At the exact moment this blog is published, 4:26 pm on March 14th, I will turn 50. As you read this, if you come across it on that day, I will be on the sand in Assateague, listening to the waves and looking at wild horses. Arguably my happiest place, and the only place I would like to be on all of my momentous occasions (anywhere near the ocean).

As I write this, though, 11 days earlier, I have sprung up from my yoga mat to make notes. I was following yoga with Adriene’s hip and heart practice in an effort to become a more open person with better balance on a horse, and once the video ended and I lie there breathing quietly, the YouTube automatically forwarded to Ethan Hawke’s most recent TEDTalk.

I thought, well, I’ll just take a nice extended savasana and listen, but only a few minutes in I found myself reaching for my phone to take notes. I have been reflecting in the past several months about creativity, my own in specific, and curiously watching the well dry. I have felt disinclined to write poetry and have not completed a painting (or even put together a canvas) since mid-2020.

And as 50 approaches, I have begun to consider the next 50 years (my grandmother is 102, so that’s not outside the realm of possibility). Among other quotes, this one stands out for me:

“The time of our life is so short, and are we spending it doing something that’s important to us? Most of us not.”

Just this morning KWeeks and I were talking about doing what we love – getting up every day and going to work that is not just a way to fill the endless daytime hours before binge-watching TV and falling asleep on the couch but is instead a buoyant expression of what we love.

Because as Ethan Hawke says above, “If you get close to what you love, who you are is revealed to you.”

I am lucky enough in my life to have the time and space to move ever closer to what I love – to unravel the tangled past and dive into things that are troubling, joyful, and deep. But there is no formula or self-help book here – no treatise of any value that gives legitimate steps to finding out what you love and thus meeting yourself. Ethan Hawke continues, “There is no path until you walk it.”

I returned to the mat, listening to the last parts of his talk and reflecting on my own life and considering the conversation with KWeeks. I want the next 50 years of my life to be spent getting closer to what I love, peeling away the layers of my experience to become more fully revealed to myself. It is only this, as Ethan Hawke says, that allows us to connect with the world and the people around us more fully, this act of walking our own particular path, that we make, that is what marks our place in the infinite, swirling universe. I know as spring comes the groundwater of my creativity will begin to dampen the earth again. I will be filled up, as the well itself.

I imagine as I write this the feeling of sand between my toes, gritty but melting away beneath me as the sea swirls around my ankles. The salt wind brushing the hair from my face as seagulls whirl and cry above. The hand of KWeeks in mine, in that moment and for the next 50 years.

Against all odds and at the impossible age of 50, I am hopeful, on the path and laying flagstones ahead as I walk it.

I don’t have many encouraging words right now. I am in quarantine, unexpectedly, and the 8th anniversary of Dane’s death is approaching. The winds are high, and my anxiety is leveling up exponentially as we barrel full-steam into an unpredictable year. So I offer these words, to myself and to you, on this extraordinary inauguration day.

For this days, and all of the others to come, HOLD YOUR OWN.

Thanks to Gina Hogan Edwards for posting this extraordinary reminder today of what is important.

Every year, and KWeeks makes a little fun of me for this, I record all of the books I read. I do this for several reasons, not the least of which being that I have the short-term memory of a fruit fly, and I will literally forget what I have read from January to December.

That’s not such a big deal until the third time you think a book looks really good, so you buy it…and it’s already on your bookshelf. And you have already read it. Sometimes more than once.

This year I also began keeping track of how many male-identified and female-identified authors I read, plus how many writers of color I reach for without going out of my way. This year, I read:

My total number of books was 77. The discrepancy between my total and the above numbers is because I read multiple books by the same author. The percentage of authors of color is 25% of the total – in line with the demographics of the U.S., but not nearly enough, IMVHO. This past year I just kept reading like I do to get a baseline, and I hope to incorporate less white-centric books in 2021.

I won’t bore you with the entire list, some of which is completely forgettable, even written down, but here are my top 13 books, in the order in which I experienced them.

I was going to put stars by the ones I really recommend, but I just can’t. They were all so fucking good.

Salvage the Bones by Jessmyn Ward

Upstream by Mary Oliver

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

The Leftovers by Tom Perrota

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams

Walk Through Walls by Marina Abramovic

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deeshaw Philyaw

The History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

Transcendant Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa by Marilyn Chase

Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Top 13 for 2020 – a mix of non-fiction, one exceptional book of short stories, and fiction. Some stunning writing in this list, and I recommend each one of these unreservedly – purchased from your local bookstore, not Amazon, natch.

I already have a list longer than my arm, but tell me what I missed last year – what books should have been on my radar, and what should I look out for next year?

Happy reading!

A week ago today, the nation suffered through the actual day of election after weeks of mail-in ballots and early voting and pontificating and bullshit leading up to it..

Four days later, president-elect Joe Biden was announced while the current president went golfing and the nation’s COVID rate spiked sharply.

Today, the current administration refuses to acknowledge their defeat. They believe, somehow, that election results favoring Republicans down ballot were somehow legitimate but the main event was bogus, a stolen election, a lie.

Preposterous. Unthinkable. A coup being staged by senior administration officials in the current administration. A(nother) stain on this country.

I am having a hard time spending time on this blog. I will still bake, cook, and write. But it seems insignificant and stupid to post anything right now.

Now is a time for reflection, renewed action, and meaningful planning.

Look after the vulnerable people in your life and wear your fucking mask.

Cancel your Thanksgiving plans and wash your hands.

I may or may not continue here. For now, I need to come out of the virtual space and make attempts to ground myself and not hate the 70 million people who voted (and all of those who chose, yet again, to sit one out).

Take care of yourselves. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side.

So I am reading The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, a book from 2017 that reminds me of how elemental it is to retreat to a natural space when it’s time to consider things – to reflect, if you will.

This week, KWeeks and I hit the road for a couple of days to camp, only to realize on our one full day there how challenging it is to just leave everything behind simply because you get in the car and make the wheels turn.

But sitting on the banks of any kind of water, surrounded by birdsong and only just a faint hint of traffic noise, is a good way to begin to release, to loosen every clenched thing inside that you didn’t even know was clenching.

It was not enough time, nearly, but it was a taste, and my first trip out of town since February. This blog does not mean I am back – I am keeping all of my writerly things close to my chest in terms of poems and other work – but it seems fitting to post the theme of this latest retreat here.

As ever: wear your mask. Be kind. Black Lives Matter.