We wake early to drenching rain. But this doesn’t deter my dear friend who has promised to meet me at 7:30 a.m. for a walk – she is truly going to great lengths to join me, getting up early and facing this downpour. The trail is almost entirely puddled, because the ground is saturated from a rainy September. I’m used to this, and my friend is a good sport, splashing along. I hardly notice the rain, I’m talking in that unselfconscious non-stop ramble a good friend who is a good listener elicits. I listen too, of course, and pay very little attention to the woods. There isn’t much to see under these clouds and through these puddles. I am so glad to get to say things I’ve been thinking and feeling that I will say to her and she’ll understand.

Indoors, it’s a pleasure to be dry. I work on my book draft, breaking through resistance and the impulse of avoidance. It’s a messy, chaotic process I’m trying to organize. I just sit down and open the document where I’ve dumped so many many pages of material and apply some imperfect strategies to begin to organize my thoughts and envision my plan, and I feel better and better, because I know it’s okay that this is simply hard work that takes focus and discipline and I have to just sit with it and let it be rough and confusing. The more I accept this, the more I realize this is just the process and it’s the only way to get to a finished product. I’ve been through this before. I’m willing to be here, I choose to be here, I’m even beginning to enjoy and feel optimistic about being inside my messy book that will be ordered some day. Yes, I am moved by the drama, I’m deeply disturbed, I’m angry and frustrated at this conflict and injustice playing out on tv and I have good listeners and talkers around me at home having conversations about it throughout the day; I’m caught up in it from time to time. But it’s not keeping me from my work and getting done what I want to get done.