Dropping the artificial everything, getting back to the root

Take a moment to slow down and sit with me.

As of today, July 4, my husband and I are officially moved into our new home.

Two items remain at our old house, one of which is a monstera plant that lives on the back deck. We left it for the new resident to babysit because a wren nested there. As I was doing backyard cleanup and hauling boxes, mama wren would watch me as her babies began to open their little mouths each time they sensed movement.

Stopping to greet them brought peace during the roller coaster of cleaning up and cleaning out our old home.

Moving our worldly possessions 18 miles meant filling and unloading a U-Haul truck four times over days that boasted temps in the 90s F (32.2 C)—it was an extreme sport.

Beyond the financial, physical and mental taxation of a move, the process has been like holding an unforgiving mirror up to my own state of mind and patterns of behavior.

For my husband, who is more sentimental than me, there were realizations about what he was ready to let go of and what habits he wanted to break.

For me, the pangs came as I flipped through dozens of unfinished notebooks. Some were journals. Some contained story ideas or half-finished novels that will never see completion, at least not by me. Seeing the sheer number of them reminded me of the dynamic nature of this human experience—the various states of mind and ideas—but more, it reminded me of the value of this practice.

I remember reading a cynical but cool and well-crafted essay, “On Keeping a Notebook” by Joan Didion, and have a slightly different take.

“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself.” —Joan Didion

For me, and for many in 2026 I’d venture, to keep a notebook offline is something more entirely. There is something about drafting longhand in our digital and sterilized world. It is a record of impressions and ideas that are true.

When I’ve been in times of transition, handwriting offered a palatable balance of clarity and understanding.

Yes, I was particularly exhausted and emotional during the move. Not just due to the sheer amount of work and details to keep track of but also because my life wasn’t stopping and I had no time to process.

When I was a kid, journaling was not “being a writer,” it was more than that. It was everything. Curiosity, clarity, creativity, fun … magic. I used to dream of sitting under a willow tree, making this magic happen. I imagined feeling sheltered in wonder, and writing or drawing or just dreaming.

I’m here in my new home now, staring out at this majestic tree. Sit with me a moment. Take a few breaths.

There are moments like this. We take a breath and pull in the entirety of the scene, embodying it.

Then there are moments when reality stings. As I sit here in days to come, bugs will crawl over my legs and I’ll have to refresh the sunscreen, a neighbor might try to give me a flyer about being saved, the unpacking could be endless, or I’ll sit beneath the willow and notice nothing but yard cleanup (adulthood!), then think about work emails or data centers.

Nonetheless, I think about a prompt a good friend and former student gave me that allows wider perspective. He suggested I think about who I was when I arrived at the old place and who I was when I left.

I plan to visit this in my journal soon. Shortly after writing this, in fact. In the meantime, I do know who I am here and now. I have it in writing. I’m grateful because I know I will nurture and create here. And if you know my story, this vision realized is nothing short of the very magic I did in my imagination.

I hope you find a place that fills you up this way, too, where you live or where you can visit. I had beautiful places to write where I used to live, too. There are spaces and places that call to us.

I suppose this blog is offered with the suggestion that we all remember to sit reverently in those places. To call back what gave us wonder as children.

When we reconnect to what mystified us as kids, after all, we come back to ourselves.

Prompt: Write longhand for a week and see what happens. Maybe ask what your childhood self might’ve found magical about your current enviornment.

It’s harder to delete what we write longhand. It’s harder, and that’s why it’s everything.

So, I’m off to explore my friend’s prompt, then unpack some more boxes. I’ll post what I’d originally planned to post here soon.

Friends, thank you for slowing down with me and taking time to read.

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