Ten.Two Thousand, One Hundred & Eighty-Four

1. Tuesday. No. Wednesday.

2. White pants. Do I dare?

3. More tea. No coffee. Lots of water.

4. Okay. The keys do work, but only if you put them all the way in, which means they don’t really work.

5. Only three.

6. That can wait.

7. Was it worth the fight?

8. Feelings are temporary.

9. Tight muscles. Everything is sore from flat-soled shoes. The hill is bitter today.

10. “Your presence will require something different.”

Ten.Two Thousand, One Hundred & Eighty-Three

1. Could use one more.

2. Second-to-last Tuesday before the end of the school year.

3. The time passes anyway.

4. Feeling the effects of no coffee for the past two days.

5. This is what happens when things are created in a vacuum.

6. Something to block out the noise.

7. The gift of self-inquiry and reflection; the gift of the desire to see your whole self with all of its beauty and imperfections.

8. Habit tracking.

9. Hot sun against my arms. They are shaking the cowbell in my ear. All of the screaming. I tell him that this was too soon after Bottle Rock. I needed a silent-film version of this game.

10. A handful of Oreos while watching them play. I feel a pang of envy for their joyful display. Take me back to those moments.

11. Create them for me.

Ten.Two Thousand, One Hundred & Eighty-Two

1. Wiped. Out.

2. Gratitude.

3. Examining my competencies.

4. I’ll figure it out. I always do.

5. Grilling season.

6. “My life is so much better, it’s so much more enriched, if I make the effort. If I actually celebrate with gratitude the fact that I get to be on this gorgeous planet.” - RuPaul

7. Turns out she negotiated a fee. Ha!

8. He really wants to go. I really want him to go. I’m really bad at planning things like this.

9. Dead earbuds which means all that I can hear are my own thoughts.

10. Why is it that I think I can never get away?

Ten.Two Thousand, One Hundred & Eighty-One

1. Day 3.

2. Coffee. Kombucha. The smell of sausage gravy.

3. He asks me what time I want to leave. I don’t really need to go.

4. More reading. Not enough time to write.

5. He wasn’t wrong.

6. No clouds in the sky today, which means everything feels just a little bit hotter.

7. Three days is too much.

8. Captivated by the beauty of Norah Jones.

9. But then, the silver lining to this is meeting them and genuinely hoping to run into them again, even though they live half a country away.

10. The Uber driver’s accent is thick. Very thick and German. He’s from the Black Forest, he says. “We make the best German wines there,” he says. I’m getting nauseous in the backseat of his Tesla. Teslas always make me feel nauseous.

Ten.Two Thousand, One Hundred & Eighty

1. Oddly fresh.

2. Bright morning sun. Tall glass of water. Headphones and study music. Trying to cram two chapters of reading before departure.

3. This Uber smells like body odor and peppermint gum.

4. BBQ and french fries and lots of water.

5. “My mother…my mother really hates this song.”

6. Bright blue skies. Cooler than yesterday. Strong desire to lay out on the benches by the table with my face toward the sun.

7. Energy shifts.

8. What would I do the same? What would I do differently? In what ways could participation in something like this benefit a brand? What kind of brand? Who would be the target audience? How would you engage them? These are things one thinks about while waiting to go to the bathroom.

9. “She holds the hand that holds her down / She will rise above” - Pearl Jam

10. Two nights in a row up way past my bedtime. One more day. Just one more day.