I went back and read some of my blog posts from January 2021.  I was definitely taking blogging more seriously and I had some pretty interesting things to say (to me, at least!).  After last night’s blogging fiasco (well, to be honest, before then but the incident amplified it) I have made a conscious effort to write today before the end of the day and not about blogging or my day or anything painfully mundane.

As I drove to Barnes & Noble this morning my mind was filled with ideas and thoughts.  I thought – I can write about anything I want to write about.  It’s my blog, it earns no money and has no readers.  The post is my oyster.  If that makes sense to you.  It makes sense to me ….

I could write about how being in State College is haunted for me – haunted by memories and people and choices I made a long, long time ago.  I both love and dread being here, love and dread remembering that  me.  I walk down memory lane over and over again; affectionate towards those old memories but also cringing, knowing what’s coming, knowing how it all turns out.

I could blog about how strange it is to transition from writing on my iPad to writing on my computer.  I keep reaching for the screen as though it’s touch screen … it’s not.  But the keys are definitely easier and I find that comforting.

I could write about perspective – how driving along Benner Pike, skies blue, air cold and crisp, snow iced across green fields makes me feel, and how that feeling is both the same and vastly different from how the same moment affects my husband.  How he looks at fields and thinks about working them in his youth and hunting similar landscapes throughout his life and I look at the these fields and think of paintings and long walks and horses.  Both realities a reflection of our lives, our experiences.  Both true to us, but simultaneously not true for the other.

I could write about how this Barnes & Noble is my ultimate favorite Barnes & Noble.  How I used to come here when Seattle’s Best Coffee was the cafe.  How I’d find a big chair and curl up, reading text books and history books and books for pleasure.  How I can still remember specific days, watching people walk by, browsing and purchasing books, as I read Pliny and Agatha Christie.

I could write about Starbucks.  Oh how I could write about Starbucks! Have I ever done that?  I can’t remember.  I would assume I have.  I have loved Starbucks for as long as I’ve known what Starbucks is.  And I have drunk the same drink since my college friend came back to school after summer break and introduced me to the soy chai.  He’d worked at the Starbucks in Chestnut Hill (a store I am familiar with … now, but not then) and with his return came a wealth of Starbucks knowledge.  I can fall down the slippery slope of all my Starbucks memories throughout my adult life because it has been a constant, a place I’ve always found comfort and respite from the thrashings of the outside world.  Happiness in a Cup.  That is what my Starbucks Soy Chai is, has always been and will always be.

Mostly what I wanted to do was write.  Because tapping out a few paltry (and frankly pathetic) lines after eleven at night isn’t a testament to what this exercise is all about.  This exercise is an attempt to teach myself the discipline of writing – the ritual, yes, but also the slogging, when it isn’t easy, when I have nothing to say.  When I am not ‘inspired’ to write but do it anyway.

Husband found headphones for me (I forgot my ear pods at home) and I have a song on repeat — something that works for me when I’m writing because it sets a mood, a tempo, a feeling.  It helps me keep track of me, and that’s a Herculean task.  I have a chai and I have a table.  The rest is up to me.

As I sit here, in a Barnes & Noble that was my past and is now my present, as I prepare to head home earlier than anticipated, I marvel at where my life is now.  How did that twenty-something girl from her first tour of State College become the woman I am today?  How did I connect the dots to become me, to get here? 

It’s what’s on my mind.  It’s why I’m writing.

xox, g