Forty Days and Forty Nights

It's my big landmark. The forty days and, this year, forty nights since I've been writing mainly at night. It's not my usual pattern, but I've been swimming in the early morning, and spending time outside in the sun listening to the birds, enjoying the blue skies, and watching the clouds move and swirl and create their fantastical patterns. Night time offers a different perspective and different energy. 

This summer's writing has been wilderness-y. Sometimes a slog. Showing up has not been as easy as in years past and the writing has felt more halting. There've been so many changes in my life this year, and it's not always easy to keep up with them and to fund whatever it is I draw on to show up, write, and publish daily. I feel more vulnerable. 

My theme, Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday, feels challenging. Embedded deeply within it is the commitment to live these summer days to their fullest, to notice and appreciate their bounty.

I think part of the vulnerability may be the home crafting that is part of this summer's winding path. It's slow and intentional, even confrontational, as I open boxes I brought home from Mom's the summer after she died two years ago, and decide what will become part of my new space. There are other boxes that wait. Boxes of things I packed after the divorce and stacked in a storage unit until I felt ready to open them and figure things out. Like my wedding album, family pictures, other items that figured prominently in a home that was part of another life. 

I remember when I was moving out of that home, how difficult it was to decide what to keep and what to let go. I made some decisions and deferred others. I rented for a long time, because it was hard to make a commitment to another home. Alone. 

And here I am. In a mostly empty new home, surrounded by boxes, so not really empty at all, but definitely under construction. The longs delays with furniture delivery have given me time, months of it, to face long unopened boxes and plumb their depths. 

And my own.

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.