Several years ago when I started this blog, my intention was to write my thoughts and show my process of learning write beyond just journal notes. It seems mostly to be a place of reflection on life and growth, and places I stumble.

The dead silence the last few months doesn’t please me. I do peek from time to time as if words will magically appear, but mainly I have been hanging out online talking to friends and acquaintances about life and the world. This year reminds me how easily and deeply I stress about the past, present and future. Places I disentangle slowly from my body reactions or don’t. I’ve been sick four times this year, each one connected to a family relation and loss. Two funerals, one burial, memory still of Jack’s death in between. I used to be better at stubborning through things like this, though pre-divorce I did have a number of stress flus I had to face and got in trouble for having.

Writing, journal writing, used to help me offload some of the stress, but putting things that matter into forms you want to share doesn’t seem to have the same fixative qualities. People say “don’t write then” but I can’t not write. It is my natural language for times like these. So I write and file things, rewrite and lose things.

In July, it was a significant accomplishment to tell myself enough avoidance, get an editor, do a chapbook. August, September and working towards a second consultation or manuscript edit. Maybe a combination. This is hard. I have so much appreciation for the editor who is working with me, giving me homework to keep me at it, asking good questions and making me make decisions for myself.

If I post this today, it’s one more step. If I go to the store to pick up the magazine in which a friend has two stories, that’s another. Being sick is no fun, but these two things I can do to provoke more words and hopefully a finished email reply on the chapbook’s next appointment.