Giving Grace.

I’m three-ish days behind schedule. I didn’t technically meet my goal last week, so I will aim for two pieces this week. I know I don’t need to tell you that, I know you aren’t keeping track on a calendar, but I feel like writing about it feels like accountability. I’m still not feeling overly creative or inspired the last few weeks and haven’t come up with a whole lot of stuff I feel excited to write about. If you read my last post, you know what I mean when I say “still.” But I feel less stuck, so that’s positive. I just don’t feel like I have it in me this week to follow a theme like girlhood, or to dive into the list of topics that I want to write about eventually (like how often I think about Taylor Swift or how New York City was my first love.) I will, but just not today. I don’t feel focused. I’m having a hard time writing about anything other than how much I miss my dog. A little over a week since my last post, and I have come to the conclusion that my writer’s block is in fact a delicate blend of planetary alignment and sadness.

So this week, I may not be able to write a great essay about anything in particular, so I will write about what I did over the last nine days. I celebrated my father. He turned 75 on November 6th, and I gave him a hat from a bar that he used to frequent during his renaissance faire days, and we strolled down the Vegas strip laughing about life. My sisters and I took him out to dinner, we went to a magic show, we smiled with neon in our eyes. He wrote a book about his childhood and young adulthood, which I am polishing up for him to share with the world, because he has some pretty great stories and he’s my dad and I think it’s really neat and one day when we are gone, our book- the book we created together- will still exist. And I think that is also really neat and makes me realize that some of the only things that really matter in this life are making art and music and stories. We waste these little weird miraculous skin suits going to jobs that are all really arbitrary, when you think about it, to make money which is fake, to buy stupid things we don’t need when we could just spend our days with our friends and families making finger paintings to trade for like, an ear of corn or something. Sounds unfathomable until you remember that people literally used to live like that, and I don’t know what happened.

This week I may not write a print-worthy article about the perfect elopement, but last week I picked up my dog’s ashes and his little clay footprint and when I took his little, tiny urn out of the blue velvet bag, it felt like my body would cave in on itself and that I would cease to exist, but I am still here, and I am eating and sleeping normally and so I think that’s something. I also closed the gate at the top of the stairs, the one I had propped open for Linus for two weeks after his death, and I finally put something in the back of my car, where he took his last drive, and I emptied his water bowl and this week I put his food bowl in the pantry, and all those things require me to be very brave and strong and today I actually only cried a little and I think that is something to marvel about. Tomorrow could be different, and I learned that we had a new moon in Scorpio and that means a new cycle and so maybe this means I won’t be quite so sad, and I will just miss him a normal amount and I won’t sit on his bed, smelling his little blanket and hoping he knew how loved he was.

This week I may not write an essay wondering about what happened to whimsy, but I set up a website for my book that I am publishing this week, a website for my publishing company -hey, if I’m going to self-publish multiple books, I may as well do it as a publisher! – set up multiple corresponding social media accounts, and an online shop. I received a second copyright for this year in the mail today, signed up for my first author event, reached out to multiple people about book events for spring – so I’ve been planting seeds so that this life I’ve dreamed of can grow into something spectacular. I’ve sent out several pitches. I am doing my best at navigating the world of self-publishing, learning so much daily, and since I enabled my book Annie the Adventurer for global distribution today, I get to go to bed tonight knowing that at some point in the very near future- I don’t know how long it will take to actually show up on all the major retail platforms, but soon- that I will have a book out there in the world for actual people to buy.

I may not write about how overlooked and underestimated summertime seasonal depression is, but we rescued a stray puppy that had been roaming our neighborhood, and gave him a safe home, and even though it seems absolutely insane to have a new dog approximately 24 hours after saying goodbye to our old boy, I believe he showed up for a reason (and I will write about this in more detail,) so here we are.

So, is this essay some award-winning masterpiece this week? Probably not. And that’s okay. I have- to give a nod to Ms. Swift-- a lot going on at the moment. So, maybe I didn’t’ write the perfect essay about anything in particular, but I today I give myself grace. Was it a little late? Yep. And that’s okay too, and that is also showing myself grace- which is something I have worked on very hard over the years with my therapist, and am reminded to do frequently by my loving, supportive husband. The last nine days have been joyful, heart wrenching, hopeful, productive, sad, surprising, celebratory, grief-stricken, and beautifully chaotic and I get to go to sleep and wake up knowing that I am loved, and will continue to be even if I’m posting behind schedule, and that the sadness will continue to lift, the planets will shift again, and I the words will come again.