I’ve promised my friend Sheri that I will write for one hour every day. I think it was my big idea, trying to get us both motivated to do what we say we love to do: write. So now I’m sitting here on a Monday morning, coffee hot, candle lit, jazz on the radio, and I’ve got nothing.

When working with clients, I advise them simply to start, when, of course, there’s nothing simple about this, except maybe the tools you need. Most everyone has pen and paper, and potential. But that motivation part is tricky. “Sometimes,” I say in my kind writing coach voice, “I make lists if nothing is coming to me during my writing session. Just begin.” And so I do.

• Today I feel a little less sad than yesterday. Maybe it helped that I showered and dressed before 8:30 this morning.
• I know the writing life requires a lot of solitude but sometimes it is too much for me.
• A friend emails to tell me a young man in our city has killed himself; his grandparents are friends of hers. Only 28.
• I should have my email off while writing.
• I’ll be 53 soon, and if one more person says “it’s only a number” I might clock ‘em.
• I’m in the process of getting rid of stuff I don’t need, use, or love. There’s more of it than I care to admit. Out it goes into the world to be needed, used, or loved by someone else.
• Last week, unbidden, two people let me know how much I mean to them. A gift.
• Fingers crossed that my precious stepdaughter gets the job.
• The nurse from the retirement home called last night. Mother was sad and wanted to hear the voice of one of her girls. I needed to hear hers, too.
• I fear I’m becoming one of those people who treats her dog like her child. Wait. I may have been like that since Quay Girl.
• A volunteer training I just completed did not work out like I had hoped.
• I called my priest friend to tell her I want to do more in the church. She wants more time to write. Such is life.
• Maybe I should just “be.”
• You’d think the meditation and centering prayer would be paying off by now.
• I need to lose weight.
• The hour is almost up!
• Why haven’t those people called me back?
• I miss Indiana.
• I’m not sure how much longer I can keep watching the news.
• What is it about the future that keeps captivating my attention?
• Self-employment is hard.
• I may have cut my hair too short.
• Yay! It’s the Diane Rehm Show, one of my favorites.
• Finished a great book last night, something I picked up on the road at a used bookstore: The Scent of God, by Beryl Singleton Bissell. Now I want to read everything else she’s written. Maybe I’ll pass it along to my friend Karen. I think she’ll like it.
• My neighbor is having her windows cleaned. I’ve lived in this house for ten years and it has only now occurred to me that washing your windows from the outside might be something to consider.
• Now more than an hour has passed since I first sat down to write. I must tell Sheri.
• If I had a dime for every time someone has said to me, “You’re so sensitive,” I’d have a bunch of dimes.