Dear Amazon First Reads reader,
Because you selected a book in a genre, here’s the second book in an unrelated series you haven’t started that you might also like.
Yours AI poweredly (likely),
Amazon
Me: um , no.
Author: Sabrina (Page 1 of 5)
You’re totally not just a sign of drought stressing the trees.
I say this is the first leaf of fall 
. Nevermind that we’ve had a month of drought and that it’s going to be in the 90s over the weekend. I’m in a certain state of mind.
Halloween!
Now if it were only cool enough to pick my owl button sweater WIP back up and finish it.
I was supposed to
Write tonight, but instead I
Deleted photos.
We were gifted a chimenea in the shape of a fish that had broken at the top of the fish’s tail. It has since been carefully reconstructed but will never be safe for a fire again.
We took it, knowing it wouldn’t be safe for a firepit with the idea that we were going to turn it into a planter. It has sat by the doorway for a couple of years now, but I never made the time to plant anything in it. This year I bought some fancy succulents from several growers on Etsy.
I’ve had them all for about half a week. Yesterday I finally took the time to get everything planted.
I’m looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen. The green ones are supposed to turn yellow as they mature, but I like the colors just the way they are if they don’t.
I might add a taller plant in the back that likes semi-shade, but I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet. I kind of want to see what happens with what’s in there now before I make any additons.
We’re doing some planting for the future. The 2020 Derecho took so many trees, so we’re trying to rebuild the population of native trees.
Of course the bare root trees arrived well before we’re going to be ready to plant them, so I’m giving them a temporary home to help keep them alive and healthy until we can get them in the ground.
Everybody in the pool, friends. Enjoy your little mud treatment spa days.
On Sunday I missed writing a post for Monday. There were many things to accomplish over the weekend and not many hours to do them in.
The point is progress, not perfection.
It’s also honoring the constraints of the day.
My plan, bit by bit, is to make a garden inspired by the lyrics of Waking the Witch by Kate Bush. I started with the pinks and posies because they’re less expensive garden plants, and several years back now, I received the red, red roses as a birthday gift that would keep blooming in my garden.
This year they decided to bloom pink.
For reference, this is the same rose bush as the pink roses above.
Maybe it’s the unseasonably hot weather we’ve had this spring that has confused them. Maybe they’ll go back to blooming red. Maybe they’ll never be quite the same again.
I’m not going to complain about roses. They’re still beautiful, just not exactly what was planned.
If I were a member of the Addams Family, I’d be Inertia Addams. *sigh*
Me, Facebook, 6/1/2022 (since deleted)
I’d like to be able to say that I lost my creative identity during the pandemic, but it’s not as simple as that. As a person with multiple ongoing health issues, keeping the energy up to continue as a high performer at my day job, which is both necessary and important, and at the same time dry and dull, often takes priority over priming the pump and other self-care.
For a long time, I’ve been able to keep up things up by shoveling tomorrow’s energy into today. But there’s been a cost. It’s been this way for a long enough time that I’ve whittled away whatever energy reserves I may have once had, and my creativity, put on hold for everything else, feels like it’s circling a black hole.
There are all these stories inside me. I can feel them dying. I just haven’t been able to find enough energy to overcome my creative inertia.
Self-care and priming the pump cannot be my last priority any longer.
Giving myself time to exercise, time to do physical therapy, time to get out into nature, to bike, to knit and crochet, to read things that are purely for enjoyment? These things are not just fuel for my writing: they’re the fuel for everything.
So, this month, I’m burning down Inertia Addams and rebuilding myself from the ashes, one little blog post at a time.
I sat down to make a plan for kicking this creative outlet back into gear, but Ms. Poppy decided it would be better if I just petted her instead.
Then she farted. An unapologetic tuna bomber stank wafted from her bum. My eyes started watering.
I guess it’s good she can relax, but I need to buy a gas mask if she’s going to love me this much.
What I’d like to say: Sock knitting. Van modding. Writing.
What’s actually been happening: very little.
So today starts a quest. Okay, understanding of a need for a quest started about two weeks ago, but I set the official kickoff to June so I could have some time to plan and prime the pump, so to speak.
I could whine about the pandemic. About losing friends. About regrets. About menopause. About a culture where it’s all but assumed that I’m Gen X and over.
But I’m not here for that. I’m here for action out of the mire I’ve let my life become since 2020.
I’m not sure about the details of the plan, but my goal is to write something here every day for the month of June. It can be about anything. Maybe I’ll write about my crafting or the van we’re turning into a camper.
Maybe I’ll post my responses to exercises from my writing prompts book.
It could be anything. It will be something.