Everything, everyone, everywhere.

Moving through this world.

At the very beginning of this year, I understood that I would be in motion for much of the first quarter. I understood that at some point I would have to sit myself down and take stock. Now might be that moment.

Sunrise at Badwater Basin, Death Valley.

I wrote the above paragraph two days ago, but it took a deeply rainy morning to settle me back in my chair and, even now, I feel antsy; more akin to the half dozen birds jamming in and out of the backyard feeder than to a calm and methodical person with a mission to “take stock.”

The year started with a quick trip to Death Valley where appreciation of sunrise and sunset is almost a local ordinance. Contemplation of the past is inevitable as you make tracks across a dried pre-historic lakebed and wander down the streets of long abandoned ghost towns. For me, the trip to Death Valley conjured childhood family vacations and my father’s enthusiasm for the singular pursuit of passion represented by artists such as Marta Beckett, whose Amargosa Opera House is open for tours of her amazing hand painted murals.

I spent the month of February in Nebraska City at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. As a resident artist, I was given a place to sleep and a place to work. Everything else was for me to decide. The small town (less than 7500 people) was a great place to consider my “practice.” What does WRITER look like FOR ME? I’m a morning person. I’m a walker. I need to have all my notes out so I can see them. Post-its are my favorite tool. During my four weeks in Nebraska I ate cider donuts ad dilly beans (delicious,) marveled at strings of migrating birds traveling across unbroken skies, and, (thanks to my magical flatmate, artist Millee Tibbs,) took tango lessons in a VFW hall just outside of Lincoln. I also wrote my way to the end of a new draft of a memoir about travel and mothers.

This was taken just after the big snowstorm. Most days were warmer than expected. Ideal for walking and wandering.

Hamster nest as organizational model. (Works for me.)

This desk shaped tombstone kind of blew my mind. A good reminder to walk when things feel set in stone — the more I move, the more my pages come to life.

I’ve been keeping a journal — not really a diary, but more of a conversation with myself. I write to work out what I’m thinking and to track threads of discovery and realization. At the end of each day of my residency, I wrote WHAT WORKED and TO DO. Keeping track of these two categories in the evening gave me a way to jump into each new day. WHAT WORKED is more positive and kinder than “DON’T DO THIS,” which, believe it or not, was once a category in my journal. Over the course of four weeks, I learned that it WORKS to eat protein for breakfast, to take a dance break when you are stuck, to get unstuck by moving forward, to write conversations. Post-it outlines work. So does cooking as an alternative form of creativity.

Two trips to Arizona formed parentheses around a flight up to Seattle for AWP, the big writers’ conference. So many people! So many books! So many chances to miss out, to say the wrong thing, to feel silly and shy and weird. But also so many possibilities for surprise connection, discovery and delight. WHAT WORKS (for me) for AWP: No expectations. A good travel buddy. Looking for books/presses/people you might not ordinarily run across. Saying hello.

On a panel moderated by Melissa Hart with Andrea Ross, George Estreich, and Juanita E. Mantz Pelaez

Thanks to the book fair, my suitcase was extra heavy on the return trip.

At the UNM Press booth with Ann Faison, writer, podcaster and super travel buddy. (Grant Faulkner was signing his new book.)

At AWP, the poet Jeff Rogers made a point of finding me and saying hello. Back in the 90s, Jeff was a member of my very first Los Angeles writing group. We met weekly to workshop short stories and essays. It was a time of dot-matrix printers and furtive use of workplace copiers. If you didn’t turn in your pages, you owed the group a bottle of whiskey. Jeff’s book, “Right Wrong Night Song,” is the culmination of years of work. He signed it for me and made a little asterisk next to my name in the acknowledgements. Jeff’s THANK YOUS run about eight pages and, while it made me weepy to see my own name included, it made me even weepier to see the names of so many other wonderful people who have, over the last 30-some years, also crossed my path. For me, writing has, at times, felt like aimless wandering and so reading Jeff’s acknowledgements felt a little like seeing a map at the end of a long hike. Cheers to forward movement in good company.