Again, the beginning

There's so much going on, all the time, I've barely had a moment to come up for air. I've meant to respond to all your wonderful comments, but I've been pushing to meet a raft of deadlines that backed up on each other, trying for all I'm worth to do a good job on everything so I can move on to the year's big book project, which begins with, you guessed it, a proposal. Oooo, my fave (sarcasm). But I love my subject already, she is just simply a badass woman, and even though I have no idea right now how to do her life story justice, I finally know that I always feel this way, and that I will do my wholehearted best. I was in DC last week to interview my subject again, and now it's time to buckle down and start writing. The thing that helps quiet my anxiety at this stage is the idea that in some parallel dimension, this proposal and the book are already written. I just need to listen for the whisper of the muses and channel her story. I know it sounds crazy, but this is what gets me through that terrifying uncertainty of beginnings.

Speaking of beginnings, my niece and goddaughter graduated yesterday, and is coming to live with us starting tomorrow. She landed an internship at a great magazine in the city, and will be working on the very same block in midtown as my daughter! I am so proud of her. She's the only one of my nieces and nephews going into the same field as me, which is kind of exciting to me. She's the real deal, too, a journalist to her core. I predict her internship will lead to a job, because who wouldn't want this bright, joyful spark of a human on their team?

With my niece moving into my son's former room, I will have to tackle all the college paraphernalia that arrived home with our boy when he graduated from the same college as my niece six years ago! My daughter is coming over tomorrow night to help me Marie Kondo the room and toss everything that doesn't "spark joy." I can't wait. (And have you noticed Marie Kondo is a verb now?)

It's also choir concert season. We had the first of our three spring concerts on Saturday just past, and there's another one this Thursday eve. The photo is from the window of the dining room of the bed and breakfast where our choir practices. That's what spring looks like in New York City. Meanwhile my freelance magazine gig is continuing, even though the woman who hired me quit two weeks ago.  I'm just going to keep riding that train as long as I can and letting the weekly paychecks spark lots of joy.

To anyone here who wanted to keep reading when I made my blog private, please send me your preferred email (if you haven't already done so) at 37paddington@gmail.com so I can add you to the list of readers in case I need to close my blog again for work reasons. In the field I'm in, it's sometimes better for me to become a blank canvas onto whom other people can project their stories. That said, I'm enjoying the blog being open again.

In a very different vein, I'm not going to talk about the cruel and immoral abortion bans sweeping the country, because I am so angry about it all, I can quite put the words together. The death penalty for abortion? Really? So a woman in Georgia who aborts a rapist's child gets a harsher sentence than the rapist? Honestly, I can't even.