First, a quick repeat of the intro to the previous two posts, ICYMI:
I’ve been off Substack for just over a year now, because I’ve had bigger fish to fry. By fish, I mean essays, and it’s not so much frying as lots of stirring and mixing and baking and defrosting and baking again and baking again and slicing and dicing and simmering. One of those essays is becoming a fully fledged book, and I just arrived a few days ago at a one-week writing residency, where I’m immersing myself in working on it. I’m keeping a daily journal as a kind of warm-up practice, and I figured, why not share it?
You can read the diaries of days 0-1 here and day 2 here. Onto day 3!
DAY 3.
Like I said, I couldn’t sleep. I’m just excited when the sun’s up and it’s a reasonable hour to leave bed. I should be tired, but I’m mostly excited and grateful to be here.
I slide open the back door, and find a huge, green-as-neon cricket perched on the bug screen. My sister has filled me in on the symbolism of seahorses — a blend of persistence and flexibility while swimming towards goals, and a reminder not to submit to excessive pressure. But for crickets, I need no outside opinions. I’m certain already that crickets are lucky. “Oh!” I say. “Good morning to you!”
I pull from my beloved Dirt Gems oracle deck, whose gorgeous cards are all inspired by herbalism. I get vitex, which the guidebook associates with “allowing for fertile beginnings, of new life, projects and creations.” I’m liking where this is going.
It’s only 8am, so I’m the first one up this time. I swaddle about six dish towels around the coffee grinder, trying not to wake my fellow visiting resident and the writer-in-residence who sleep in the main house. I still wince at it, even with the towels. I whisper “sorry” under my breath.
The plan is to bring the coffee back to the cabin, but instead, I settle with my mug — this time, one that says ASK ME ABOUT MY PRONOUNS in technicolor font — on the front porch, where I allow myself the brief distraction of browsing New York sublet listings before I settle in to write. And write. And write. I work until 3pm, publishing my first Substack post in a year and even posting on Instagram and wow, aren’t I a superhero.
Thing is, now my blood sugar is high, because I’ve stuffed leftover beans and tofu scramble in my face at my computer and hardly moved my body in all these hours. So I relocate to the office, stick my wireless headphones in my ears, and do a 30-minute bodyweight workout that’s surprisingly sweaty. And then I leave to walk off the sweat. On this walk, I swear, a car nearly razes me down. But at least nobody tries to ask me out, and I skip going down the road with the GO AWAY signs.
Back home, I shower, and then spend way too long concocting an elaborate salad that it turns out I don’t actually want to eat. I’m trying to get my shelf of the fridge less crammed — I have the kimchi jar angled sideways in there, the apples perilously perched on top of the salsa. So I throw as much as I can in a massive bowl — arugula, onion, peppers, avocado, kimchi, sprouts, microgreens, tofu, surely some other stuff I’m forgetting. And then jam it back in the fridge for later.
I do some work things. A few practical to-dos. I’ve done so much writing already today, though not on the big project I’m here for. I have to go back to the cabin for my bug spray I accidentally left behind, so I check to see if the cricket’s still hanging around on the screen, quietly nudging the sliding door open. Nope, the cricket has left. I wonder what it’s up to.
I have a friend’s Zoom event at 6:30, and then a meeting with my writing group at 7:30, and by 7:37, I’m mourning the sunset I’m missing right outside the window. (I’m back in the office, because all the bug spray on the entire earth does not seem formidable enough to combat the congregation of mosquitoes out and about by this point in the night.) I’m getting antsy, getting worried I haven’t done what I should have done today, though I’ve done a lot. At 8pm, I wave “bye” and shut my laptop faster than ever, quickly gathering myself and my stuff — and my final leftover serving of pasta from the fridge — to walk to the cabin. To walk home.
On the walk, I think about how you love things more and more, the more you get to know them. Day 1, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here. Day 2, I’d developed the affection that comes with familiarity. Now, on day 3, that familiarity has turned downright cozy. I am filled with love and warmth for this uphill hike. I have done it enough times for enough days in a row that it has become devotion. It’s not so much that I have to trek it anymore as that I’m carried by it, back to where I need to be.
Back in the cabin, I light my candles and flip on my twinkle lights. I pull another card from the deck. This one is anemone, which the guidebook describes as a “windflower.” It says, “Open your window, and let a rush of fresh air wash over you, watch the curtains blow and know that this windy bloom will help you remember what it feels like to be here and now.” It’s perfect.
I arrange my draft on the desk. I’m going to attempt to wrangle my 12:30am “aha!” onto the page, and I have all night, as long as I want. But first, I do as the card says. I crack some windows and open the sliding door for fresh air. There’s the cricket again, back to its same spot. This must be its resting place, too.