work it

I knew I was settling in to my new(ish) job when I developed the strut.

It's the way I show my dominance -- my physical way of saying to the outside world, "Yeeeah. I belong here. I feel good here." And I do! I feel good here; I belong here; life is nice.

I've been noticing it more and more lately. At my last job I had a ton of strut, because I was so comfortable, so effective, so on top of my game. It took a long time to get to that point here; with more responsibilities and all sorts of new things to think about. Unions, reviews, hirings, probations, interns, promotions...it takes a long time to learn to strut with all that on your plate.

But today, routing the alerts. Walking to my boss's office, then the lawyer's, making the rounds of the office. I could feel my hair and my boobs bouncing assertively. The power walk.

Strut, girl, work it out!

perfect

I had such a spectacular day today. Such a perfect little jewel of a day.

The best days of my life have never been full of big, all-consuming events. They have always been normal, regular days, but full of tiny blessings in almost every hour. There were so many good things that happened that I'm not sure I can remember them all...

• big belly laughs with work friends all day long
• eating a bag of Cheetos and drinking a can of Coke (the "Britney Spears Breakfast," as I like to call it)
• finding out that a very concerning medical issue is actually not a big deal to fix
• getting my cell phone fixed and then playing around with it
• scratching at the start of a nice theological conversation with an old friend
  
• walking a mile through cool rain that's not too cold
• talking to my mother on the phone
• having homemade chili, biscuits, and pumpkin pie with wonderful friends
• nerding out with my favorite episode of a very dorky show
  
• standing on the roof deck and looking at the fog and the light through the fog
• getting a ride home so I didn't have to walk
• sitting upstairs with a friend and playing music for one another
• falling asleep in a comfy sweatshirt (coming up next!)

I think, and this is going to sound really morbid, but I think that if somehow I get to choose my last day on Earth -- the very last day before I die -- I want it to be like this. Full of small joys. A day where nothing is remarkable but everything makes me happy.

writing!

I want to write. I want to write!

Friends kept telling me to write every day, that the urge to write would come back. Now, my friends are wonderful people, but they do not understand the deep, intense, etc., torture that I live with as a writer every day. They do not know the ebb and flow of inspiration, the crashing and sucking waves.

Of course, I am an idiot, and they were right, and it only took about a week.

I want to write about our bread-eating mice. I want to write about being a murderess of fish. I want to write about my friends, and my family, and my very useless fear that I won't be able to publish anything about them until they're dead, because then they would know how I really felt about them all. I don't yet want to write my big essay for the MFA application, but I know what it'll be about -- and I'm ready to start thinking about writing it.

I want to be like Anne Lamott, faithful and snarky, writing about how bad and good everything is, and how to make the bad stuff good by changing your heart. I want to figure out how to change my heart.

But for now I'll just make a point to get this written down -- I want to write again.