Through the Looking Glass

I've been curious about what I was writing about last year at this time in the 100 day writing project. I'm feeling a little meh today. Probably because it was a long day at work, after a long and intense week at work. It's late at night. I'm in the last hour of the day and am pushing this writing to its edge, deadline-wise. So I decided to look up what I was writing about at this point in the project last year.

Joy.

And jackhammers.

Last year there was a water project on my street. The borough was replacing all the water pipes, so it was quite noisy and they seemed to like to start jack hammering just as I started to write every morning. Glad I'm not contending with that this year. The loudest thing in my neighborhood these days is either power tools or bird song. I probably don't have to tell you which one I prefer.

The odd thing for me was that I took a week to write about joy. 

I simply decided. And cultivated it. It was not that difficult, to tell the truth, and I could tell simply by reading the beginning of one of these writings that I was completely into it. I'd decided that joy was the right response to emerging from the wilderness. And today is Day 40 again. Forty days. A wilderness journey. It's really felt like it this year. 

That darn book.

But tomorrow and the next day and the next I have very little scheduled, so I can give those days to myself. Three days. Another archetypal reality. Perhaps today is the day I die to an old life and allow myself to transition into something new. That feels like the right response to emerging from the wilderness this time.  

If I can decide to cultivate joy. I can certainly decide to cultivate rebirth, resurrection, revival, reinvention, regeneration, rejuvenation, renewal, resurgence, revitalization, renaissance. They are all facets of the same jewel. But what do they look like in a human life? I my human life? 

I don't know. 

But I'm going to take three days and see what I can discover about it. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.