Here are a few I remembered after the fact–being a Brownie leader, spending every New Year’s Eve until graduate school cooking a fancy meal with friends, sending Bobby to Harlem when I was trying to send him to the Threepenny Opera, a conversation with Peyton Manning that let me know the charm of my youth was gone, watching Heroes on Monday nights from 2006-2010, Friday Night Lights on Tuesday nights from 2006-2011, Glee on Tuesdays/Sundays from 2009-2015, Parenthood from 2010-2015, binge watching House of Cards in 2013.

Last night I discovered this line in Carolyn Heilbrun’s The Last Gift of Time–Life Beyond Sixty:
What one remembers is, I think, a clue to what one wants to be.

2016: Exhausted from the holidays, I arrive in Provincetown in a drenching rain storm. By the time I unload my suitcase and the groceries from the rental into the house behind the wharf house (which is closed for January and February), I’m drenched and standing in a puddle. The next day I wake up with fever. In a few days, the #1truething project is not only over but has worked its magic. At the end of 365 days, I’m now out of whatever hole I’d gotten myself into. I’ve recovered who I was and who I am. And more enormous good news–after months of looking for a house in Provincetown that I love as much as the wharf house, I’ve persuaded the owner of the wharf house to sell it. You just rent it, I said. I love it. But lots of potential road blocks–including a mortgage. My new Massachusetts lawyer and I become best friends. Still, I stay sick for weeks and weeks. I gain 10 pounds. At my six months’ endocrinology checkup in late March, my blood work shows hypothyroidism. Finally an answer. Mid-April I start taking a pill every morning and begin to feel better. I spend my birthday at AWP in LA. The week after that is Writing by Writers in Boulder. And the week after that, I close on the house. In May we add a new WxW event in the Methow Valley of Washington State. At the Seattle airport I pick up Ron Carlson and Andre Dubus, great teachers and WxW regulars, and we start the 5-hour drive west. Sam graduates from college, and even Jack flies in from LA for the weekend event. I rent my little house to pay the mortgage. Family vacation in Florida. Visits to and from the kids, who are now 35, 29, 27, 23–and living in Texas, Alabama, California, and North Carolina. I put a Stronger Together bumper sticker on my Prius. In NY, Cal and I stay at the Park Lane, where they upgrade us to a huge suite on the 46th floor with a mirror-lined dressing room and a living room and a dining room and a piano and so many closets I can’t count, and stairs to the outside, where we can walk all the way around the building. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. Amidst woodland creatures, Ro turns one and we go to Birmingham for the party. I hang a Hillary flag on my house. October is Tomales Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a major clean-out of my closet. After months of worry and posting and talking, it looks as if Hillary will win. I vote and settle in to watch the first woman elected president. But the results come in with too much red. I don’t leave the TV. When she concedes, I burst into tears. The next morning I pack up the Hillary dolls I’d bought for each of the little ones, but thankfully Kathleen persuades me to give them out anyway. The resistance begins. A few days later, WxW is in Lake Tahoe for boot camp. In December, my mother falls, and my parents, now 83, need even more help. After five years, my agent and I decide to part ways. 34 books this year–my favorite is easy, Patti Smith’s M Train. My playlist for the year includes 51 songs–Anthem Lights’ Wildest Dreams, Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine, Natalie Taylor’s Latch, Emily Barker’s Nostalgia, Ryn Weaver’s Traveling Song…And 107 days in Provincetown, with a record stay in the fall of 19 days. It goes so fast.

1 day to 60

 ~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

c

2015: Back in Provincetown, I sit still and stare at the water. The last couple of years, all my writing efforts have poured into this current novel and apparently all my self-worth as well. When I see people, they ask if they can buy one of my books yet. I lose my voice. I slip further away from me. The true me. What matters. I come up with a plan to recover myself. I will post #1truething about me every day for a year. When I’m in Georgia, I spend Wednesdays in Atlanta visiting and helping my parents. I begin to revise my novel again, but the one true thing project takes precedence and that feels right. In March I wake up one morning not believing my eyes–huge pieces of sea ice/ice floes/icebergs cover the Provincetown harbor. My hair is thinning and my nails are breaking. My endocrinologist says my numbers are fine. I cut my hair short and turn it red. Columbus is coming into its own with the longest urban whitewater course in the U.S. and a zipline across the Chattahoochee. For my birthday I step off the platform into nothingness and slide across a cable form Georgia to Alabama. Hillary Clinton will run for president. Bobby and Claire are expecting a baby! A couple of years ago I started going through our photos and digitalizing them. No real progress until now when I decide to tackle a year at a time and to finish by December. In addition to the generative workshop in Boulder in the spring and the Tomales Bay workshop in the fall, Writing by Writers adds a boot camp for completed manuscripts. We take our family beach trip to Sarasota for Memorial Day week. For our 30th anniversary, Cal and I take our first trip to the Caribbean, to Petit St. Vincent, where we raise and lower a flag outside our oceanside cottage if we need anything. Until now I’ve shelved every book I read. I begin to cull. I don’t feel that great. I don’t have my normal amount of energy, and when I get sick, it takes forever to get well. Perhaps it’s because I eat too much sugar and cheese and not enough vegetables. Cal and I go back to Canyon Ranch in July. I do a whole 30 but feel terrible the whole time. Throughout the year, there are visits from family, visits to family. In September, Baby Ro is born! And the nights become magical again–filled with little peeps and scratches, little fingers and toes. Only 34 books this year but so many that rise to the top: Niall Williams’ History of the Rain, Joy Castro’s Island of Bones, Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping, Miranda July’s The First Bad Man, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (736 pages), Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby. 72 songs on my Spotify playlist–Joshua Radin’s Worlds Apart, Lucius’s Wildewoman, O.A.R.’s Peace, The National’s Gospel, LP’s Into the Wild, Distant Cousins’ Fly Away, Andra Day’s Rise Up, and Nate Ruess’ Nothing Without Love… My agent sends my novel out to 4 more editors, and either something’s missing or it’s too literary or it’s too commercial or just nothing. 92 days in Provincetown.

2 days to 60

 ~

She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

c

I’ve been wanting to write to you all for some time now–all of February really and somehow it’s already the 20th. I’ve chosen to let other things take priority–my novel mainly. I just finished a stretch of working on it everyday for six days in a row, and I’m hoping to make it seven later today.

What I’m listening to now: Untold by Daniel Gidlund over and over again, and the ocean

What I’m reading at night: Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night

What I was drinking while I was writing this: Chakra #2 An Herbal Tea for Passion and Creativity

What I’m smelling still: Big Dipper Wax Works Clarity Tin Candle

This blog I’m loving: Sarah Bousquet talked herself into one true thing a day for 365 days. I was immediately hooked–what a pleasure to follow along on her journey. Any of you who enjoyed my #1truething project will love Sarah’s too. Here’s her first post, and today’s is #32/365. Please click over to One Blue Sail, bask in its gorgeous watercolor header (a Sarah-and-her-2-yr-old-daughter original), and leave her a word or two.

On my todo list for today: walk, read, write, this post

What I’m having trouble with: I remember it’s 2016, but I can’t seem to understand it’s February. When I write the date, I keep starting with 1.

What I learned how to do a few days ago: make the ‘like’ star show up under each comment

What I’m looking at: oh you know what I’m looking at : )

What I’m thinking about: YOU ALL

~

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

At times, making it to the end of this practice seemed impossible. At the beginning, I would stare at my screen for hours, getting more and more anxious. In those early days I had to write the post first thing in the morning so that time was not an added pressure. Then there was the period when I could only write the post at night with the pressure of time. After I passed the midway point, often it wasn’t just the post but “the damn post.”

A few days ago, when I read through the list of each true thing, I kept thinking of a Mary Oliver line. I found it this afternoon in her book, Our World.

Isn’t it wonderful the way the world holds both the deeply serious, and the unexpectedly mirthful?

That’s what I had wanted to uncover–not just the serious but also the quirky. I wanted to know the whole of me at this moment in time.

At the end of 365 days, I’m now out of whatever hole I’d gotten myself into. I’ve recovered myself–who I was and who I am. I know what I think. I can talk about me–the good, the strange, and the uncomfortable. I’ve put the puzzle together and I feel great–both about my life and my writing. To paraphrase Stevie Wonder in Twenty Feet from Stardom, I got to step out there and do my thing.

And now I have a new voice, which I recognize as my own.

Many of you have asked what’s next. This year I want to make my novel a priority. And I want to get rid of the excess, the things I don’t need, the things that obscure vision and movement and joy.

I’ll be back later in the month to introduce the next writer in the How We Spend Our Days series. Until then, from Provincetown where I began this journey, I leave you with this quote that I can’t remember where I found, maybe from one of your blogs. It comes from the book Pollen and Fragments by Novalis, the pen name of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, born in 1772.

The first step is introspection–exclusive contemplation of the self. But whoever stops there goes only halfway. The second step must be genuine observation outward–spontaneous, sober observation of the external world.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

Throughout the year, I’ve resisted thinking about the next day’s post so I wouldn’t scare stuff away. It’s what I have to do when I get really close to something writing fiction–under no circumstance do you think; stop thinking and just write. To this same end, every once in a while during the year, I wrote a word or two about a post on a scrap of paper just to get it out of my head where I couldn’t mess it up by thinking.

For these last ten posts, however, I took a sheet of paper and with intention gave some thought to what I might like to write about–how I might like to end–and then I jotted down a word or two and forgot about it until it was time to write the next post.

Here’s what I had written for today’s post:

tides

When I’m here in Provincetown, I almost always know what time high tide will be, and low tide. I know whether the water’s on its way out or on its way back in. I listen for the moment the crank grinds to a stop and then starts moving in the other direction. Or I look up from what I’m doing and think, Here it comes… And I think of this line from Evidence by Mary Oliver,

Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

It always feels like such a miracle when I’m on a plane for the first time after the holidays–to know that I’ve actually managed to emerge whole and intact from all that fun, but concentrated, togetherness.

No matter how exhausted I am, it’s like I explode out of Christmas.

I am fiercely independent. I always have been.

From the moment I dropped over the edge of my crib to these monthly trips to Provincetown.

Perhaps it was the read-thru yesterday that caused me to wake up with this truth in my head. Or perhaps it was preparing to head off again this morning into the wild blue yonder that was not blue at all today but a thick wet gray. And yes. I realize how lucky I am, not to have to choose one or the other, to have both togetherness and alone time.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

As part of bringing this year to a close, I wanted to read all the true things, one after another. To make it easier, I printed them. 15 pages worth. These truths are of all different weights and measures. I began to visualize a chart with all the truths running down the left-hand side and different categories running across the top–categories like travel-related, being in the moment, writing-related… But just for fun–sometimes I can be fun–here are some whimsical picks from the past 361 days, kind of a Dr. Seuss approach : )

Small truth: ZipLoc-bag user (226)

Large truth: I believe in myself (141)

Truth I changed: I don’t like yoga but I want to… (202)

Truth I tried but failed to change: So not a morning person (21)

Truth I wish I would change: I wish I knew lines I loved by heart (144)

Truth I changed but may change back: I’ve been dividing myself, but perhaps it would be better to add my selves together (70)

Truth discovered: What this year did was make me more comfortable with the uncomfortable (361)

Truth acknowledged: I wasn’t ready for 2015 to begin (55)

Truth I’m not proud of: Money motivates me (71)

Surface truth: I don’t dust very often (177)

Deep truth: I’m starting to understand how I got to this moment (265)

Sad truth: I just want to grab some food and get on with it (210)

Funny truth: I talk loudly on the phone–only on the phone (148)

Contradictory truth: I like motion, but I like stillness just as much (215)

Pitiful truth: I’m obsessed with the Kennedy’s (236)

Animal truth: Foxes are my kind of animal (335)

Obvious truth: Truth is what I’m after (152)

Metaphorical truth: Once I get on a train, I have a hard time getting off (82)

Literal truth: I felt the earth move–literally (111)

Moment of truth: As this day takes shape within the last week and the week and the month to come, I realize how behind I am, but I’m just going to focus on this good day (131)

Truth of detail: I’m a two-towel person (151)

Truth of a particular day: Too much sitting, not enough moving (104)

Truth of preference: Prunes, I like (281)

Truth of opinion: I believe we should open our doors to Syrian refugees (311)

Truth about truth: I’m not in the mood to write one true thing (123)

Other truth: I’ll just be going about my business and hear the water and think, here it comes… (126)

Least favorite truth: I requested a single room when I went to college (75)

Some of my favorite truths: I was a child in the 60’s, and I still think hippies are cool (12), Here’s the kind of toddler I was: I climbed over the side of my crib in the dark and let go (57), I’m a believer in signs, especially from the universe (58), When I have a lot of stuff going on, I pick up speed as I go–spinning like a top with the tiny point the only connection to the present moment (129) And the thing is, I LOVE being self-sufficient (143), During the summer of ’69–the summer of the moon walk, Hurricane Camille, Woodstock, Chappaquiddick, and Charles Manson–I first became conscious I had a body (181), Seeing the wash hanging on a clothesline makes me feel good (186), I’m hanging on by a thread (222), I’m a calendar girl (235), Going with nice over the truth day after day, year after year, might have sent my ship in the wrong direction (289), My new black ankle boots are me (291), I was once a girl with a ukulele (294).

I’m curious–did anyone ever go to the 365 true things page to see what one truth I had pulled out of a post? I would also love to hear if any truths stand out for anyone…or if anyone remembers a specific one for any reason… or if anyone has a favorite? Or how your Saturday is going?

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

I’ve been looking over the posts from the last year, and although my intention was to use a title for a post only once, it appears that I accidentally reused at least the word comfortable. Which was the subject of both #56 about life and #242 about clothes.

I find this mistake interesting.

The word comfortable also appears in a number of posts: #55, #56, #139, #159, #242, #253, #265, #352, and #353. And now #361.

I was hoping this project would make me more comfortable with myself. And it did. I can talk about myself now, which at the end of 2014 was impossible.

But I’m a private person. This year didn’t change that.

Cheryl Strayed wrote,

And part of the work is about getting comfortable being uncomfortable, learning how to say, “Hello, fear, thank you for being here, because you are my indication that I’m doing what I need to do.”

In post 265, I wrote this:

So I’m down to the last hundred posts in this year of catching me–this year of looking at the photos, digging up memories, finding the words to fill in the spaces. I’m taking up more room these days. And I’m more comfortable. I’m discovering things and remembering things. I’m starting to understand how I got to this moment. I will probably always be a private person but from now on, at least I will know who I am.

What this year did was make me more comfortable with the uncomfortable. What it did was to teach me to go after the uncomfortable. This year has encouraged me to get back to the risk-taking self I once was. Hello, fear. Thank you.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

During the past year, whenever I would say to Cal that I had no idea what to write about, he would always say, “You can write about how wonderful I am.” Which of course isn’t a true thing about me. Nor is it a true thing about him.

Okay, okay. Truth. Sometimes he is wonderful.

We met in June of 1984 at a Younger Lawyers’ Weekend in Savannah. I had gone with a friend, and she introduced us at the opening cocktail party. But during the party I mostly talked to this other guy whom I had met at the last event and who walked me to my room. Cal happened to be in front of us, and I noticed what room he went into. A few minutes later, when the other guy left, I stuck my room key in Cal’s door lock and continued back to my room. As I was just about to open my door, Cal came into the hall putting on his shirt. He said something like come have a drink with me. So we sat on the steps and talked. For hours. The next morning before he left (he had to leave a day early), we were talking by the pool, and he said sometimes he came to Atlanta on business. I suggested he come just for the hell of it.

On Sunday I went home. Monday morning, no call. After lunch, no call. I went to a friend’s office to say he was never going to call.

When I got back to my office, my secretary handed me a message.

A year later, we were married. ❤️

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice

Attentiveness is something that, historically, I haven’t been very good at. But it’s something that writing is teaching me and also something that this year has prioritized.

Many have attributed the quote below to Mary Oliver, but I’ve looked and looked but can’t find it in any of her books. Which is not going to prevent me from loving it or including it here : )

This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

I want to keep working on attentiveness–one thing at a time, more being to balance out all my doing, more yoga, more breathing.

~

 365 true things about me
why this daily practice