Ten.Two Hundred & Sixty-Four

1. The crash of the recycling truck. Before I remember what the sound actually it is, the truck is already too close for me to run out and  drag the bin to the edge of the driveway.

2. The opening and closing of a door. I am no longer alone in the quiet. 

3. I can feel the relaxed sense of freedom in taking roads that I usually don't take. The drive up to St. Charles isn't very scenic, but it's easy and the sun is shining and it's hard not to feel good. 

4. It so happens to be the replay of Krista's conversation with Naomi Shihab Nye. The reminder that we are living in a poem. Everything is a poem.

5. Even with the hours and hours of planning and dreaming, there's something about holding a tote bag in my hands that makes it all feel real. 

6. Where do I stand between my ideals and the reality presented in front of me? How much more time is meant to be spent dreaming versus doing? What am I even doing? What am I willing to do? I need to just move and trust that the path will make itself clear. 

7. But it's perfectionism that keeps me from making one grand step. And the fear of "wasting" even more time. 33 feels pressing to me. And so I do more research. 

8. Sometimes the simplest meals are the most tasty. It was missing something green though. Something fresh and uncooked for the teeth to bite into. Next time. 

9. In the shower. I ask myself what it is that's so different. Once again frustrated by what feels like this constant state of in-between. Never reaching the other side. Is there another side? Are we not always being stretched? 

10. And the awareness that I just haven't been myself since Santa Cruz. Which I had expected. But I left so deconstructed. Arrived to a time and place that required me to be put back together and so in my rush to get it together just enough to play my part, there are, of course, holes, bent corners, misaligned edges that are calling out for attention.