9 days!

 Ok, so....it seems that one of the things it took me until the very end of my 30s to learn is that I may not have actually learned 30 blog-worthy things in this decade. 

Sure, I've learned plenty. I don't mean that to sound arrogant. Rather, I mean...how does one distill thirty things and have them be meaningful enough to actually spend time writing or reading about? 

Not that I think all the things I've managed in the first 12 days or these last 9 will be actually worth spending time writing and reading about. Far from it. (wait for tomorrow's, haha)
In any case, let's call this...during this decade, I learned that sometimes in mid-project, I need a break. And this time I won't promise I'm going to make up the days, because we all know that's not how this is going to go, so I am not going to pretend. That in itself may be a big enough lesson to warrant its own blog post: that it can be okay not to pretend that the break never happened. 

It did happen. And we are in the midst of a global trauma when I have been trying to remind people that our capacity for productivity is not likely to be what it normally is, and it is okay to need a break, to care for ourselves, and to allow space for fallowness where once creativity bubbled. Sometimes we run out of words. And sometimes they will come back in a quick rush that doesn't last as long as we would like, and then we need a nap.

So...mark this past week of blog-silence as: the week I learned to take my own advice, not simply offer it to others.

The poem my friend Elsa sent me for yesterday is basically perfect for this lesson: "After a time" by Luci Shaw. It starts off like this:

After a time of writing

I stop to let my mind breathe.

This is necessary, otherwise

the thoughts turn gray and

drift.

And, well...yep. That's what happened. I'm hopefully back for this home stretch now, though! See you tomorrow.

this is what I look at when I need to let my mind breathe