There’s something about sunshine that feels like a reset button.
After months of gray skies, obligations, and half-hearted coffee that I chug down before rushing to work, I’ve been stepping outside more. I’ve been doing this on purpose, with no real agenda except to walk and maybe feel something. Sometimes with a podcast— Bad on Paper has been a favorite lately— sometimes just listening to the birds with dark black and orange feathers along the path.
It’s been helping. The kind of help that doesn't really fix everything or anything always, but softens the edges just enough to let some of the joy back in. I’m hoping.
When not walking and tucked inside, I finished reading Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. I picked it up out of sheer curiosity after not reading Songbird and Snakes when it first came out, but it’s done more than entertain.
Reading another Hunger Games book reconnected me to that early-reader version of myself, the young girl who devoured novels like snacks, who read during meals and under covers and sometimes even while walking down hallways (no wonder I wasn’t a popular kid in middle school).
I miss her, and I think I’m finally learning how to invite her back again by simply reading. New releases and the old young adult novels I fell in love with in the first place.
Reading outside as the weather turns warm also reminds me that the stories I love aren’t just in books yet, they're in me, too. I’ve started journaling again, not for the sake of "progress" or with the pressure of crafting perfect dialogue or story for my manuscript yet, but just to talk to myself on paper. Scrawled thoughts, fragments, half-poems, weird dreams, little things that happened— like creative meltdowns when all I want to do is write more, and heavenly baked goods I need to document.
These jottings feel more like footprints than any kind of deadline, and I’m starting to follow them curiously instead of critically.
I realize that like when I was in middle school with my journal that came with me everywhere, I am trying to reinstate a commonplace book for myself.
Commonplace book — a place to record and organize quotes, stories, and ideas from other people so that you can recall them to inspire you in the future
Teaching, well, substitute teaching, is almost wrapped up for the school year. Thank goodness. I think I need to take a step back and recompose.
Summer break is sneaking up, not in a loud countdown way, but like an exhale I didn’t realize I was holding (another fun young adult reading reference, catch it?).
I think that’s the whole thing recently. A sort of quiet, slow process of returning to myself. The self who reads because she loves to read. Who walks because the air smells like sun and pollen that makes my nose itch no matter if I drink raw honey or pop back allergy medication. Who writes because her thoughts have nowhere else to go.
So that’s where I’ve been. Or maybe where I’m going. Somewhere between a story and a sidewalk.
Thanks for walking with me.
Let me know what you’ve been reading lately, or how you’re getting back to your creative core these days.
I love hearing about other people's creative and life rituals!
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