Written March 13, 2023

Day 20 of 40 in a 45-day period: I’ve started and stopped a variety of different entries for today and can’t seem to get my thoughts straight.

I started writing about our summer of canceled plans, about how all the things that worked out so well on paper disintegrated, like sitting down to write outside only to be met with a rainstorm, the words bleeding together, undecipherable.

I wrote about my daughter’s start to school this year, how it didn’t start out smoothly in a year that I expected would be a return to some kind of normal and was anything but typical, much less normal.

I wrote about the art of forgiveness and how I wish I could figure out how to truly forgive and let go.

I wrote about how hard it is to be true to what we know deep down inside so instead we mask it by picking our fingers until they bleed and apply the literal and figurative bandaid to make the problem go away.

I thought about how much being an adult makes my heart break into a thousand pieces sometimes and feel complete and whole others.

I thought about a piece I wrote on my blog years ago, living in the gray, and how much that has changed yet stays the same.

I thought about how my kids can make me smile at a silly moment and then rage at another. No one did, or could have, prepared me for the intensity of parenting.

I thought about the joy this writing initiative has brought me and how I don’t talk about it much with others but write it for the internet to enjoy.

I thought about how people can live in places where it rains so often, and decided it must be because they’ve been buying themselves flowers long before Miley Cyrus ever sang about it.

Someone told me today that at 44, it was time to be the author of my own life. And with that I’ll wrap up Day 20. Halfway there, right in the messy middle.