 journals in the year, but then I started one to test how long it would take, and I’ve been working on the one for over two weeks, so 45 is probably a little too ambitious. Twenty seems doable.
That’s it. I don’t need to set any intentions around reading or gardening or exercising or blogging because I’ll do all of those things no matter what. Drawing is a new habit that I want to nurture, though. I get absorbed in it, and it’s fun, and it’s very satisfying to see myself improve as I practice. I want to make space for it in 2024.

Daily writing prompt
What are your biggest challenges?
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Reading in 2023

December 31st, 2023
I just finished the final book I’ll finish in 2023: Someone Who Will Love You In All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg. It’s a collection of quirky short stories that are funny and philosophical and weird, and that are all about love in one form or another, including the love a dog Rufus has for his ManMonster, told from the point of view of Rufus. Our son gave me this book as a Christmas gift, and told me it is one of his favorite books of all time. Of course this made me want to read it, every word. I laughed, I cried. It was the perfect book to end the year with.

This book took my reading year out with a bang. I’m grateful for that, because it wasn’t a great reading year for me compared to other years. I started but didn’t finish several books in 2023 because they just didn’t do it for me. I’m not going to suffer through crap I don’t want to read, not any more. I’m almost 50, I don’t have time for that.

I remember blogging at least twice this year about being in a reading slump, and my book count this year was 49 on a goal of 60. I set a goal of 60 because 60 was fewer than what I read in 2022 because why even set a reading goal, that’s dumb when I read for pleasure, and I don’t want to pressure my reading life, but Goodreads has a reading challenge thingy, and I do challenges, and I figured why not, 60 is easy. I read 60 in 2019, 65 in 2020, 70 in 2021, and I don’t know how many in 2022 because I forgot to publish a “Reading in 2022” post and Goodreads doesn’t easily give up that stat now that we’re in the end of 2023 (but I counted manually because now I want to know, and the count in 2022 was 64). So 60 is the minimum number of books I’ve read in a year since I started paying attention to that.

Well, now that minimum has dropped to 49. I don’t know how to deal with this for setting a goal for 2024. I’ll figure that out tomorrow. But for this year, for 2023, I read 49 all the way through to the end. Only a couple of them were terrible, but I finished them anyway because either I paid for them or they were short. The rest were pretty good, and a few were excellent. Things really turned around in October when I got my hands on Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake, and then Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and then Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds. I wasn’t in a slump anymore when those came out.

Looking at my list, I have no recollection of some of the books; I am nostalgic for where I was and what I was doing when I read others. I am nostalgic for the early part of the year when I was preparing for my February trip to Istanbul. Seeing If We Were Villains takes me back to our summer beach vacation to the Outer Banks, where I turned the pages so fast I almost tore them. I remember really enjoying The Golem and the Jinni, and buying a copy of When God Was a Woman for one of my best friends, and sending it immediately after I finished the book.

Here’s what I read in 2023, in chronological order:
- The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak ♥️
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay ♥️
- Lord of Emperors by Guy Gavriel Kay ♥️
- Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali
- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt
- Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins
- I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson ♥️
- When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone
- The Magicians by Lev Grossman
- And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt ♥️
- Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
- Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
- Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
- Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer
- The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker ♥️
- Weyward by Emilia Hart
- The London Séance Society by Sarah Penner
- The Measure by Nikki Erlick
- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
- Symphony of Secrets by Brendan Slocumb ♥️
- Still Life by Louise Penny
- The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
- All the Names by José Saramago
- If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio ♥️
- Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff ♥️
- The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden ♥️
- Honor by Thrity Umrigar
- The Forgiven by Lawrence Osborne
- Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
- A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley ♥️
- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
- Tom Lake by Ann Patchett ♥️
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin ♥️
- The Housekeepers by Alex Hay
- The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff ♥️
- The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna ♥️
- The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak ♥️
- The Memory Keeper of Kyiv by Erin Litteken ♥️
- The Alice Network by Kate Quinn ♥️
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
- North Woods by Daniel Mason
- The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder David Grann ♥️
- The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
- The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams ♥️
- Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg ♥️
Daily writing prompt
What makes you feel nostalgic?
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My dream space

December 27th, 2023

Getting old is the pits. There are many things I love about aging, the biggest being that I know and like myself better than when I was younger. I love that we’re at a point in our lives that we’ve built something: we get to enjoy the fruits of our labors, with a comfy home and awesome kids. Life just isn’t as hard now as the struggle of young adulthood when you’re still trying to figure everything out.

However. Aging also comes with a deteriorating body. Aging brings failing eyesight and aches just from sitting. Now that I’ve started drawing, I’ve picked up yet another hobby that involves being seated and that requires a stable surface to create on, good lighting, and excellent vision, which I no longer have.

I read, I write, and now I draw, and I find myself moving from seat to seat in our house, trying to find a comfortable place to do any of them. Sitting on the couch with a lapboard hurts my shoulder and my back, and it’s not by the window where I can get natural light during the day. The chaise lounge is by the window, but it also hurts my back and neck, and at night, forget about it for lighting — the lamp is behind the chair, so my body casts a shadow on any drawing or writing I try to do. Our dining table is good for lighting during the day thanks to the natural light that pours in through the sliding glass door, but the chairs are hard, and the table is constantly covered in crumbs. My desk in my office would probably do, but I don’t want to be in my office for my me time. It’s in the basement, the lighting is too bright and sterile, it is separated from everyone, and it is where I spend all day for work. I don’t want to be in there for my leisure activities.

When I picture my ideal space for writing and drawing, I picture a small rectangular table by a source of natural light, like you always see in movies where writers have a little desk facing a window, or snugged up next to one, so they can look out when they stop to think. At first I pictured a little round cafe table, but the circular surface would likely be less utilitarian than I’d need it to be for supplies. I’d have a sturdy chair that was supportive yet cushioned, and there would be a good lamp on the table for when there’s no daylight. Ooh! I’d probably also like a magnifying glass, one of those ones mounted on an arm so I could put it in place, hands-free, for drawing. The space would be in a living room, a study, or a library, maybe with a fireplace — a cozy room that’s warm in winter and that’s not isolated from my family. Nearby, I’d have a little storage space for journals, fountain pens, sketchpads, and pencils.

I don’t know how or where I’d set up a space like this in our current home, but I’m doubtful we’ll live in this house forever. Once the kids are both launched in their lives and we know a little better where they’ll be, we might start looking to relocate. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what kind of space I’d like to create on the next leg of our life journey, and a little nook for reading, writing, and drawing is definitely on my mind. I look forward to a day when I don’t have to move all my writing or drawing supplies from one seat to another, and my shoulder and neck don’t hurt, and I don’t have to strain my eyes to do these things I enjoy.

Daily writing prompt
You get to build your perfect space for reading and writing. What’s it like?
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Sauna

December 20th, 2023

Mornings have been icy cold the past two days. Yesterday, I sat at our kitchen table with my notebook at 5am before my swim, and my phone rang: schools would be closed due to dangerous driving conditions. I didn’t know whether that meant the aquatic center would also be closed. I debated for ten minutes on whether to make the attempt — to go out in the cold to warm up the car and scrape the windshield in a wind that felt like ice shards — knowing the pool might be closed when I arrived.

I decided to risk it. The roads weren’t that dangerous, not in a Suburu; there was no weather happening except wind, there were just some icy patches. Nobody is on the road around here at 5:15am, and the entire 7 minute drive has a speed limit of 25mph, so I was safe.

When I arrived at the aquatic center, the lights were on inside, I saw lifeguards and our trusty early morning attendant getting the sign-in sheet ready inside, and other swimmers sat in their warm cars waiting for the doors to be unlocked.

On the pool deck, everyone chattered about going through the same wondering thought process I did — will it be open if schools are closed? — and then we all got in and swam our laps. The pool I go to is warm, thankfully, and steam rose from the lap lanes.

The locker rooms, however, are not warm. After my swim, I opened the door to the changing room, and the cold air on wet skin was a bit of a shock. The splashing of swimmers echoed on the tile floors and walls, and I stood dripping in a puddle on the cold floor. I grabbed my towel, which I’d hung next to the sauna. I eyed the sauna door and thought, hmm, it’ll be warm in there. So I stepped into the wood-planked room. The wooden floor was warm on the soles of my feet. The planks were absorbent and welcoming. No standing in puddles. I was enveloped in heat, a muted quiet, and the scent of warm cedar.

I toweled off in the sauna, and it was such a delightful experience, such an easy little treat to myself, that I will make it part of my winter swimming ritual. I’ll brave the cold mornings to drive to the pool and swim, and my reward at the end will be to dry off in the sauna, where the heat warms me to my bones.

Daily writing prompt
What was the last thing you did for play or fun?
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Both where I thought I would be, and not

December 17th, 2023

I’ve been feeling the itch to blog, but as usual, haven’t because of the perennial “what will I write about?” problem. I checked my blog’s dashboard today to see what the built-in writing prompt was, because maybe that would spark something, and lo, here I am.

The writing prompt asks, Is your life today what you pictured a year ago? I have no clue what I pictured a year ago for my life. I looked back at my blog, which is turning out to be a really useful supplement to my actual memory. Our daughter wanted tiramisú for her birthday again this year, and I could not remember what recipe I used that she liked so much last year. I vaguely remembered that I might have blogged about it, and sure enough, here it is.

So anyway, I looked back at my blog for this time last year, and discovered that as of December 14 last year, I had blogged for 30 days straight. Thirty days! How on earth did I do that? How did I find something to write about 30 days in a row? The 14th was the last of the 30 days; I picked back up again on December 20 and wrote about a crackling fire, and then the solstice on the 21st. I didn’t write about my future self, except that in my solstice post I jotted down our menu because I liked it and wanted to document it for future years. But if I know myself, I probably pictured myself being cozy at home for the holidays. I probably hoped for myself that I’d be writing and blogging, that we’d be warm and safe with a twinkling Christmas tree and crackling fire, that our kids would be home and happy, that we’d be satisfied in our jobs and lives.

When I think of where I expect to be a year from now, that’s what I picture. Only a year from now, we will have done a bunch more stuff in between. Our daughter will have graduated from high school, and we will have taken her on her graduation trip, possibly to Costa Rica. This time next year, I hope she’s having the college experience of her dreams, and that she loves college as much as our son does. I hope our son will still love his college experience and roommates and friends, and that he will have a chance to get the summer work he’s aiming for. He may have even had a chance to study abroad. I hope my husband and I will have gotten to travel again and take fun trips, like our trips to NYC and Pittsburg this year. I picture myself still employed and finding meaning in my job, and I picture myself still writing, drawing, photographing, and appreciating birds and leaves and books and food.

This time last December, I hadn’t explicitly thought about what my life would look like in a year, so it’s hard to say whether I’m there. While my general life stuff is likely where I pictured — we are cozy, the kids are home and happy, we have a twinkling Christmas tree and crackling fires most nights — I probably hoped for myself that I’d still be blogging regularly. In that sense, I’m not where I thought I’d be. I don’t know why blogging is important to me and why I always want to be doing it. I do enjoy using my blog as a sort of searchable reference book for my life, and that only works if I actually publish, so maybe that’s part of it. It helps me remember what I was thinking about and cared about at different times.

But I don’t think that’s the reason I care about blogging. I joked once that I do it for the likes and comments, which is definitely true (thank you to everyone who reads here ♥️), but I don’t think it’s just that either. There’s something about moving from a private journal, which I’ll never go back and read, to publishing on my own little public corner of the web, where I take a little more care with my writing, where I reference posts, where I have a community that’s not limited by geography. Blogging is both expression and validation. I can express myself in a journal, so maybe it really does come down to validation. Or maybe being able to share stuff that others resonate with? That feels really good too. Is that the same as validation? I don’t know, but I really like that part — the connecting. The being human together.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that I care about blogging. Even so, after all these years (this will be my 1046th post on this blog), it’s still hard to overcome the “is this worth sharing?” question. When I saw today’s prompt and realized I had no recollection what was on my mind a year ago, I was really glad for all the times I did post. Something is better than nothing.

Daily writing prompt
Is your life today what you pictured a year ago?
View all responses
Nature journal

October 3rd, 2023

It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I’m sitting outside under the dogwood tree. It’s been weeks since I’ve pulled out my cushion and sat in the Adirondack lounger my husband made me last year. The sky is blue. Wind rustles the dry Karl Foerster grass next to me, the lemon balm, the dogwood leaves. A grasshopper just leapt out of the columbine and landed on the foot of my chair. It’s walking towards me. It’s buggy eyes are trained on mine. I hope it doesn’t jump.

I can’t concentrate for fear it will leap at my face. Writing on my lap is a challenge now because I had to stop using my left hand to keep my journal in place — I have to use it now to hold my book up as a shield. My journal slides around as my right hand tries to scribble in it. I peek over my book and the grasshopper is still staring straight at me, like it will leap any second, and even though I know it might jump, I know I will still squeal and drop my pen and bat at my face if it does. Ooh! It’s turning. Slowly. Away. And now it has sprung into the Karl Foerster grass.

The breeze feels good on the hairs behind my ears. And on my toes. I hear frogs and crickets and the soft shushing of leaves. My mums and asters look lovely in their bronzy deep red and bright October purple. End of summer bumble bees and honey bees buzz around and land on them. My husband and daughter just called out from the driveway that they’re going to get Boba and wonder if I want any. I do. They will bring it back; I don’t have to get up.

Sunlight slants through the dogwood leaves and into my right eye. The leaves aren’t as full as they were midsummer. They’ve shrunk a little and are coppery red with green spines. Sunshine glints off the rim of the glazed bird bath. The wind has died here, but I hear it ripple through the tall trees across the street, and now it has arrived. I feel a breeze on my shoulder. Little skippers dart among the flowers. The air is filled with crickets chirping. A suet cake dangles from a dogwood limb, under the canopy of autumn red and green leaves. The tree has made bright red ovoid berries. The sun is still in my eye, but it’s not too bad, it’s October.

Daily writing prompt
What details of your life could you pay more attention to?
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