Hodgepodge

January 2025 || Some things I won't say… and others I've loved.

Jan 30, 2025

I won’t say “I’m sorry.”

(Even though I want to!)

It’s been awhile, I know. Turns out, it’s pretty difficult for me to write much of anything in the space between Thanksgiving and well… now. Six years and some change of taking myself seriously as a writer, and you’d think I’d know that… but every time I forget. First, I’d intended a weekly thematic poem, essay, whatever during Advent, and that didn’t happen. Then, my December AirMail also didn’t happen, and if you know anything about me at all, by now, you can imagine the crisis of expectation I felt.

Not only did I enter 2025 having not finished my reflections on 2024, but I was also not fully prepared (i.e. visioned, goal planned) for the year ahead, let alone the month I was greeting. Add to that my people requiring my full support for getting back into the swing of their rhythms after a long holiday break being followed by the disruption of those rhythms due to weather and more weather — I let not writing here (or anywhere!) weigh heavily on me.

Meanwhile, you probably didn’t even notice!

I don’t mean that in the self-deprecating way it could appear. It’s simply that your world spun on, and frankly, so did mine. I’m confident you had no shortage of content to consume in my six week absence (though I am sorry I couldn’t fill the gaping hole any of my readers who also use the clock app might have felt for the day or so they went without), but hopefully you found yourself seeking quiet and some solitude as much as I too, have tried.

I won’t say “This is essential.”

Before you sound the alarms, this isn’t derision. If anything, it’s freedom, keeping in line with what I wrote above. Truth is, my writing doesn’t save lives, solve world peace, or put out fires in the still-burning Southern California hills. It doesn’t even indirectly impact the financial freedom of thousands of lives like my husband’s work does.

And thank God for that.

For a long time, I’ve been a little mixed up on my vocational call to writing as a Sisyphean task I can’t possibly accomplish the way I think I should, thus constantly pressing back against all the other demands of my life and the people in it trying to find the way to get the boulder up the hill that MIGHT FINALLY WORK. That, and watching others somehow do it all so well and leaving me to constantly ask “But how?!”

My friend Maegan crochets beautiful blankets in same amount of time it takes me to sneeze (sometimes three times in a row; it’s an event). Meanwhile, I’ve got a blanket I started work on over a decade ago in the colors of a playroom we once had in a house we don’t even own anymore sitting half-finished in a bag in my closet.

That’s what my writing work has felt like: like I’m supposed to hook-and-loop a blanket big enough to keep the whole world warm, and by golly, won’t I die trying! When, maybe, all my offering is really meant to be are the one or two (or three or four) squares which hundreds of thousands of hands stitch together into a quilt over the course of all the centuries there have been (and will be) of creative work.

In a way, this lets me off the hook — and maybe even, you as well.

I won’t say “I quit.”

Though sometimes my actions say otherwise.

And sometimes, after a few days or even a week, I’ll notice that I’m not so much thriving as surviving because I’m putting minimal (maybe even sometimes negative) effort into caring for myself (except for weekly date night!). When I’m doing laundry every day so everyone else has clean clothes to wear, but it’s day three of the same pajamas all day — sometimes clean, sometimes not. When I won’t pick up a pen, though they live on every surface of our home. When I won’t go for the walk, though I’ve got plenty of time and reason to.

The world starts to feel Ecclesiastical and I notice the questions in my head contain the words “Why?” or “What for?” It matters that I’m noticing, to be sure, but learning to see the patterns and pace is the next necessary step.

The only goal I knew for sure that I had on Jan 1 was walking 500 miles in 2025. My random and sometimes silly humor and the Proclaimers are to thank for that. And though it’s not a world record, by any means (and I do hope to surpass it and surprise myself!), it’s more than I’ve logged in the last couple of years, for sure.

To start, I challenged myself to walk every day in January, caring less about the quantifiable distance than the consistency of days, in all circumstances. In 50°F and 9°F (windchill 0°) weather, in mist and snow, in the dark, or in laps around the culvert ditch behind our house. Up hills in stranger’s neighborhoods, with friends or family, and often alone. Usually not listening to anything, but sometimes an audiobook carrying me along. Sometimes angry, sad, or unmotivated — especially, even then.

The other day, when I finally sat down to write out some more goals for the year, it hit me that my greatest success as a human and all the things that comprise what I want to be good at being (woman, wife, mother, friend, writer) is simply to show up. To show up is essential; the product, less so.

I can’t account for the part where I’ll fail, make a mistake, or take a wrong turn. But I can account for being present: to the page, to the people, and to the promise offered to me with each new days.

I write to connect. Whether it’s the novel work that allows me to spin stories from everyday observations and interactions, essays and poems that lace human emotion and insight into the mundane or natural, or newsletters that just say “Hi! Here’s what’s new! Thanks again for being here!” — it’s all a gift.

A gift I’ve been known to squander some in seasons of burnout and exhaustion, but thank God seasons change. And right now, I feel mine turning.

A Link-y List of Things I’ve Loved Lately

At Parnassus, I picked up a signed copy of Billy Collins’ book Water, Water (thanks for the inspo,
Aimee Guest
!) whose work is (sadly) new to me. There, a bookseller introduced me to Collins’ “accidental project” The Poetry Broadcast, in which he began live-streaming poetry readings on Facebook at the onset of the pandemic. I briefly reactivated my account to watch a few, and I’m so glad I did!
While playing pool and putt-putt on our first trip to the neighborhood barbershop, the boys and I were absolutely vibing with the music, intermittent Brit accents decorating the airplay. Later, David (Haven’s Welsh owner and master hairdresser) pointed me in the direction of BBC Radio online when I couldn’t stop gushing about how great the music was. Could I stream a playlist of similar songs? Sure, but there’s just something about radio (which we still regularly listen to in my car) that feels so spontaneously good. DJ commentary, artist interviews, call-ins, all with that cool British flair. I’ve been listening on my laptop, but there is an iPhone app as well!
If anyone wants an early birthday idea, LEGO and the Van Gogh Museum have teamed up on a collaboration of one of Vincent’s (many) “Sunflowers” which is now available for pre-order. Did I pre-order the LEGO release of “Starry Night” when it first came out? Yes. Have I yet to put it together? No. Maybe I can add that to my 2025 goals.
I know nothing about the Round Swamp Farm chicken salad and its supposed viral-ness, but I stumbled upon this dupe recipe one day on Pinterest. After a quick jaunt to the store (a nice half mile round trip walk for me) for the ingredients I was missing (a rotisserie chicken and a shallot), I made it and have been making it weekly since (sometimes with the vinegar, sometimes without — I think I prefer without).
To celebrate the Herculean feat of booking international flights for our family’s first trip abroad (more on that later!), I made a pot of tea, snuggled up with our youngest, and put on a few episodes of Rick Steves’ Europe. Can you believe I’d never watched it before?! Love him or hate him, I find his explorations endearing and fascinating!

And finally…

I won’t say I haven’t missed you!

Last year was my first full calendar year of publishing My Pen in the Air. In that time, I experienced what felt, to me, like an explosive and humbling growth in my readership (147% increase, for the math nerds).

Truth be told, 144% of that growth took place in the first six months of the year, and largely, because of this viral Note.

Some of you are still here because of that Note. Some of you have been here since the beginning. Some of you have just arrived here in the last couple of weeks, curious and unsure what you’re in for, just yet. And some of you have walked alongside me for years before this little publication of mine, checking in — encouraging — believing in my writing when I’ve been so close to saying what I said I won’t say.

The plateau my publication became the second part of the year won’t find me on featured lists or highlighted for how-tos on grow, grow, growing your newsletter. To the world, 3% looks like nothing, but to the little girl whose chipped, nail-polished fingers daily turned the key into the flimsy lock of her squishy pink Hello Kitty journal to make sense of her inner and outer worlds all in one, it’s everything.

Thank you for that! And if you have a second, let me know how you’ve been?