Do not deprive thyself of wine and what's good.

Do you ever feel like the sky and the trees and the light are so beautiful that it hurts you to look at them, as though you’re looking at some aspect of yourself that has come untethered from your Soul? Like perfect happiness would be to rejoin the view—to become one again with this perfect beauty you are both privileged and pained to behold through the window?

Wow, this is hard…Can we talk about this?

You know, I’m actually (secretly, sadistically) loving this. It’s exciting to do something hard! It’s exciting to push yourself! “Serious writers” don’t just write when they feel moved to write, they do it regularly. This has been the missing piece for me. The piece that has kept me at amateur status for way too long.

But then I sit down here and I take a breath and I begin. And what I write is shite. And then it all starts to come unfurled, until I remember that they call it a practice. 

So. Hello again. And again and again.

I write these posts at night (edit them the next morning) so that I might have the benefit of a full day’s events before me to draw from. And that’s helpful sometimes, unless it isn’t. So I try writing about the sunset, since I’m sitting at a window that faces west. And the trees are pretty—it’s honestly an arresting view, in its own, humble right—and I want to say something about that, but it comes out shite. And every day feels just a tiny bit out of control, and this is something I remember now about summertime. How having grown up with summer vacation from school still causes the months of June and July to feel like a whirlwind of opportunity and expectation and pressure. I want to—have to—make the most of this time. But God, it’s hot. And the days are so long, yet still not long enough when you keep a day job.

But I’m not here to complain, though it is my blog.

Maybe this has something to do with being the type of person who falls madly in love with the present moment. Of course I have goals, and I’ll do everything in my power to level up my life and the degree to which I am able to share. But I’m learning this summer that it’s all those little things—bubbly water and chocolate bars and rosé; the exact-right song for the moment; the sun roof open and the right shade of lipstick; running into an old friend on the street; a new pair of shoes; a film; a dance; a kiss; head back, laughing—it’s all of this and more that keep me sane and, honestly, me.

A first for me this summer is making a budget and sticking to it because my heart wants something bigger than I’ve ever had before. But then, cooking for friends, and trips back home, and daiquiris, and bikinis, and all the local haunts, and music, and…

Balance, my friend. Balance and patience, yet faith that staying true to the path will always be worth it. (And that a bottle of bubbly every now and then can actually set things right again.)