Bluebirds

Monday evening I received this lovely bluebird in the mail. The bluebird from a gift from Zazzy, a blogging friend I’ve never met and only recently became acquainted with.

I was quite moved to receive a gift and moved to tears that it was a bluebird. As many of you know, bluebirds are special to me as they remind me of people I’ve love and lost, like my stepdad,  his son, and my sister.

This little guy is staying indoors, but I thought he would photograph nicely in natural light.

Thank you, Zazzy, for warming my heart.

Writing

Just over a week ago I took a major leap and signed up for A Year of Writing Dangerously, hosted by Summer Brennan on Substack. I’ve been reading Summer’s work for a couple of years now and have taken her Essay Camps a couple of times. Before I signed up, I hadn’t been writing for a couple of months, at least not writing much of substance and it was starting to grate on me. But I was also depressed. Yup, that dark demon just won’t leave me alone. He likes to show up just when I’m starting to feel good about life.

So it might seem contraindicated for me to join an intensive writing practice for a whole year. But I’ve been paying attention to Summer and the community building up around her, because of her. I know I’ll be in a safe place for writing. For one thing, I don’t have to share anything I write, ever. The focus is on developing a practice, finding those gems buried deep in the mounds of seemingly nonessential words, and then making them shine and sparkle. On our own. Summer will guide us through example and recommended readings. On Substack, we have something like a chat room where we can account for ourselves in whatever way we want. But we don’t have to share our writing, and I like that.

For now, I want my writing to be for my eyes only. The writing I struggle with, that is. Book reviews, photo essays, things like that, can go out into the public sphere. That’s the whole reason for writing those. But right now, I need to just be writing and not worrying about whether my writing is boring or interesting.

Today is Day 7, and I have written for seven days, writing about what I see and hear and remember. Ranting, which I still do a lot of, is not part of my daily writing assignment. It doesn’t count except to clear my head so I can write intentionally.

So here I am. Zazzy’s bluebird couldn’t have arrived at a better time.