On Friday, I signed the contract for a flash essay that will be published in a lit mag at the end of the year. The acceptance for this piece popped into my inbox in early September. I experienced the news as a jarring (and pleasant, somehow at the same time) reminder that my writing life still existed on the sidelines, waiting for me to return.

In late April, I let myself go a little crazy in the stationery section of McNally Jackson (Seaport). In addition to a notebook and a few stickers, I bought a Penco monthly memo pad with lines numbered 1-31. As soon as I saw it, I was filled with a desire to track what I wrote or what piece of writing I worked on each day in a month.

At least half-finished paintings and crochet projects exist in my physical reality to remind me of their continued existence. It feels easier to accidentally leave writing to rot in whatever way data points decompose, which is to say never and sometimes all at once.