How it goes.

I always start my days with writing.

I’m working on a new project, one I will tell you about soon. It’s a new series of books and at first I thought I would write under a pen name, but I have decided to accept the tangle of genres that I write, and publish these books as myself.

My plan is to finish the first draft of the book I am working on and then jump right into the first draft of World Whisperer Book 5. It’s helpful to work on something different in between, actually. It’s like the ginger in between bites of sushi.

After I write new words in the morning, I move into writing blog posts or newsletters. I’m working on a couple doozies of blog posts now, so I go into those documents and fix a few things, add a few lines, try to make them live a little more, then write a few lines of a newsletter. I am easily overwhelmed. I do my best writing little bits. 

Then Isaac waltzes into the studio and it’s time to get up and shift gears, to get him some breakfast and make sure the clothes he’s wearing are somewhat suitable. To make sure the other kids are getting ready for the day, eating, drinking tea, finding their school books. Isaac goes off to school and other kids come over for readalouds and English class. Or maybe Chinua handles that and I go off to guide meditation. Or it is a gardening day at Shekina, so I buy some plants and drive around the hill to plant them.

The day is in full swing. It careens around until bedtime, when I lie flat on my back staring at the ceiling, or when I fall asleep lying next to Isaac, his warm little arm around my neck. 

Often, these days, when I’m driving on the motorbike, I get lured away. After I bring Isaac to school, I might find that I need to see the sky from a different direction, or the view from the next hill. The sky is so perfectly blue. The branches so jagged and they reach, reach as far as they can. The road bakes in the sun and the breezes lift my hair off my neck, and I am reminded of beautiful days and years from the past, and all of it is almost too much. 

Eventually I come back home, to joke and puns and boys with springs in their legs. We comb through tangly bits of offenses and hurt feelings from siblings. We dance. We make a lot of messes. I can be grumpy and easily overwhelmed. And there is so much love. Love and words and blue skies. I am thankful.