The squirrel jumped and turned in a slow circle

Day 44 of 200 days of writing

(Continued from days 29,30 and 32)

With the faint clicking of hooves, the talking snow drift rose in front of him. It let out a great huff of air and began shaking. Big wet clumps of snow slumped off the white back of the mountain god. It flew in great arches off her nose as she shivered and shook. Some were almost flying on top of the little squirrel, turning him into his own little snow drift. 

When the god was done shaking off her snowy coat, she looked at the squirrel with her great big star eyes. The little squirrel could only stare back. 

“Won’t you help me? The forest god said you could help.”

If the squirrel could have frozen any more than he already was, then he would have. He wasn’t even sure if he was breathing, and definitely couldn’t tell if the gears in his brain were moving. 

“They said you would be able to bring me to the mountain. They said you would help me if I asked.” A great tear welled up in the god’s eyes, drowning the stars. The squirrel felt something move, something shift and crack inside his chest. 

“But I am just a little squirrel.”
“The forest god said you could do it, that you would be able to help better than anyone.”

The mountain god took a step closer, and with it came the smell of cold air and pine needles.

“Please”

The little squirrel felt his little body loosen. He clenched his little squirrel paws a couple of times. 

“Why does a mountain god need help getting to the mountain? And why can’t the forest god help you?” The squirrel asked, sending a firm glare up at the mountain god. 

“I don’t know the way,” she said. “And the forest god can’t leave the tree they are housed in until the spring. I have to be back on my mountain before spring.”

“It is a large mountain. You can see it from the clearing by the river,” said the squirrel

“I cannot see it.”

“Just go to the river and look up, it takes up half the sky.”

“I cannot see the river.”

“Can’t see the river?”

“Yes, I cannot see.”

“I cannot see when I am not on my mountain.”
“Then you cannot see me?”

“No,” said the mountain god as she took a step closer. She breathed in a great, deep breath and bent her head down to the squirrel’s level. “But I can smell.”

She flicked her long white ear.

“And I can hear.”

The squirrel looked into the band of white stars in the goat’s eyes. They seemed to be looking right into him. 

The god blinked and sniffed again.

“You smell of tree nuts and winter air.”

Photo by Vladimir Vinogradov on Unsplash

Hello and welcome to day 44 of 200 days of writing.

Finally back to a bit of fiction work.

When I sat down to write I knew that I wanted to continue on with something i had already started. A big part of me wanted to try working on Burn but that story is one I want to keep off the internet because I really want to get it traditionally published one day.

This little story, though, I felt like i could work on. I am not against getting this cleaned up (and there’s a lot to clean up, I know) and published someday, but it’s not the goal. I just want to finish this story. Enjoy the process. And share.

I am feeling pretty okay today so this was a pretty easy write. I started to get a bit tired towards the end, but I probably could have continued for a bit longer. I took some notes on where i want this to go next and I am going to let it sit for now. Not sure if Ill continue from here tomorrow so I guess we will just have to see.

See you then and thanks for reading.

I feel that I have been eclipsed by my own work. How small I must think myself to be lost in the shadow of a paltry, incomplete project.

Day 36 of 200 days of writing

Today, I wanted to write about my heart project. Instead of a prompt or a general journal, I wanted to talk to you guys, the ether, or god about Burn.

I wanted to talk about Burn because I want Burn. I want to write Burn. I want to want to write Burn.

I’ve used so many diminishing and cruel words to describe Burn. I’ve called it corny, cliched, stupid. I’ve avoided talking about it so that people couldn’t laugh and they couldn’t be able to arch a brow at it. I was preempting the moral judgment I thought they would make. Prescribing it to myself and cutting my self and my work down until the candle of my work was boiled in venom and disappeared.

I am going to be kinder now, for the girl who thought up Burn and bore the weight of her own vitriol.

Burn is about a girl.

Burn is about magic.

Burn is about scars and change.

It’s about meeting people and losing people, not to death but to your own choices, and not being able to fix things. Burn is about a little girl and a man. It is about a woman and a kingdom. It is about fire. It is about so much fire. Burn is about religious extremism as a result of trauma. Burn is about trauma. It’s about bodily autonomy. It’s about war. It’s about meeting people and living. It’s about living regardless. Regardless of the pain and the loss and the fire and the change. Burn is about a lot of change. Changes that the main character isn’t ready for, isn’t willing to face. Burn is about a lost queen. Burn is about a reluctant hero. It’s about love above all else. It’s about travel. It’s about secrets. It might even be about drugs, I haven’t decided yet. Burn is about a hawk. It’s about parents and doctors and soldiers and kings. It’s about a golden past and rose colored glasses. It’s about little sisters. It’s about old friends.

Burn

I think of burn often.

I think about Marcel, her name almost as natural to my lips as my own. I think of Arrand, Lilith, and Cherith. I think of the Frye. I think of their magic and what it means to be them in the world I have created. I think of all of this, and I feel afraid. I think of all of this, and I am at the bottom of a mountain in my bare feet and night gown, clutching my stuffed tiger, blinking into the moonlight. It’s so much easier to turn around and head home. It’s so much easier to not climb the mountain, even if everything I’ve dreamed of is at the top. Even if when I get home and lie back down in my bed, tiger clutched in my arms, smelling of the outside, I fall asleep and see myself there at the top night after night.

It’s easier to be such a good writer if I only had the time than to be the writer who was bad when she tried.

Photo by Malcolm Mittendrin on Unsplash

Thanks for coming by today. I really need people right now. I also think I needed to face this. Burn has been this spector thats been following me around since the beginning of this project. It is like the moon, always there, sometimes faint, sometimes marvelous.

I want to write Burn. That little girl who sits in the writer’s seat wants to write Burn. But there’s this other snapping voice that snips and slashes at her every time she shares her voice. That voice has beedy blood shot eyes. She spits when she speaks, and I am afraid of her. It’s hard to face a part when you are afraid of them. When what you feel is anger, there is sternness and compassion that you can bring to the table. When it is sadness, there is love and comfort. But when it is fear, how do you look it in the eyes and ask it to change? How do you look it in the eyes to begin with?

I wonder why I am feeling so unwell today. I am hoping things aren’t getting bad again. I’m just feeling pretty alone and small today. I want to want, I want to want. It’s been the refrain of the last couple days with me. Getting your period, bad news, and then a cold really does a number on a girl. I want to say goodbye today with some lines from Burn. I struggled to read through it today, but I really think I needed it. When I finish it, and it is a book, I hope you’ll give it a read.

—————-

Seth was not there. Marcel knew instinctively where he was. She knew that he was gone. That Anna would not be this way if he weren’t inside that crumbled, crackling house.

Marcel stumbled towards her now smaller family, soot-soaked and coughing. She stood silhouetted by the fire’s light, the dagger in her hand hummed like bees, and she felt the bite of the metal like stingers in her palm as the knife burst into flames.

The crowd watched as she held the blade before her, the heat licking her skin but not burning. Even though it didn’t hurt, she felt the sobbing cracking of her chest increase. Everyone watched in shock. Anna was the only one who did not turn to stare,

The people’s faces were blurred by the dark and the tears in Marcel’s eyes, but she heard the whispers turn into shouts.

“Look what she’s done.”

“I knew she was a curse.”

“Monster” “Beast” “Fryemen”

The little girl tried to choke out a denial, an explanation, but she only coughed. The blades’ flame grew taller in her hands. She cried out in fear, and the crowd flinched back a step.

Suddenly, from above her, a voice.

“Ah, there you are, Marcel.”

————–

This one is going to be short as well

Day 43 of 200 days of writing

I had to spend the evening trying to fix my health insurance so that I wouldn’t have to stop seeing my therapist. It has some how resulted in me spending and extra $50 a month for my plan. Wtf ever.

There’s still issues but now it’s on hold it’ll june. I’ll figure something out.

I really would love for the US health care system to be anything else.

I hope everyone had a good weekend. I hope to be back with real writing tomorrow.

It is late, but I wanted to get something written today.

Day 42 of 200 days of writing.

I’ve been out of my house for 14 hours today. That was kind of a lot. Though for a bit of it, I was at a concert and hanging with a friend. It was fun, but the band was mostly sick, so they sounded a bit rough.

For the rest of the day, I was at work. It was a pretty normal day, I just needed a break at some point and wasn’t able to cause of the low staffing.

I could really use some free time. And 30,000 dollars if anyone has some they could spare, smh

I wonder what I’ll write tomorrow. I have been wanting to work on burn lately, but I don’t have a lot of free time. And it’s one of those projects that I want to sink 4 hours into at a time. I have got quite a few things on my plate right now, so a four-hour sink is kind of off the table.

Anyway, I will see you all tomorrow. Take care and try not to avoid hard things.

The first time I dreamt of her, she wasn’t even there. I dreamt of her in my hometown at the library, checking out picture books to read to my big belly. I was waiting for him to come back from work; he was on a business trip, and I was due any day. The other patrons at the library chidded me for being out, knowing just how far along I was. I giggled back, brushing off their concern. Then I felt the contractions starting, right there in my hometown’s little library, and immediately I was afraid. Afraid that I would have to do it alone.

I first saw her when I was dating a man. She wasn’t a baby but a little girl. A little treasure made up of brown curls and giggles. She wore jean shorts and a pink top, and she smiled with one single dimple. That’s how I knew she was mine. We were outside, in the grass somewhere. She was excited, and I was happy, and I knew we weren’t alone, but I didn’t see anyone else there with us.

The last time I saw her, she was a baby. Impossibly small and red, skin leathery and dry, and she was crying so hard. I held her in my hands, feeling the heat of her. I knew she was sick, I knew she was in pain, but I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get her temperate as she screamed and screamed. I watched the thermometer go up and up. 101.3 102.5 103 104.6… I woke up with a start, knowing that it couldn’t be real but searching my sheets for the shadow of her warmth.

I have the feeling that she is with me. That she is inevitable. It is only a matter of time before I find her, carry her, have her. She is my everything.

…

Prompt - Write about that baby you have been dreaming about

An actual photo of me as a child

Hello, thanks for reading Day 34 of 200 days of writing. Wasn’t I a cute kid? I tried to keep this piece a little artful, but I found it much more explorative than I was expecting. And I’ve got a lot of thoughts.

I have dreamt about this little girl so many times. For a while, I thought of her as the child I would someday have. The problem is, I don’t plan on ever having any children. And even when I think that it doesn’t feel like I have lost my connection with her. In writing this, I started to wonder who that little girl is, and could it possibly be me?

When I had the dream about the sick baby, it was around the time that I was ignoring some growing problems in my life. I wasn’t taking care of the pain and grief that I was feeling, and I was numbing out with books and games.

When I was dating that man, I was so close to self-love. I felt confident and secure. I felt like I was being, at that time anyway, the most authentic version of myself. And I was having so much fun. It was first love, it was sunshine, it was rainbows, until it wasn’t.

I had the dream about me being pregnant around the time I felt my first shift. It was a little after college when I was starting to really evaluate who I was and what it meant to be. My “self” was on the edge of being born, and I was afraid to do it alone.

Alone

That’s part of the reason it wasn’t my future child that I was dreaming about. I have always been afraid to be alone in my body. It is overwhelming. How am I supposed to make all those decisions about my life? How am I supposed to live with the results of all those decisions? I think if it were my child, there would have been someone there. I wouldn’t have been alone. ]

But who knows? Dreams are such a vague thing.

I hope you enjoyed it, and let me know if you’ve had any interesting recurring images in your dreams.

I had another dream about this baby last night. She was 1.5 years old, and I had hidden my pregnancy from everyone, and I was acting ashamed of her. But she was there, almost self-reliant. Anyways, I started taking better care of her and holding her, but it was almost like I was in a smaller body, like a child’s body, so it was difficult. I started talking about her, though, and I felt a lot of pride. She was so sweet.

Today’s post is going to be a little different

day 41 of 200 days of writing

I wanted to feel a little inspired before trying to start the writing process. So I got out my project Burn. If you have read my previous posts about it, you know that it is my baby, and I feel very crushed to not have touched it in so long. I just wanted to read what I last wrote on it.

Well I ended up reading it for nearly 30 minutes until I got to the end.

I’m literally crying.

I stopped on a cliffhanger.

I have no notes on this part of the book.

The main character just read a letter that upset him so much he freaked out.

I didn’t write down what was in the letter.

I didn’t write down what was in the letter.

I didn’t write down what was in the letter.

I have no idea what was in the letter!

I don’t even know what to do. It was so good. I can see every scene, every picture. No letter.

No letter.

Oh my god, I don’t know what to do. I feel like it was so important, and now I’ve got nothing.

I’ll either figure it out or come up with something else.

Let me recommend taking notes when you are writing, especially if you are going to abandon the project for nearly two years. smh

Here’s a line that had me gasping

“ His chest was heaving as if he had run across the entire city to arrive at her door.”

I wrote that, omg

“…these raw vials of pain scattered around whichever hut they lived in, she would feel that familiar burn, that thrumming heavy heat in her chest.”

“that thumming heavy heat”

omg

I love it.

Thanks for swinging by today. Can you tell that I actually slept last night?

I want to reread the whole story so far. I can’t believe I gave it up, there is so much good inside of it.

I could write for the whole night, but then I definitely won’t get enough sleep again.

Prompts used so far

1. Write something in the first person
2. Write something in the second person
3. Write something in the third person
4. Write a poem
5. If it gets bad, just writing can be the prompt. Don’t leave the page empty
6. Take a poetry book, grab a line, and continue from there
7. Write something using only dialogue
8. Write a piece about a missing person that was never reported missing
9. Continued from 8 (Burn from a curling iron)
10. Continued from 8+9 (teeth)
11. What is keeping you from working on _____? {Blueberry, a personal project}
12. Write about that moment when you are writing, and you feel the overwhelm of not knowing the end. Or whatever it is.
13. Change the sheet
14. Luck and Magical thinking - what is your relationship with these ideas
15. Continued from 8-10 (A handshake)
16. You haven’t been sleeping, have you?
17. Write a letter
18. Maybe
19. “I’m on my way somewhere, I swear,” Vincent Lima
20. Recap/reflection
21. 1234
22. Pruning
23. Fight someone for control of this piece
24. Cut your own hair
25. There’s a dog outside your kitchen window
26. Crisis
27. Allow someone else to dictate how this goes
28. I don’t want to move on - Tophouse
29. Write a story with absolutely no dialogue
30. Continued from day 29 - write about a mountain god
31. If you didn’t have to work anymore and could write everyday, how long would it take you to write?
32. Continued from day 29-30 - refuse the call to action
33. It hurts to look at the snow
34. Write about that baby you have been dreaming about
35. Talk about someone you are struggling to deal with
36. Talk about the project you have been avoiding
37. Coming home after a night of drinking
38. Crossing paths with a small family
39. I don’t want to write today
40. Recap/Reflection

Since I continued a couple pieces over multiple days I went ahead and created prompts that corresponded with the writing for those days, rather then just saying “Continued”

Photo by Christian Bass on Unsplash

This project is a lot of work.

When I came up with the idea I didn’t realize that it was going to be about 2 hours every night. I also wasn’t expecting to be working 47+ hours a week. I wasn’t expecting to get some of the most stressful news of the last year. I wasn’t expecting to be offered a full time job that I will be starting at the end of the month. I wasn’t expecting to get sick or to start having sleeping problems. I wasn’t expecting to feel tired all the time.

I’ve still written something everyday despite all this and that is pretty amazing. I have never stuck with one of my own ideas for so long. I’ve never written every day so consistently. Sometimes the writing is shit and sometimes it leaves me wrecked but I have been showing up for myself in a way i never have before.

I have failed at a most simple part of it, though. Not the writing, not the sharing but the stats. I have been checking the stats on each post and putting a lot of emotion in the responses I am getting. The pieces I pour everything into, where i am raw and broken in front of the world, get nothing. The silly story of a squirrel and a mountain god gets so many.

I wish I didn’t care.

But I am so twisted up and tired.

So twisted up.

Thanks for reading day 40 of 200 days of writing. And thank you for coming along on the writing journey with me even on the days when I’m a bit down in the dumps.

I’ll see you all tomorrow.

I try to get some extra sleep tonight.

I’m starting to get worried

day 39 of 200 days of writing

I don’t want to write again today.

I don’t want to write.

I don’t want to write.

I’m not really sure what is going on inside my head right now.

I just don’t want to. I want to be erased inside a book, or my phone.

I want to sleep but I don’t want to be left alone for too long, Ill get scared. I want to not go to work for days but I won’t be able to handle that kind of time.

I think I’m a little misguided right now.

Maybe my iron is low.

Maybe I need to eat some meat.

I want silence but I can’t bare it.

I feel sick in every pause of conversation. Even my anxiety can’t speak up loud enough and every breath feels like I’m squeezing it out of an exhausted toothpaste tube.

I want to eat and eat and eat and eat.

I’m not hungry and nothing sounds good.

don’t make me do anything

i can’t

Photo by Patrick Pierre on Unsplash

its day 39.

i wonder how i am feeling about that.

I want to say I am tired but i am so tired of saying I’m tired.

But i am so tired. I just don’t think sleeping would help it.

I think I want to see the ocean. I’d really like to see the ocean actually.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a round up of all the prompts I have used so far. I hope you’ll follow along to see it.

When I crossed paths with the little family that lives across the street the three of them where holding hands.

Day 38 of 200 days of writing.

I came up the wide alley as they crossed it on the sidewalk and when the boy saw me he let go of his sisters hand. He pulled it with such force she tripped forward. They, all three, looked at me and I looked at them.I saw the weight of that moment. I saw the confusion on the little girls face as he looked up to her brother. This must have been the first time he let go of her hand, stopped being her brother and became just a boy trying to look like a man. I saw something close to fear in that boys face. something sour and cold in the way his smile shifted into a hard masculine set. And I saw the pained pinch on the fathers face.

It felt poignant and painful. I felt guilty as they passed by, as if I was the one that exposed this boy to ridicule or hatred. But I did nothing. I just watched as the little girl reached to take the boy’s hand again and he brushed it off. I wanted to say something. Tell him it was okay. I wanted his father to correct his behavior. But the boy did nothing wrong. How do you have a conversation about such a small moment? How could I possibly comfort him in the split second our paths crossed?

I guess I don’t know what to do with what that moment left me with. I feel like I was left in the alley holding the broken a shell of the little boy that used to run up and down the street, his father calling after him not to go too far. I feel like I watched the first sprout of pain in a little girl that looked up to her brother, would chase him down the street giggling and calling after him. It rally felt like I watched that family shed a bit of its innocence onto the cracked pavement.

Photo by Limor Zellermayer on Unsplash

Thanks for coming for day 39.

I was planning on writing to a prompt today but when I had this moment on my walk home I knew i needed to write about it. I feel like I have still only begun to scratch at the well of meaning and poignancy of this interaction. I was the oldest in my family I am sure that there were moments like this for my siblings. I wonder if they remember them cause I don’t but I can imagine the pain that might linger after something like this.

This poor boy. I just wanted to scoop him up and show him that it doesn’t matter. That it more admirable even to continue to hold your little sisters hand. The way his smile fell as he saw me. As if he had been caught doing something bad. All while his father, his actually authority, was right there seeing the same things I was seeing.

I am sure in that moment he was realizing that he couldn’t shield his son of the realities and pressures of the world. I am sure he was seeing himself, feeling the echo of his own breaking as he faced the expectations of toxic masculinity.

I guess all of this is to say that a bit of my heart broke today. I’ve picked up the shell of this family and this interaction and I am going to keep the pieces together. There might be more I could mine from this, more i could learn.

I hope you are having a good day. I will see you tomorrow for day 39.

I have been out late today and I didn’t prepare anything before hand. Ill have to share just a little bit of tipsy rambling as my writing today.

day 37 of 200 days of writing.

I have been about chatting and drinking with my coworker today. we had an event with a pretty big time journalist. I didn’t get to meet them but the event was short and easy so it left us with plenty of time to grab a beer and chat afterwards, though we really did spend a little too long out.

We got to talk about a lot of things and I aired a lot of my worries that i have been holding in. I’m not sure that it was the best idea but it is done.

I don’t feel like my world is ending but I am a little sad that no one read my last post. I am glad that people are liking my story about the squirrel. I really would like to finish it some day.

I hope everyone is having an okay Monday. I hope you week goes well. I am going to go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow for day 38.

I feel that I have been eclipsed by my own work. How small I must think myself to be lost in the shadow of a paltry, incomplete project.

Day 36 of 200 days of writing

Today, I wanted to write about my heart project. Instead of a prompt or a general journal, I wanted to talk to you guys, the ether, or god about Burn.

I wanted to talk about Burn because I want Burn. I want to write Burn. I want to want to write Burn.

I’ve used so many diminishing and cruel words to describe Burn. I’ve called it corny, cliched, stupid. I’ve avoided talking about it so that people couldn’t laugh and they couldn’t be able to arch a brow at it. I was preempting the moral judgment I thought they would make. Prescribing it to myself and cutting my self and my work down until the candle of my work was boiled in venom and disappeared.

I am going to be kinder now, for the girl who thought up Burn and bore the weight of her own vitriol.

Burn is about a girl.

Burn is about magic.

Burn is about scars and change.

It’s about meeting people and losing people, not to death but to your own choices, and not being able to fix things. Burn is about a little girl and a man. It is about a woman and a kingdom. It is about fire. It is about so much fire. Burn is about religious extremism as a result of trauma. Burn is about trauma. It’s about bodily autonomy. It’s about war. It’s about meeting people and living. It’s about living regardless. Regardless of the pain and the loss and the fire and the change. Burn is about a lot of change. Changes that the main character isn’t ready for, isn’t willing to face. Burn is about a lost queen. Burn is about a reluctant hero. It’s about love above all else. It’s about travel. It’s about secrets. It might even be about drugs, I haven’t decided yet. Burn is about a hawk. It’s about parents and doctors and soldiers and kings. It’s about a golden past and rose colored glasses. It’s about little sisters. It’s about old friends.

Burn

I think of burn often.

I think about Marcel, her name almost as natural to my lips as my own. I think of Arrand, Lilith, and Cherith. I think of the Frye. I think of their magic and what it means to be them in the world I have created. I think of all of this, and I feel afraid. I think of all of this, and I am at the bottom of a mountain in my bare feet and night gown, clutching my stuffed tiger, blinking into the moonlight. It’s so much easier to turn around and head home. It’s so much easier to not climb the mountain, even if everything I’ve dreamed of is at the top. Even if when I get home and lie back down in my bed, tiger clutched in my arms, smelling of the outside, I fall asleep and see myself there at the top night after night.

It’s easier to be such a good writer if I only had the time than to be the writer who was bad when she tried.

Photo by Malcolm Mittendrin on Unsplash

Thanks for coming by today. I really need people right now. I also think I needed to face this. Burn has been this spector thats been following me around since the beginning of this project. It is like the moon, always there, sometimes faint, sometimes marvelous.

I want to write Burn. That little girl who sits in the writer’s seat wants to write Burn. But there’s this other snapping voice that snips and slashes at her every time she shares her voice. That voice has beedy blood shot eyes. She spits when she speaks, and I am afraid of her. It’s hard to face a part when you are afraid of them. When what you feel is anger, there is sternness and compassion that you can bring to the table. When it is sadness, there is love and comfort. But when it is fear, how do you look it in the eyes and ask it to change? How do you look it in the eyes to begin with?

I wonder why I am feeling so unwell today. I am hoping things aren’t getting bad again. I’m just feeling pretty alone and small today. I want to want, I want to want. It’s been the refrain of the last couple days with me. Getting your period, bad news, and then a cold really does a number on a girl. I want to say goodbye today with some lines from Burn. I struggled to read through it today, but I really think I needed it. When I finish it, and it is a book, I hope you’ll give it a read.

—————-

Seth was not there. Marcel knew instinctively where he was. She knew that he was gone. That Anna would not be this way if he weren’t inside that crumbled, crackling house.

Marcel stumbled towards her now smaller family, soot-soaked and coughing. She stood silhouetted by the fire’s light, the dagger in her hand hummed like bees, and she felt the bite of the metal like stingers in her palm as the knife burst into flames.

The crowd watched as she held the blade before her, the heat licking her skin but not burning. Even though it didn’t hurt, she felt the sobbing cracking of her chest increase. Everyone watched in shock. Anna was the only one who did not turn to stare,

The people’s faces were blurred by the dark and the tears in Marcel’s eyes, but she heard the whispers turn into shouts.

“Look what she’s done.”

“I knew she was a curse.”

“Monster” “Beast” “Fryemen”

The little girl tried to choke out a denial, an explanation, but she only coughed. The blades’ flame grew taller in her hands. She cried out in fear, and the crowd flinched back a step.

Suddenly, from above her, a voice.

“Ah, there you are, Marcel.”

————–

I don’t feel like writing anything today

Day 35 of 200 days of writing

I don’t want to write anything today. I don’t even want to give you my tired little journal.

I’m tired.

I’m always tired.

I need to get over the dislike I am feeling toward someone. Especially as I am moving into a space where I will be with them so much more. I was wondering throughout the day about how I should communicate or hold my boundary around this person. I even caught myself googling “how to deal with people who…”

But it is hard to communicate, so my searches were not pulling up much.

I don’t know if I want to be blunt or if I want to keep brushing the behavior off. I know I am not going to play along.

I wonder why I have always struggled with other Pisces, lol.

Some of the issue is that I get the feeling that this person is being fake with me. I get very uncomfortable with people who are very artificial or performative.

I am not sure what has changed in me lately, but I really don’t feel a lot of anger. When a customer is rude or someone brushes me off, it just kind of slides off. I watch it happen, and I feel more surprise than anger or hurt. Just 4 months ago, this was completely different. Something changed, and I want to put some signifier to the starting point, but I don’t know if there is one. There probably isn’t.

Photo by Hanna Lazar on Unsplash

I’m sure that this is completely disjointed, but I’m not going to read it over. Maybe there is something in here I’ll regret saying. Maybe there is something here that I need to explore more. Maybe I’m just too tired.

See you tomorrow.

The first time I dreamt of her, she wasn’t even there. I dreamt of her in my hometown at the library, checking out picture books to read to my big belly. I was waiting for him to come back from work; he was on a business trip, and I was due any day. The other patrons at the library chidded me for being out, knowing just how far along I was. I giggled back, brushing off their concern. Then I felt the contractions starting, right there in my hometown’s little library, and immediately I was afraid. Afraid that I would have to do it alone.

I first saw her when I was dating a man. She wasn’t a baby but a little girl. A little treasure made up of brown curls and giggles. She wore jean shorts and a pink top, and she smiled with one single dimple. That’s how I knew she was mine. We were outside, in the grass somewhere. She was excited, and I was happy, and I knew we weren’t alone, but I didn’t see anyone else there with us.

The last time I saw her, she was a baby. Impossibly small and red, skin leathery and dry, and she was crying so hard. I held her in my hands, feeling the heat of her. I knew she was sick, I knew she was in pain, but I didn’t know what to do. I tried to get her temperate as she screamed and screamed. I watched the thermometer go up and up. 101.3 102.5 103 104.6… I woke up with a start, knowing that it couldn’t be real but searching my sheets for the shadow of her warmth.

I have the feeling that she is with me. That she is inevitable. It is only a matter of time before I find her, carry her, have her. She is my everything.

…

Prompt - Write about that baby you have been dreaming about

An actual photo of me as a child

Hello, thanks for reading Day 34 of 200 days of writing. Wasn’t I a cute kid? I tried to keep this piece a little artful, but I found it much more explorative than I was expecting. And I’ve got a lot of thoughts.

I have dreamt about this little girl so many times. For a while, I thought of her as the child I would someday have. The problem is, I don’t plan on ever having any children. And even when I think that it doesn’t feel like I have lost my connection with her. In writing this, I started to wonder who that little girl is, and could it possibly be me?

When I had the dream about the sick baby, it was around the time that I was ignoring some growing problems in my life. I wasn’t taking care of the pain and grief that I was feeling, and I was numbing out with books and games.

When I was dating that man, I was so close to self-love. I felt confident and secure. I felt like I was being, at that time anyway, the most authentic version of myself. And I was having so much fun. It was first love, it was sunshine, it was rainbows, until it wasn’t.

I had the dream about me being pregnant around the time I felt my first shift. It was a little after college when I was starting to really evaluate who I was and what it meant to be. My “self” was on the edge of being born, and I was afraid to do it alone.

Alone

That’s part of the reason it wasn’t my future child that I was dreaming about. I have always been afraid to be alone in my body. It is overwhelming. How am I supposed to make all those decisions about my life? How am I supposed to live with the results of all those decisions? I think if it were my child, there would have been someone there. I wouldn’t have been alone. ]

But who knows? Dreams are such a vague thing.

I hope you enjoyed it, and let me know if you’ve had any interesting recurring images in your dreams.

It hurts to look at the snow

Somewhere behind the eyes
in a place that doesn’t make sense
to explain.

We say it hurts our eyes
but it’s something deeper
something past the eyes
but not quiet in the brain.

I might call it the soul,
if I’m feeling romantic
Or the void if I’m not.

Looking at the snow hurts in a way
that looking at the sun doesn’t.
You can look away from the sun, 
but the snow is everywhere. 

It forces you to look up as you walk.
Forces you to see beyond your own footsteps
Beyond the path. 

It hurts to look at the snow
but I can’t help looking.
It feels like if I look hard enough
I’ll see myself looking back. 

And I’ve always wanted to be able to look back.
I look into the snow, blinking into the pain,
hoping for a chance to see her. 

Photo by Fabian Mardi on Unsplash

Welcome to day 33 of my 200-day writing challenge.

The prompt for today was - It hurts to look at the snow

I didn’t think I had anything in me to get any writing done today. I am not feeling the best right now. But when this prompt came up, I didn’t even consider searching for another. This piece didn’t hit me. It didn’t overtake me. It felt like a controlled pour onto the page.

and maybe it’s no good

i don’t really know.

But it is done. I wrote today, a day I wasn’t sure I’d be able to.

It’s a bit funny to be writing this after winter ends, when where I live is flirting with the idea of 70-degree weather. But maybe it is that exact distance that helps me write about it.

There’s a quote that I am thinking about that is about the exact distance and perspective. It’s someone talking about not being able to write about a place until they have moved away from it. For some reason, the names that are coming up in my head are John Green and Joan Didion. I have no idea if it was either of them. It goes along with the quote from Hemmingway “Never write about a place until you’re away from it, because it gives you perspective.” This person I am thinking way talking in more detail about the cities they lived in.

Anyways,

I hope you liked this little poem, and I hope to see you all again tomorrow.

take care

For three days, the young god sat at the bottom of the little aquirrerls tree. Every time he popped his head out of his tree home, a little voice came from below.

“Please, won’t you help me?”

And he’d scuttle back into his home. On the third day, the squirrel was getting restless. He wanted to feel the wind in his fur. He wanted to climb to the top of the trees.

The squirrel crept as close as he could to the opening in the tree trunk, listening for any sad little sniffles or scuffing hooves. All we heard was the faint whistle of the wind.

The squirrel poked his little nose out of the tree hole and sniffled. All he could smell was snow.

The squirrel popped his head out and peered around the forest floor. He saw nothing, just the snow that piled up over the last three days.

At last, the little squirrel could leave his home, feel the wind in his fur climb to the tops of the biggest trees. Before he knew it, he was scampering down the tree and scuttling around in the thick powder snow. The cold bit his tiny squirrel toes, and slow-falling snowflakes flew into his nose. He looked up into the trees, trying to decide which to climb. The sun shone so bright it tickled his nose, and he let out a great, terrible sneeze.

“Bless you,” came a soft voice from a snow drift next to the squirrel’s tree.

Photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash

Hello and welcome to day 32. This was all I could manage today. I have a lot that I am working on and trying to figure out, so I wasn’t able to write much more.

I like this little story, though. And it is pretty refreshing to write something for kids. There’s not a lot of pressure to sound cool or smart. You get to focus a lot more on the story.

I hope I get some more time to work on it soon, but I have a couple of large stressors that I need to deal with before I’ll have much free time.

I hope you are having a good day, and I will see you all tomorrow, hopefully, with more to write.

Prompt: If you didn’t have to work anymore and could write every day, how long would it take you to write?

Here’s what I’d like to say.

Each morning I’d wake up early, somewhere between 6 and 6:30 in the morning. I’d make my breakfast while reading a book. Then I’d pet my cats for a bit before going out to a coffee shop and sitting there sipping coffee’s and tea’s and munching scones while I write out thousands of words by hand. I’d use the cafe regulars as inspiration, and I’d feel the sun and the breeze before going home for a late lunch. Then I’d work out or tend a garden before settling in front of my computer for the next couple hours to type out what I had written. It wouldn’t take me long to write. I’d write every day, without fail. 

Romantic and simple, isn’t it?

I think I know myself better than that now, though. 

I think I would still struggle to write. I think I would be waiting for the other shoe to drop and convincing myself I couldn’t lose myself to my writing so that I couldn’t be surprised by that second shoe. 

Frustrating.

There are many reasons I have stopped myself from writing. Sometimes it’s ideas of money, sometimes setting, but most often it was time.

“I don’t have time”- the common refrain of people who dream of writing but never actually do, myself especially. Even when I was barely working, I didn’t write. If I didn’t write, I couldn’t do bad writing, and I could sit comfortably in the thought that if I had time, I’d be such a good writer. 

…

But I’d never actually be ‘such a good writer.’ I’d just bear the weight of the potential. 

That shit’s heavy though. I’d rather just embody that potential rather than carry it around.

Is this striking a chord with you? 

It’s painful, isn’t it? That cognitive dissonance between wanting to do something, dreaming of it every night, and not doing it. Not taking the steps to do it.

There is always another reason or excuse. 

But what I am learning is that things won’t change until the weight of that dream becomes more than the weight of the reasons. There will be a point when the weight shifts and it’s your job to know where your point is. 

I couldn’t bear the weight and the pain of not being a writer anymore. It hurt so much more than the comfort of saying I didn’t have the time. I could hear that little girl, the little writer crying inside of me, and I kept ignoring her for so long. Somewhere in January, the weight of her cries became more than the weight of the time constraints or the insecurity. Thus, 200 days of writing.

This project may be proof that all this isn’t quite true for me anymore. But with each change a person makes, it takes a while to come to terms with the new iteration of themselves. I think I am changing now. That alone will take time, and once this change is done, I will then have to relearn myself. More time. 

If only I could take a step back and not mourn the moments that pass. If only I could feel like I have the time. 

Photo by Payton Tuttle on Unsplash

. Thanks for reading today’s post.

I had this thought while I was lying in bed with a low fever today. I knew it was something I needed to write about today. There was some stuff I needed to work out. I am sure that this is pretty disjointed. It really is more of a journal entry than a writing piece, but I think there are thoughts here that other people need to hear. I am hoping that you are finding this when you need to.

Take a moment and look at your life. Look at your reasons for a bit. Are there reasons there that you are weight-ing more than you’d like? Do you know where the point of change is? At what level of distress do you have to hit to be forced to make a change?

Maybe those questions are a little harsh or tough. But they are the ones that have been going through my head a lot lately, and they are the ones I am trying to answer. I think if I were asked these questions a year ago, I would have felt very defensive. I probably would have stormed out of the room. Now they are questions I am asking myself of my own volition.

Change.

Once my biggest fear,

Now my aspiration.

Day 30 of 200 days of writing

Continued from day 29

Suddenly, the squirrel felt the chill of the air for the first time.

The whole forest seemed to stand still, watching the squirrel and the beast. Even the creaking trees quieted and stood still to hear the sniffling cry of the beast. 

The little squirrel was actually the oldest of his litter and often helped his mom care for his younger siblings. So when he heard the beast’s big wet sniffles he heart broke a little. But as much as he wanted to help, he was just too little. The beast would squash him with one foot if he got too close. But the squirrel had nowhere else to go, no one he could ask for help. The beast was crying at the base of his tree home, and most of the forest was fast asleep for the next two months. The squirrel squeezed his hands a couple times, wondering what he should do. 

Just then, the beast let out another loud cry, and it broke the squirrel’s heart so much that before he knew what he was doing, he was scampering over to the beast. He sniffed the air a couple times as he hopped closer. The beast smelled of cold air and pine needles. The beast didn’t seem to notice he was there. 

I took nine squirrel hops to get from the beast’s tail to its head. The squirrel could feel the heat coming from the beast’s body.  He clambered past its large brown horns until he sat at the base of the tree in front of the big crying eyes. He reached out a little paw and rested it on the beast’s fleshy pink nose. 

Suddenly, the beast’s eyes shot open, and the squirrel tensed its little body, ready to run as fast as he could so as not to get eaten. The eyes that looked at him were a solid, deep night blue; they sparkled as if they held the stars in them. And just like that, the squirrel knew he wouldn’t be eaten or squashed. He knew this beast wouldn’t harm him. He was staring right into the eyes of the mountain. Or to be more correct, the future owner of the mountain, because the beast in front of him was actually still just a kid. 

The squirrel pet the young god’s nose and a inal tear fell from her starry eye. 

“I want to go home.”

The thought came into the squirrel’s mind not so much as words but as a feeling. He knew they weren’t his feelings but those of the god in front of him. But the squirrel had no way of getting a god hime. He was just a little squirrel.

“Please help me,” came the thought. 

But the young squirrel was suddenly feeling a lot of fear. He wasn’t sure if it was his own or if it was the goats. Either way, he took a step back and shook his little head. 

A new big blue tear grew in the god’s eyes as she watched the squirrel retreat up the large oak tree and disappear into his tree home hole. 

“Please,” she sent the thought out as a big, bleating sob escaped from her throat. Wouldn’t anyone help her get back to her mountain? 

Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash

This is how I imagined the goat god’s eyes. You know how their pupils are horizontal? I kind of imagined the cluster of stars like that. As I do a rewrite Ill add more detail to that.

I hope you liked his continuation. I am facing that feeling of overwhelm right now. The overwhelm by my own idea that I often get when I am faced with a large project.

Short pieces can get done in one sitting, but these large pieces could take weeks or months or even years. My concept of time doesn’t do well with that smh.

Day 30 is another milestone, but I’m not feeling much with this one. Still too stressed about a couple of other things in my life right now.

That’s all for now. I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Day 28 of 200 days of writing

In which we hear the other side of day 23. Please give it a read and then come back to this one.

Prompt - I don’t want to move on by Tophouse

I don’t wanna move on.

I don’t wanna move on

I don’t
I do-
I want to be pulled kicking and screaming. Don’t make time happen.
Don’t make me change and ache and cry.
I don’t want to.
I want to stay here. 

I can’t
I can’t do this
Please, let me stay, don’t make me go.
How am I supposed to let this go?
How am I supposed to move to something different?
This
This is everything 
Everything that I am
How am I supposed to move on?
How?
How??
HOW??
All I know is this.
All I know is this, right here. 

I can’t do it.
please, I can’t
It hurts
Please please please
It hurts
How am I supposed to change?
I am the only thing I know, the only thing I have.
Why do I have to change her?
Don’t make me
Please don’t make me
Please Abbie
I’m so scared
It hurts so much
Abbie, please don’t 
Please

We have to

Photo by Artyom Kabajev on Unsplash (I had to change the image because the first one had the post flagged, smh)

Hello,

I hope you went back to day 23 to give it a read before reading today’s post. If you didn’t let me implore you to give it a read now.

I felt some tightness and resistance to writing on day 23, but I wasn’t sure what to say about it. I wasn’t sure what that tightness was. Here it is, though. For five days, I ignored that tightness, and it led to quite a lot of turmoil inside of me lately.

Here is the voice we didn’t hear in day 23.

Here is the voice I struggle with a lot lately.

Here is the child in me whose dad suddenly started having heart attacks, and she didn’t know what to do cause he yelled and screamed so much, and she had to be strong cause how was her little brother supposed to deal with it?

Here is the little girl whose mom yelled at her for comforting her little brother when he was fussy cause that was “the mom’s job.”

This is the little girl who started to see the reality of her parents’ hoard and decided to turn inside cause she couldn’t deal with all of it and survive.

I wish I could hold her and show her how to face these things. I wish I could sit at her side and tell her exactly how we would make it through it. I wish I could tell her that dads don’t die, even if they weren’t the best dads.

I wish someone could have sat with her then.

I will now. From now on, I will.

But it hurts so bad to see her there, so scared.

Writing this was tough.

writing this reflection, even tougher.

I really thought I had been listening to that girl. I thought I had been giving her time to express her pain and her fear.

I guess I wasn’t

This ripped out of me,

about so many more things than I can even explain.

I hope your weekend goes well. I hope you are listening to each part and each iteration of yourself as you go. Just listening can do so much.

Thanks for reading.

Day 29 of 200 days of writing

Prompt - Write a story with absolutely no dialogue.

The squirrel didn’t have a name. He didn’t have a name, but his mother always called him with a soft chirp that lifted at the end. For each of his siblings of his litter, his mother’s chirp started the same, but lifted or trilled or bubbled or dipped at the end. For his, she lifted the note. And he always felt like that prescriptive or fate or something that only a mother could know about her babies.

For the squirrel loved the sky and the wind. He loved the chill of the winter breeze as the other squirrels skampered over the powder snow, curling their big bushy tails into tight balls of winter fur and toasty warm fat. He preferred to climb to the top of trees, cling to the thin, creaking branches, and relish in the cool and concentrated heat of the sun on his eyelids.

On the third day of snow after the leaves fell, the squirrel was settling into the branches at the top of the tree that held his home. It was the tallest in that area of the forest ti reach so far up it nearly scratched the sky. He contented there, feeling the damp cool tickling his tail and frosting his nose.

That is, until there was a great terrible thump beneath him, followed by the gentle sway of his tree. He ignored it, sure it was a young buck rubbing the velvet off his antlers or a bear with a stubborn itch. He kept his eyes closed, thinking about the acorns he had waiting for him in his tree hole house.

After a moment, there was another great terrible thump, and the tree swayed back and forth. It swayed so hard that the little squirrel was jostled from his lounging. He was determined to ignore the interruptor, though. So he settled back into the crook of the branch he was lounging in without looking down.

But a minute later, he was interrupted again by that great terrible thump and the force of that sway, and the loudness of that thump knocked him right off his branch, and he fell three branches down before he caught himself.

The squirrel let out a loud, indignant squeak as he peered down at the interrrupter. But there was no one there. There was only crumpled snow and the tips of leaves and the tops of grass peaking out.

The squirrel began a slow, cautious descent down the thick brown oak tree. When he was the last branch from the bottom, he heard hooves. Before he could decide whether he should scramble up the tree again or anchor his little claws into the tree bark, there was that great terrible thump. The poor little squirrel flew through the air, thrown from the branch he was clinging to, and as he flew, he had the thought maybe it was actually a knock, not a thump. A very loud, forceful knock. A knock that had knocked him right out of the tree and into the powder snow.

The squirrel squeaked another harsh squeak, ready to fling himself at the interrupter, scratch at its face, pull on its lips, bite on its paws. But when he looked up and saw the identity of his interruptor, he stopped.

Sat there at the bottom of the squirrel’s tree was a large beast, much larger than the squirrel, much larger than the young buck or his father or even the ever-itchy bears. Sitting at the bottom of the squirrel’s tree was a beast of white fur, with large, brown horns curled around its head and hooves that clicked as it stretched its body and shook its giant head.

The squirrel let out a long, low squeak as it stared at the giant beast. It looked much like the goats that lived in the mountains near the forest. The squirrel had never seen one up close before, but he was sure the ones he saw were not this big. The beast stood nearly two brown bears tall with hooves bigger than the squirrel was long. The beast let out a large huff of air as it looked up the squirrel’s tree home and into the sky. Then it let out a long bleating cry and crumpled into the snow.

Suddenly, the squirrel felt the chill of the wind for the first time.

Photo by Philipp Deus on Unsplash

Hello,

Welcome to day 29 of my 200-day writing challenge. How do you like my stab at a children’s book? I think if I actually continue this idea, it would be more of a middle-grade reader, something like the Wild Robot books by Peter Brown.

I have an idea of where this story might go, but no real plot points. And if I continued, I don’t know if I would continue to write the story without any dialogue. I think it would be a fun challenge, but I don’t know how well that would actually translate later down the road. Make it exist first, though, right?

It was nice to write something fun and fictional. I have been dealing with so much mental stuff lately, and I felt a little dread when I thought about starting my writing for today. And that made me a little sad. I really don’t want to dread or resent this writing challenge.

But this piece was a good reminder that I don’t have to be searching my soul every time I am writing. No need to “Sit down at the typewriter and bleed.”

(Who else was obsessed with that quote from Hemingway?)

As I was writing this, I was imagining all the little drawings that might accompany it if it were a picture book. (I think it’s too long for that, though.)

It was really fun, and I think I might continue it tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get the reveal on who/what the beast is.

See you tomorrow.

Day 28 of 200 days of writing

In which we hear the other side of day 23. Please give it a read and then come back to this one.

Prompt - I don’t want to move on by Tophouse

I don’t wanna move on.

I don’t wanna move on

I don’t
I do-
I want to be pulled kicking and screaming. Don’t make time happen.
Don’t make me change and ache and cry.
I don’t want to.
I want to stay here. 

I can’t
I can’t do this
Please, let me stay, don’t make me go.
How am I supposed to let this go?
How am I supposed to move to something different?
This
This is everything 
Everything that I am
How am I supposed to move on?
How?
How??
HOW??
All I know is this.
All I know is this, right here. 

I can’t do it.
please, I can’t
It hurts
Please please please
It hurts
How am I supposed to change?
I am the only thing I know, the only thing I have.
Why do I have to change her?
Don’t make me
Please don’t make me
Please Abbie
I’m so scared
It hurts so much
Abbie, please don’t 
Please

We have to

Photo by Artyom Kabajev on Unsplash (I had to change the image because the first one had the post flagged, smh)

Hello,

I hope you went back to day 23 to give it a read before reading today’s post. If you didn’t let me implore you to give it a read now.

I felt some tightness and resistance to writing on day 23, but I wasn’t sure what to say about it. I wasn’t sure what that tightness was. Here it is, though. For five days, I ignored that tightness, and it led to quite a lot of turmoil inside of me lately.

Here is the voice we didn’t hear in day 23.

Here is the voice I struggle with a lot lately.

Here is the child in me whose dad suddenly started having heart attacks, and she didn’t know what to do cause he yelled and screamed so much, and she had to be strong cause how was her little brother supposed to deal with it?

Here is the little girl whose mom yelled at her for comforting her little brother when he was fussy cause that was “the mom’s job.”

This is the little girl who started to see the reality of her parents’ hoard and decided to turn inside cause she couldn’t deal with all of it and survive.

I wish I could hold her and show her how to face these things. I wish I could sit at her side and tell her exactly how we would make it through it. I wish I could tell her that dads don’t die, even if they weren’t the best dads.

I wish someone could have sat with her then.

I will now. From now on, I will.

But it hurts so bad to see her there, so scared.

Writing this was tough.

writing this reflection, even tougher.

I really thought I had been listening to that girl. I thought I had been giving her time to express her pain and her fear.

I guess I wasn’t

This ripped out of me,

about so many more things than I can even explain.

I hope your weekend goes well. I hope you are listening to each part and each iteration of yourself as you go. Just listening can do so much.

Thanks for reading.

Day 27 of 200 days of writing

Prompt - Allow someone else to dictate how this goes

The wind was cold and damp
Stroll
The woods creaked as I walked,
Toes tripping on loose rocks.
Fear
Branches snagging on clothes
It’s quiet and large and covered in green.
Trees bare of leaves reach for the night sky
Ivy sewing together the loose branches
Trunks coated in this pillowy moss
That seems to -
Hungry
Eat the sounds of my steps
Swallowing them whole, gulp, gulp, gulp
Until I somehow feel even more alone. 
Taking blind steps on narrow paths
Dare
I’m peering over the edge
Where it drops off into thick stick trees
Jump, it says jump, and I can feel
My stomach as it does.

Photo by Christian Quadt on Unsplash

I had a very different idea for this prompt when I made the list. I thought for sure I’d actually ask someone to help me with it. Maybe I would have them read a line and tell me where it goes, or have them tell me exactly what type of poem they want.

But in the end, the idea head as I read it over was to have this voice interrupting the narrator and have that voice push the person in different directions.

I didn’t know where to start, but I wanted that voice to subvert the ideas that the narrator had. I started with a boring cheesy line, and I wanted to take the poem much further, but I am catching a cold and have very little strength. But I think there’s a lot of potential with this prompt and a lot of ways that it could be taken. I would love to see how others use it.

I know for a fact this poem that I wrote is not good. No doubt. I could do better. Not today, though. I don’t feel well at all, and I want to sleep for 10-20 years if possible.

I hope you all are having a good end to your February. And I hope to see you tomorrow for day 28 and the end of the first month of my 200-day writing challenge.

Day 26 of 200 days of writing

If there was any way to just make $1000 more every month.

Student loans might kill me. I don’t know how I am going to deal with them.

I wish someone had yelled at me when I was a kid. I really do. I really wish someone had stopped my coasting and made me realize the problems I was causing. But no one did, and now there are thousands and thousands of dollars that need to be paid somehow.

Photo by Ahmed Nishaath on Unsplash

I’m having a hard time dealing with this stress right now, so I don’t think there is much more that I can write.

I need to try to figure something out. If any of you know of a chill job that makes $4000 a month, that’d be super helpful. smh.

Day 25 of 200 days of writing

Prompt - There’s a dog outside your kitchen window

A dog’s been howling outside my kitchen window for two weeks. The dishes have piled up so much that I have started ordering takeout.

I can’t hear it from the livingroom or the bedroom. It seems to know the moment I enter the kitchen, letting out loud, deep yowls that seem to bounce around inside my ear. I can hardly tell which direction the sound is coming from. But I’ve figured out that it is coming from my open kitchen window. It seems cruel to block out the sound of its pain, but I still avoid the kitchen. I imagine it is one of those shaggy grey black dogs. The kind that leaves your hand itchy after you pet it.

I’ve tried looking out the window to see where the poor thing is crying from, but I can’t see anything but paw prints in the snow. It must be so cold out there. My neighbor Tom says he hasn’t heard anything. My other neighbor, Lilly, says it’s not her dog. But every day as I dump my keys in the bowl on the counter, I am greeted by the dog’s howls.

I wish it would stop. I wish someone would help it. I’ve started to hear the howl in every kitchen. As I wait for the whirring coffee pot to splutter out my cup, I hear a whimper, a whine, a squeak of pain. I ask Randy how the new project is going.

After the sound started, I tried waiting in my car outside my house. I thought the dog might show itself, might howl while I waited. But there was nothing, no barking, no howling, not from the dog outside my kitchen window. Lilly’s little dog did yap as I slapped my door shut, but there was no pained cry in response; just defensive yips. I tried peering around the building, but the snow really was so tall, and it really was so cold out.

And there really was no dog.

But once I made it into my kitchen, before the door was fully open, it began to howl. I tried calling the police, but they said they wouldn’t come if I didn’t know where the dog was. I wish I knew where the dog was, then I’d be able to help it. I wonder where the dog is outside my kitchen window.

I called my mom, asked her if she could hear the crying through the phone. She said there wasn’t anything. I held the phone up to the open window. She said she didn’t hear any crying. She told me to close the window. I left it open just a crack.

I feel like I should at least witness the pain if I can’t do anything about it.

The take-out containers are starting to pile up, and there are gnats migrating from the kitchen into the livingroom. I need to do something about the dishes. Something needs to be done about the dog.

The gnats really are getting bad. I need to do something.

I open the kitchen window. The howls roar into the room. I look out. There is only howling.

I howl back.

Photo by maxime caron on Unsplash

This one makes me feel a little odd. I wonder what meaning you take from it. It was another one where I felt it going a couple places as I was writing it. I think if I were to edit it for publication, I would try to lean into something political or something closer to social commentary. I thought about writing “This isn’t about a dog” at the end, but I decided to hint that way with the stand-alone line, “and there really was no dog.”

I didn’t want to break the fourth wall to tell you to examine the piece further. Though I think I did with the line “I feel like I should at least witness the pain if I can’t do anything about it.” Worried that my attempts at subtlety were too much, I said it straight out. Maybe I should have trusted you, reader, more. You probably got it without me saying anything.

I thought this prompt was interesting when I wrote it a month ago. I was surprised at how it came out. I hope you liked it.

Thanks for being here for day 25. I hope to see you all again soon.

Day 24 of 200 days of writing.

In which we cut our own hair.

Prompt - Cut your own hair

Mary cut her hair on a Sunday evening. In the throes of that inevitable feeling of a coming Monday, she dug through her bathroom drawers to find her rusted pair of shears. When she was in college, she took her hair very seriously. Going so far as to carry her scissors and trim her blunt cut micro bangs in her reflection on scuffed steel elevator doors.

Now those bangs hung loose and greasy in her reflection in the mirror in her very own apartment. She couldn’t be bothered to set up a hair appointment during the work week, and she didn’t have it in her to plan so far ahead to snag the elusive Saturday, Sunday spots. Instead, she sat on her couch each weekend, wishing she just didn’t have so much to do, all while doing none of it.

Her reflection blinks back at her, yellow globe vanity lights reflecting off the scissors and into the mirror. She angles her hand so that the light shines into her eyes. The hazel looks almost gold in the light, the green almost black. She thinks something violent.

The sheers clink into the porcelain sink, and she gives herself a long blink. She is sure that if she looks any longer, one of the women in her bathroom will disappear.

She opens her eyes and grabs the scissors again.

Scrinch, that’s how she’d describe the sound. Scrinch

She starts at her left ear, focusing on the sound. She can smell the rust as she moves, watching her hands work and avoiding her own gaze.

The long black hair,

Scrinch

Once past her shoulders.

Scrinch

Those long, greasy bangs

Scrinch

That gold glint in her eyes

Scrinch

Sunday nights.

Scrinch

The scissors clink back onto the counter.

Her neck is cold, and there’s an ache wrapped around her thumb.

She looks at herself again.

Someone she used to know is looking back at her, a golden glint in her eyes.

Photo by Daria Andriianova on Unsplash

Hello, welcome to day 24.

I found this piece a little unexpected. Mundane but heavy.

I like it.

This is one of those where not a lot of editing happened in the process of taking it from the handwritten page to here. That might be evident to you reading this, but to me, in the flushed afterglow of the writing process, it seems so complete and whole.

Either way, I hope you liked it. I hope it made you feel something. I don’t have much to say other than that. Let me know what you think.

I’ll see you all tomorrow.

Day 23 of 200 days of writing

I’m doing this.

I’m doing this.

I’m writing this. I’m changing.

You can’t have control here. I need it.

I need it to be different.

We can’t keep doing this.

We can’t keep having this fight just for you to win and for me to sit back watching everything I dread come to fruition because you can’t bear to feel the discomfort of now knowing.

I don’t know either.

I don’t know that these are the right choices.

I don’t know that these are the right words.

We can’t know.

That’s not an option.

I have to write them.

I can’t stay here.

I can’t be this anymore. You will have to change. I will have to change. Stagnation is not an option.

If I could cup your face in my hands and tell you everything will be fine, I would. If I could hold your body in my arms and rub away the anxiety and the tension in your shoulders, I would. I would do anything for you, and I will. I am expecting you to do the same for me. It’s no longer a wish or a dream. We are doing this. You are coming with me, and you are going to have to change. Now.

You have always wished someone would yell at you, scream in your face.

WAKE UP.

So I am doing it. I’m yelling. I’m telling you.

So listen.

Listen.

To.

Me.

Wake up.

Move.

Change.

Be different. If there are things you hate, change them. There is no force outside of you that will fix things. We have to fix things. Or build new, move, or change.

It can’t wait any longer.

We are not going to do this anymore. We’re not going to have these fights anymore. I can’t bear it. I can’t keep waking up to the same thing.

Move.

Change.

I’m no longer begging. No longer waiting for it to be your idea. We are doing it, together. Now.

It will be scary. It will be painful, but despair won’t be an option, and despair is what I have no tolerance for anymore.

Let’s go.

Photo by Keyur Nandaniya on Unsplash

Prompt - Fight someone for control of this piece

for the last three or so years (possibly as many as 8), there has been a fight going on inside of me.

I remember writing this prompt when I was amassing my list, and I was excited to see what kind of story would come out of it. I wasn’t expecting it to be a manifestation of this fight. This was a long time coming.

The person I was and the person I want to be are two very different, very far apart people, and I am trapped between them. I am caught between my future ambitions and my pasts’ pain. It will eventually have to be enough, and we change, or I’ll have to give up.

After writing this piece, I think it should go without saying, but I’ll say it for both of those people to hear.

I’m not stopping. I’m not giving up.

And I expect you, reader, not to give up either.

This one has felt like running. Running with 30 bricks on my shoulders.

If you’d like to know more about this desire to have someone yell, “Wake up!” into my face, I’d really love to tell you more about it. As it is, this piece has given me a bit of a headache, so I think I’ll be calling it soon. Let me know if you’d like to hear about that or any other line in this piece. They are all pretty much vebatum the images and words that have been going around in my head lately.

I hope you enjoyed. I hope you felt something.

See you next time.

Day 22 of 200 days of writing

Prompt - Pruning

Pruning might be a better way to think about some of the overgrowths in my life. Or maybe it just dulls the ache of calling it a cut.

There are a number of things I need to cut out, things that would benefit from less of …whatever. Things that would grow and flourish from the nutrients lost to fruitless overgrowth. I want to write more. I want to want to write more. This 200-day writing challenge is helping with that, but there were cuts. All of them crude and careless prunes that were made without much input from myself. But they had to be done to allow the nutrients to go to my writing. My sewing has taken a hit. Meals have been lackluster, and keeping things clean has been a struggle.

Some of these places are not where I want to prune; more so, they are places that have begun to wilt and brown as their nutrients are sapped away. It leaves me wondering how to make those trims and changes to keep the balance, to keep the writing fruitful.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Hello and welcome to day 22.

I am posting this very late. I had to work an evening event, and I didn’t think to do it before work. It would have been a lot easier and a lot longer if I had. But I was able to write this piece during some free time.

I have been thinking about the balance in my life lately. In fact, some of the reasons this post is late are that after my late shift, I sat talking with my coworker about this balance and my ideas and plans for the future.

All I know is writing is part of it. Everything else is a means to that end. I want to make enough money to write and get published. I would like to work around books. But I’m not sold on the library. There’s a lot that I don’t enjoy there. There’s not a lot of movement that I can see. And I like the bookstore that I’m in, but there’s still not a lot of movement, and at times it feels insecure.

There isn’t a 100% better option. Each leaves me with about the same amount of money (not enough), and they both have very unpleasant things and good things. I dread the idea of staying at the library for another full year. But it’s not like I can see myself at the bookstore for more than 2 years. Nothing feels right. This limbo I have been in is not so pleasant, but not so bad that I want to jump out.

Maybe the bookstore would be better cause things would be covered and I’d be able to explore other ideas, more sewing projects, more writing.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

I’ll figure it out, or the world will end.

And I don’t think the world is going to end.

Day 21 of 200 days of writing

Prompt - 1234

Stop. Don’t speak. I can’t listen. There’s nothing to say. Not that will change anything. It’s over, just like you wanted. You have her love and her sex. There is nothing more I can give you. You decided to place her before your whole family. I won’t be the one blamed for all this pain. Not when you could have made any other choice. Not when you could have told me sooner. Before I had to find you together. Twisted up in our bed sheets. The ones we bought together. You need to leave. No, it’s over. We’re done. Goodbye.

Photo by Maximilian Bungart on Unsplash

Welcome to day 21.

I really struggled to decide what shape this piece should take.

It seemed natural to write each line separately so that you could see the words per sentence going up until ten and then counting down again, but when I looked it over, it was so disjointed. The lines all felt so choppy. Some of that is due to some poor word choice. I used a lot of one-syllable words because I kept accidentally counting syllables instead of words. So it ended up as a block of text, and now I raise it to you, reader. Did you notice?

This prompt was very vague. There’s a lot I could have done with it, but I am still feeling pretty uninspired, so I wanted to work with form and restriction. I had to be very intentional about each word to make sure it fit the word count and got the point across. It was more fun than I was expecting. I probably could have helped going for a little longer, but I was worried about bringing the word count down to end the poem.

I think it was pretty fun, and I hope you give it a try.

Short little post today. We all need that sometimes. I hope your week is going well. I’ll see you tomorrow for day 22.

Day 20 of 200 days of writing

In which we share the prompts used thus far and reflect a little.

Prompts used so far

1. Write something in the first person
2. Write something in the second person
3. Write something in the third person
4. Write a poem
5. If it gets bad, just writing can be the prompt. Don’t leave the page empty
6. Take a poetry book, grab a line, and continue from there
7. Write something using only dialogue
8. Write a piece about a missing person that was never reported missing
9. Continued from 8 (Burn from a curling iron)
10. Continued from 8+9 (teeth)
11. What is keeping you from working on _____? {Blueberry, a personal project}
12. Write about that moment when you are writing, and you feel the overwhelm of not knowing the end. Or whatever it is.
13. Change the sheet
14. Luck and Magical thinking - what is your relationship with these ideas
15. Continued from 8-10 (A handshake)
16. You haven’t been sleeping, have you?
17. Write a letter
18. Maybe
19. “I’m on my way somewhere, I swear,” Vincent Lima
20. Recap/reflection

I have continued a single piece for a couple days. For those days, I have offered an alternative prompt that you could use, or feel free to use that day to continue on something you have already started.

Photo by Hejar Shahabi on Unsplash

Hello, Welcome to day 20 of 200 days of writing

That is 10% done.

Amazing to think of it that way actaully. I feel like I just barely started, but really, I am 10 % of the way through.

I had every intention to write to a prompt today. I still might do a little handwriting, but I am not feeling very well. I’ve been looking at my computer for a while, and I tried to start a couple times, but I am very tired and a little sick, so I think I’ll just leave it to a reflection.

Writing it out now is coming much more freely than trying to write something creative. I feel like I am talking to you. Whoever you are.

I feel a little overwhelmed by the idea of the next 180 days. Feels like a lot, and it scares me a bit. It’s a lot of work. One to two hours when I get home from work, and some days when I am working 10 hours, it can be a lot. But I am not dreading those 180 days. I am excited and a bit surprised by that reaction.

Even though I am tired, there is no resentment towards the project.

Resentment is an interesting thing for me. I am trying to be more intentional about speaking up and stepping back before I am overcome so as not to create resentment later on. I have already seen a lot of positive effects of this at work. When I get home, I don’t get so bogged down. And with the writing, I think having the space to write nothing, not answering any prompt at all, and just posting some reflection or complaint has been very helpful.

And I do like the little doses of validation I get when someone likes something I have shared, but I also feel fine when a poem or post doesn’t get any reaction at all. That was something I was very worried about before starting. I thought I wouldn’t be getting any reactions at all. and that it would cause me to spiral down and quit. But actually, some people like this weird, unedited stuff I am posting, and I am very grateful for every like and comment I have been getting. (minus the bots, of course)

So far, I have been keeping it a secret from the people in my life. Not for fear of judgment but to keep myself from losing steam, but airing out the idea to others. I still think I will bring it up at some point. I am not ashamed of the project.

But really, I haven’t mentioned it. It is for me. All I say is that I am working on a writing project. I’ve been so motivated and consistent with something for the first time, and it has honestly been a little surprising. I want to thank Andy J. Pizza again because I don’t think I would have had the idea if I hadn’theard him talking about his a drawing a day project he did.

Thank you all for being here and following along on the first 20 days of my 200 days of writing. I look forward to the next 180.

Day 19 of 200 days of writing

Prompt - I’m on my way somewhere, I swear. -Vincent Lima’s song Somewhere

I am on my way somewhere, I swear. 
I am going, I am going, I am going, I am going, I am going, I am going
I am not going to be still anymore.
I’m not going to.
I am on my way somewhere, I swear.
I am not sure where,
Somewhere to the east, then maybe I’ll go west.
I need somewhere new and different. 
I need novelty.
I need some alone time to stop feeling so angry and interrupted. 
I need to have more ideas. 
I want to write these ideas down.
I swear, I am moving again.
Today I feel like a sad and angry child,
but I am moving,
Changing,
Growing. 
I have to be.
What else would you call this?

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I have been thinking about when things changed.

As a child, I was completely oblivious to everything. Naive.

I think when I was supposed to step out of that, I subconsciously came to the conclusion that it was too much. I tried to get help. Tried to express my pain in the only way my mother took seriously, and when even that was ignored, I shut down.

I drifted through life for years. For so damn long.

But something must have happened. Some trigger or catalyst, because I am not drifting now. At some point, I opened my eyes to everything. And I was overwhelmed by everything. I still couldn’t cope, so I continued to drift, but now shrouded in shame.

Then, even more changed inside me, and I am even more different now.

Well, I had a bit of a breakthrough with my therapist on Monday on the subject.

For a week now, I have been wondering, when was it? What caused it?

I needed to talk it out. I knew that writing it wouldn’t work. I knew I needed to say it out loud, where I couldn’t pause and edit the flow of thought. There isn’t someone in my life right now who could listen to something like that. So it had to be my therapist.

It was long and complicated, and I felt the clock ticking down our 55 minutes as I went on and on.

At the end, I was flushed and breathing heavy.

I told my therapist.

“It feels like I’ve been running.”

She said, “It does.”

Not as a question but a statement. And I was so fully inside my own body, so wholly myself, I couldn’t hear a single voice that doubted her. I just believed that she understood. That she could see that I had been running and had just plopped myself on my couch, sweaty and gasping.

Then the session ended,

and I started falling.

All the voices up at once. And I shut down. Shut down in a way I haven’t in a long time. For three days, I have been reading until I get headaches so bad I cry. Less and less sleep each night. No hunger.

It’s kind of scary. To be seeing it happening. To be screaming “don’t let it” to parts that refuse to listen.

Instead of writing something new today, I wanted to share this piece I wrote last year in May, when I felt shifting happening, and I felt angry all the time. I can see in it the beginning of spirit that I’d never had before. Faith and hope in myself. Concepts I used to, and at times still do, cringe away from.

(Three words in that last paragraph highlight themselves to me. Spirit. Faith. Hope. Very religious in nature. I will have to think about those a bit. I am not a religious person.)

I fear this is rambling a bit, so I think I will leave it here.

I have a lot more I could say about the change, but it’s probably only of interest to my therapist and me.

Day 18 of 200 days of writing

Prompt - Maybe

The broiler is on
You left the broiler on
It’s so hot when you use it. 
It takes 15 minutes to walk to work
You wouldn’t be able to run the whole way home
You left the broiler on
The broiler is still on

The blow dryer is still plugged in
You left the blow dryer plugged in when you left
What if one of the cats jumps up on the sink
Stella, who loves sink water, 
And bumps the button
Causing it to run for hours 
And you don’t know.
And the hair you’ve been neglecting to clean out of the filter on the back
Get sucked in and catch fire. 
When you used it this morning, it smelled like burning
And the cats,
Belley, who is afraid of loud noises,
Hides under the bed when the firemen come
And dies from the fire.

You said something rude just now
You came off as so weird and slimy and conniving and egotistical and crude
And weird and weird and weird and weird and weird and weird and weird and weird
They think you are unreliable, that’s why
They are mad at you.
You stink, you stink, you smell because you didn’t shower, you smell because there is something wrong with your body, no one will want to touch you or love you cause you smell, they can smell the litter box off you, you’ve gone nose blind to it
The broiler is on
You’re really just so weird and unpleasant to be around. They didn’t ask you cause they really don’t like you very much. You’re talking too much. You’re going to get in trouble. You’re being loud again. You’re so weird. 

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

hi

this one was tough

I think I have mentioned in a different post that my therapist and I have been talking about an OCD diagnosis.

My head often sounds like this, especially on days I haven’t slept well, I am stressed or if I am getting near my period. For a number of years, I have been very overwhelmed by these feelings. It was actually a really bad OCD episode that pushed me to find a therapist.

I thought I left the broiler on after making my bagel one morning. I was waiting for the bus, and I had the thought. What if I didn’t turn the broiler off? But the bus was coming. I couldn’t run back to my apartment and check, and still make that bus. It would be seven hours before I made it back home. I got on the bus. What if I didn’t turn the broiler off?What if I didn’t turn the broiler off?What if I didn’t turn the broiler off? Two stops later, I pulled the cord and rushed all the way home to check the broiler wasn’t on.

It wasn’t, and I was late for work.

That episode was just a piece of what led to a very bad panic attack later that day.

I used to think it was anxiety. I even had a therapist say that it was anxiety. I don’t think I even really showed her how much these thought loops and spirals inside my head. It isn’t just, I’m worried the broiler is on. It’s: the broiler is on, the broiler is on, the broiler is on, and the cats are going to die. Every time.

I have a lot of trouble with electrical appliances. Just like my mother.

I’m not sure what the next step is. Some day it will probably mean trying out some medication. I’ve tried a couple before and didn’t have the best luck, but like I said, we thought it was just anxiety. OCD is a different thing and needs to be treated as such. For right now, though, I think I am coping a lot better than I was when I had that panic attack, though every time I use the broiler, I have to check multiple times.

Earlier this year, I was learning a lot about dealing with OCD, and one of those posts was talking about responding to those OCD “what if’s” by saying “Maybe,” but saying it like Elijah Wood says it in the infamous “Will You Wear Wigs” interview.

I don’t know that it is actually good advice, but I have used it a number of times. I didn’t like the advice at first; it felt so callous to just shut away that worry. After some time, though, I think of it more as showing myself that I can’t ever have absolutes. My head wants 100% all of the time. But that’s not possible. I can’t be 100% sure the blow dryer is unplug and the cats aren’t on the bathroom counter, somehow pushing the button. Thats too many pieces for me to be 100% about.

so

You left the blow dryer plugged in

maybe