Tag: writing

How to live

July 7th, 2025

This is my final week on sabbatical. Over these past months, I’ve gotten a taste of what it’s like to be in complete control of my time, and wow, it was glorious.

Before sabbatical, I wondered if I’d feel unmoored without work. I wondered if I’d feel like I lost my identity. I wondered if I’d not know what to do with myself. I worried I might try to do too much, and it’d rush by too fast as a result, and I’d go back to work feeling like I still needed a break. I worried I might do too little, and I’d become sloth and useless. I worried I’d feel like I needed to be productive with the time off because I felt guilty for having it.

What happened was that I learned to enjoy life, with gratitude instead of guilt. I learned to allow myself more time to do things that add richness to my life: I lengthened my pool time so I wasn’t rushing through my swim workouts, I watched wildlife in our garden for long stretches instead of quick glances, I spent a week with friends in Utah instead of squeezing a visit in on a weekend (or not visiting at all), I stayed in France after my husband and son went home. At home, I visited every coffee shop in town and sipped from stoneware instead of paper cups. I walked to shops instead of driving to them. I napped.

I learned to pay attention to my motivation for doing a thing — am I doing it because I want to do it, or because I feel like I should do it? I did the things I truly wanted to do, and eliminated the things I didn’t. I cooked only when I felt inspired and wanted to cook. I gravitated to swimming and walking, not to bicycling, and that is okay.

I’m in my 50s, and therefore in the second half of life. Retirement is likely on the horizon in the next dozen years. Sabbatical was a test run for what life feels like without work to occupy every day: will I feel empty? Will I be bored? Restless? Or will retirement be wonderful?

It will be wonderful. I can’t wait.

In this final week off, I’m going to soak up this time as much as I can. I’m going to read on the couch during the day and not feel bad about it. I’m going to nap if I feel sleepy. I’m going to hang out in coffee shops and watch the world go by. If I feel moved to, I might think about what I can take with me from my sabbatical life into my working life. It would be a shame to wait for sabbaticals and retirement to live and enjoy. I’ve got my health and energy now, I don’t want to squander it.
Back to regular life, sort of

June 28th, 2025

I wrote every day during my recent travel to Europe. My goal was 1000 words a day, but I typically wrote 1500 to 2000. As soon as I began my journey home, on the train from Lille to Brussels, I went back to the beginning of my trip journal and started typing up what I’d written. I used my bookmarks on Google maps to find addresses of restaurants we ate at, or my photos to remind myself of places I didn’t write about, and I listed out what we did each day in the digital copy of my journals*. And then I shaped the entries into blog posts with photographs from each day’s adventures.

I am so happy I wrote every day, and that I went back and typed up what I wrote. This is the first time I’ve done that. Between typing my hand-written entries and then blogging about our days, I got to live the vacation of my dreams three times. It was fresher during the beginning, on the travel home and on the first few days back in Blacksburg. The trip felt very close, like I could touch it again, and see the soft golden light, and hear the street sounds, and taste the crêpes, and feel how the art moved me. Now that two weeks have passed, it is fading. By the time I started typing my final journal entries a few days ago, I was already coming across things I’d forgotten about.

During these past two weeks, I’ve barely cracked my regular journal or written anything new; going through my travel journals and photographs and trying to make sense of them in blog posts has consumed most of my time since I’ve been back. Now, the photos are edited, the drawings are drawn; my journal entries are typed up true to their original stream of consciousness form, then blogged slightly more coherently.

With my travel project complete, I’m back to my normal day to day, which is sad in some ways and comforting in others. It feels strange and small going back to our pre-trip normal after such a grand experience. My habits at home don’t include walking to a café each morning for coffee and a pastry or walking city sidewalks every day. They don’t include riding trains or visiting art museums, buying hats at a chappelerie or sitting in the shade of a lush garden by a trickling fountain with beautiful bronze and marble sculpture. They don’t include trying to capture all of these new experiences in writing.

Instead, I eat my overnight oats each morning. I journal by the window with a cat in my lap, trying to think of something new to write about. I swim at 8am, longer sets than before my sabbatical, when I squeezed my workout into 30 minutes at 5:30am. I walk in our green neighborhood, down green Glade Road, through green Heritage park. Sometimes I draw in my sabbatical journal. I eat lunch at home while I watch birds, usually a smoothie bowl, or a black bean burger with avocado, or half a wheat bagel toasted with pepper jack and everything but the bagel seasoning, with avocado smashed on top. I water my plants. I go to a coffee shop to get out into the world, I lay on the couch and read. I write letters to friends.

My days are slower than our days on vacation, and not quite as stimulating. They don’t provide as much fodder for a creative project as the novelty of my travel journals did. But they are comforting, relaxing, and gratifying. I am trying to soak them up and enjoy them as much as I possibly can right now, because they are not truly regular life. That will begin again in two weeks, when my sabbatical ends and I return to what is actually, truly regular life. I’m starting to think about what habits I can take from sabbatical back into my working life, as this has, without a doubt, been the gift of a lifetime.

*I use the Day One journaling app.

Daily writing prompt
What are your daily habits?
View all responses
A small commitment

May 24th, 2025

My podcast tree has grown a new branch. I don’t know how I found it, maybe I was clambering around, looking for stuff about creativity, but I scrambled onto the London Writers’ Salon and came to rest. Specifically, I sat with my legs swinging to listen to an interview with Jami Attenberg. The episode summary promised and delivered everything I wanted: Writing 1000 Words A Day, Learning How to Write Again, Finding Creative Inspiration, Committing to Creativity Daily.

I, of course, immediately took a field trip to Blacksburg Books and ordered Attenberg’s book. And subscribed to her Craft Talk newsletter.

After hearing the episode last month, I toyed with the idea of joining the community to write 1000 words a day for two weeks on something besides my rambly what’s-in-my-head journaling. In morning writes, I’ve listed topics to explore. While I wondered when this year’s #1000wordsofsummer event might start, I considered what project I might work on for a two week, 14,000 word commitment.

I learned a lot about my writing self in the process, namely that I recoil from planned writing work. That’s what it feels like when it’s planned: work. Right now, what attracts me to writing is spontaneity, and being in the moment. As soon as a topic becomes planned, I lose interest. Right now, I want to play. I don’t want to work.

One of my favorite writing prompts is the Here and Now* exercise. I frequently do this exercise when I want to write but don’t have anything in mind to write about. I love it because it makes me pay attention, right here, right now. It engages my senses and makes me realize how much I don’t know, like what kind of trees those are across the street, the ones I see every dang day of my life, or the name of the little hat a pendulum (pendant) light wears (it’s a shade, just like a lamp), or whether those metal ceilings with stamped patterns in them have a name (pressed tin ceiling).

I’d considered focusing on a particular topic for 1000wordsofsummer — I found one I thought I was excited about — but as it became more clear that it would feel like work instead of fun, Jami announced the dates of this year’s event: May 31 – June 13. The entire time I’ll be on vacation in Europe.

There’s no way I’m doing a project that feels like work while I’m there. But can I sit in a café, on a train, in a garden, on a museum bench, and write 1000 words on the here and now? Hell yeah I can. And I can’t wait to do it.

*There are many variations on this prompt. Here and Now is what Priscilla Long calls it in The Writer’s Portable Mentor. In Old Friend from Far Away, Natalie Goldberg uses “I’m looking at,” which can be expanded to “I’m listening to, I feel, I smell…”
Laptop time at an all time low

May 22nd, 2025

Several people from work looked forward to their sabbaticals to completely unplug from technology: no computer, no internet. I didn’t vow to do anything of the sort on my sabbatical, but it occurred to me the other day that I frequently go whole days without opening my laptop. I still use my phone to communicate with friends and family, for internet searches, and to ask AI to do stuff for me, like make swim workouts, but I’m not on social media anymore, so my screen usage is a fraction of what it is when I work.

My eyes are grateful for it — they need the rest. Just as welcome, I feel present in the world and connected to it. Rather than only watching birds for a few minutes at the feeder, I watch for long stretches of time. They’re funny little creatures. They chase, they chirp, they dart, swoop, strut, and preen. I watch them hide in the leaf-heavy branches and move among the trees. They’re very busy at being alive. A crow hopped around the driveway the other morning, chasing after two bunnies, chattering at them, “Hey guys! Play with me!” They ignored him. The squirrels are funny, too. They raid the feeder, of course, and I love to open the sliding glass door and watch them freak out that I’m so close. The feeder hangs from the back deck on the second floor, and they leap from the deck rail to the nearest tree branch, arms spread like they’re leaping for their lives, land on the flimsy branch that bends cartoonishly low under their weight, and scramble up to surer stability with their tiny squirrel hearts racing. This little spectacle is such a delight, I don’t mind feeding them along with the birds.

I also get out of the house a lot more, now that I’m not fully concentrated on my screen all day. Yesterday, I went to our small downtown after lunch for a coffee. I took my notebook with me. I write a lot in notebooks. Maybe a couple thousand words a day, with my pretty pens and pretty ink and smooth paper. Not about anything in particular, just writing to write because I like the feel of it.

Without a laptop, I don’t need to carry a backpack when I go places; instead I carry my new tote with a notebook and pens. Yesterday I sat in the café and sipped foamy coffee, wrote my surroundings, and felt the difference between now, when graduations are done and town has emptied and 85% of the café’s tables were vacant, and two weeks ago when the line snaked out the door.

I had errands to run downtown. In my normal life, I would have driven from the coffee shop, which is on one end of downtown, to the book store, which is on the other. But this is a very small town. It’s only a 15 minute walk between the two. If I’d been traveling to a new city, I wouldn’t have even considered driving. So I treated home as if I were traveling, and I walked. I walked one block over from Main Street so I could walk past pretty residential gardens, listen to the birds, investigate berries, feel the air, and smell flowers. I walked to the co-op to buy cashews and poppy seeds for my overnight oats, to the art store to buy notebooks to take to Europe, to the dentist to pay a bill, and to the book store to pick up a book I’d ordered.

I’d been feeling the itch to blog again, so I opened my laptop today. Now the sun is up, though, and the wind is rustling the trees. The sky is blue with fluffy white clouds, and there seems to be some sort of bird convention in the front yard. There’s a lot of squawking going on. I have my computer glasses on so I can’t see them to see what kind they are. Maybe robins. It’s time for me to shut up shop and see what’s happening.

Daily writing prompt
How do you know when it’s time to unplug? What do you do to make it happen?
View all responses
Drip drip

May 13th, 2025

The meloncholies have wormed in. Clouds settled in on Sunday. Rain fell all day yesterday. Today is the third gray day in a row. Greens in the garden are electric against the dark sky, and I keep telling myself the rain slakes the thirst of my plants, and that they’ll burst with new leaves and flowers after all this wet, but I personally need the sun to come out. I’ve realized that I’m okay with cold weather, but I don’t handle grey, flat light well at all. I need the gold of sunshine.

Yesterday I had a great swim and watched some of the Giro d’Italia while I lift weights in our basement. After that, though, I spent the rest of the day on the couch finishing The Iliad and napping while rain dripped outside. I decided I like The Odyssey better. The Iliad is tediously repetitive; it could have been about half as long as it is. “And Zeus got pissed, and his vanity was wounded, and then Athena got mad, and so did Hera, and then Poseidon didn’t want to be left out, so he stirred shit up, too, and then they all said, ‘We don’t meddle in human affairs,’ even though that’s all they do, and then Hector killed such and such, and such and such, when his spear pierced them next to the nipple.” It frequently reminded me of all the begats in the Bible, except listing all the kills, and all the whining of the gods and men, and all the boats the Greeks brought. And then repeating that all over and over again, except the enumeration of the Greeks’ boats, that was only in the beginning.

It’s possible The Iliad contributed to my meloncholy. I’ll find something more my taste to read next.

I came to a café today to get out of the house so I’m not just looking out the window waiting for the rain to stop. I didn’t think I’d feel like blogging, but I brought my laptop just in case. The hiss of the espresso machine, the clatter of crockery, and the vibrant sound of laughter and conversation inspired me to get it out and check the prompts in my blog’s dashboard to see if any of them would spark anything. And here I am, blogging. Blogging often makes me feel better.

Plus the caffeine is kicking in. The caffeine is definitely helping perk me up. As did the delicious scone. My taste buds are satisfied, and it’s lively in here with lots of people eating breakfast and chatting with each other. That all feels good.

After this, I’m going to take myself on a date to an antique shop, just for something fun and different, and then take my husband on a lunch date. Maybe all of that will burn off the grey drizzles I’m feeling. If not, I’ll just ride them out and know they’ll eventually end, as rainy days and cold weather generally do.

Daily writing prompt
How do you feel about cold weather?
View all responses
Lady of leisure

May 8th, 2025

A great joy for me right now is that I can swim at 8am instead of 5:30am since I don’t have to squeeze my laps in before work. I reserve my lane for a whole hour instead of 30 minutes, too, which means that I can mix things up, add more exercises, and take my time with my workouts. I can do kick sets, which are slow, so I never use the kick board in my 30 minute swims. I can also add longer rests after sprints. This felt like a luxury yesterday — to rest 30 seconds instead of 10 — and I was shocked by the results. By adding rest between sprints, I dropped 6 seconds on each all-out effort. After a longer rest, I swam stronger and faster. There is likely a lesson in this, if one wants to swim stronger and faster.

Similarly, with the time affluence I find myself with, I feel very little compulsion to run for exercise. I’d rather go for a long walk and listen to birds, or listen to short stories. When I have a job to go to every day, time is my scarcest resource. It has now occurred to me that I run because running is a fast, efficient workout, not because I actually like it. I do, however, actually like walking. When I’m walking, I feel present. I notice things. I check on the progress of the peonies in the neighborhood, I smell roses, I pay attention to the scent of sunlight on pine needles. Tomorrow I can hike in the the woods with our daughter.

When I’m working, I squeeze in one journal page per day if I’m lucky. I may blog once every two weeks. On sabbatical I get to write as much as I want, and that ends up being a lot. I blog multiple times a week. I keep a daily sabbatical journal handmade by my friend Pam that includes 2 pages per day and some sketches. I do morning pages — 3 pages of non-stop brain dump. On some days I do an additional 3 pages of exploratory writing.

This morning when I looked out the window at my poppies, whose buds look like they are going to burst open into flame red flowers any day now, I thought, “Oh, I want to journal about those!” What will I write about them? Who knows! But I had a moment of lucidity about why I love writing and journaling. It’s not just a way to discover what I think, or to clarify my thinking. It’s not just a way to be present in the moment by paying close attention to sensory details. It is both of those things, yes, and much more. But what struck me as I thought about my poppies is that writing is a way of being friends with myself. When I write, I can say whatever I want without worrying about whether it’s interesting or how someone else might respond. Maybe all I’ll journal about the poppies is that I love them, their weird hairy plump buds, their ridiculously bright petals, the thrilling anticipation of waiting for them to open. It doesn’t matter what I write: I can put my thoughts on a page without worry about being boring or having any purpose in what I’m saying.

Maybe later in my sabbatical I’ll care about improving my writing, but maybe I won’t! I was interested that my swim sprint got faster, but that was a just a side effect of the thing that I was actually excited about: I liked the luxury of the longer rest. I thought I’d want to spend time on sabbatical improving my craft(s), but pushing to always be faster, better, stronger is exhausting. I like this life of leisure. I’m leaning more now towards just writing (and swimming, and walking) for the joy of it, as a way of being friends with myself.