Does it all begin with waking up with an eye to the sun and giving thanks for a nice long stretch in a warm house with good food and nice neighbors? Gratitude? Does it all begin with writing down everything I’m thinking since the night transpired (dreamless, again) sorting emotions like seeds into baskets and weeds on a pile for compost? Perhaps it all begins with visualizing what I want, what I believe can be.

I don’t know where it began, or begins, and maybe that’s not what’s most important, but writing it down sure is. I began the day in the usual way with a mug of lukewarm coffee and a walk on the beach, but then I changed the plan: the air was still and the sun quite warm for that hour of morning so I went back in the house, collected my stuff (camera, binoculars, pens, journal, phone) and gave myself the best morning. Had a nice text with my son, too!  Then I settled in to… settling in. Just watching a gull catch a fish in the lowering tide for once. They never seem to catch what they dive in for, but she got it this time! I cheered for her. I watched pleasurecraft, container ships, and crab boats go by. Dog walkers, a jogger, and met my favorite neighbor and we chatted for a while.  In between, the writing. The sorting. Listing my choices. In this becalmed state I believed that right now I can choose what to feel and believe, what to give, what to hold on to or let go. Writing down my choices helped me visualize the outcome of each. Last week I chose to deal with my flow on the beach instead of curled up on the couch, and you know what? The distraction was quite helpful.

I don’t know if it will happen every day; it might just be a coincidence. It might just be that I’m at the end of a hormonal low and now the light is looking better.  It might be coincidence that since I chose breath over breath-holding, fruit instead of cheese and crackers, walking instead of folding over, writing instead of reading the same old story, can it be true that the birds are singing louder? That Johnny Cash is playing outside my window? That new life arrived two doors down, and I was allowed to be a teeny part of welcoming him home? Can it be coincidence that I feel good today, good enough to keep writing and not give up on what a life can be?  Did I write it, believe it, hope and good vibe it into being?

What the fuck else am I gonna write into being?  Oh, mama, that’s a scary.  And I wanna go there!