Just start writing

My friend Jessamyn, who is very wise about a great many things, suggested that I just start writing. “You don’t have to wait for a special event, and you don’t have to spend a lot of time editing what you write,” she said. “Just write.”

Of course, she’s right. And there have been so many times in the last eight months that I’ve thought about writing here. I don’t know why I haven’t, exactly. Only that the longer I didn’t write, the easier it was not to.

This year hasn’t brought much change to my little corner of the world. Still married to John, still living in our Chicago condo, still sharing that home with Moose, the nine-year-old greyhound who limps with arthritis every once in awhile but spent last Sunday tearing around the cold, windy beach like a puppy on speed, just to remind us that he isn’t that old.

Still on the fence about having a baby, and still overthinking it way too much. Still working the same job, but I was promoted to an editorial management position in the spring, so that’s brought a lot of change and challenge and a nifty new feeling of self-worth and accomplishment. Still Episcopalian, and still wondering sometimes, for a split second, whether Christianity might just be an immensely popular, elaborate, long-lived myth and whether agnosticism is the real way to go. (Despite that, still fairly involved in our church—helping out with meals for the homeless and editing the parish magazine.) Still loving photography and posting somewhat regularly on Flickr. Still fully committed to my moderately liberal views.

New things, besides the promotion: I ran four 5k’s this summer and achieved a personal best of 29:53, not too shabby for a 31-year-old. John and I traveled to St. Augustine, Florida, and to Sonoma and San Francisco—the latter being one of the best trips we’ve ever taken in terms of relaxation and food consumption. Speaking of food, I feel myself leaning more and more toward becoming a vegetarian, although I may be too lazy (see: eight months since I last updated this journal) to make the complete leap. I’m also trying to make small, environmentally friendly changes in my life: saying no to plastic bags, reusing sandwich baggies, cleaning with cloth rags rather than paper towels, buying organic fruits and veggies weekly from a local co-op.

I just submitted a poem for consideration in an anthology. I’ve been working on an essay.

So that’s where I am in November 2007, near the end of my 31st year. It’s a good place to be. My mind is full of work and family, politics and books, friends and neighborhood, and our upcoming trip to the Out Islands of the Bahamas, where we’ll meet up with my dear friend Rachael and her husband, Tim. They’ve sold their house and quit their jobs, and they’re spending a year living on a sailboat, traveling down the East Coast and into the Caribbean. I’m incredibly excited to try on their strange new lives for a few days, to feel what it’s like to be moving, always moving—from marina to marina, town to town, island to island, always following the dip and sway of the water. They remind me that anything is always possible.