On Foundations and Joy

By Catherine DiMercurio

We’re having a gorgeous September here by Lake Michigan and I feel incredibly lucky to be just a couple of blocks away from access to a paved bike path that runs along Muskegon Lake. Once the summer heat and humidity broke a bit, I decided to try and get a little more consistent with my running efforts. Throughout the chaotic spring weather and the steamy heat of the summer, I tried to go at least once or twice a week, along with taking some bike rides and walking and doing some strength training. But fall weather feels like the best for me, running-wise, so it seemed like a good time to commit to a more consistent routine.

As with many things requiring effort, energy, and some kind of commitment, running quickly serves up metaphors to a mind eagerly looking for ways to make sense of life. My interests all seem to require patience, more than anything. Whether I’m trying to make a better loaf of sourdough, throw a more perfect pot, submit more pieces of writing, or run a stronger mile, I’ve learned that I cannot expect to improve if I’m going about things in a haphazard manner.

There’s one important caveat here: sometimes I care not one tiny bit about improving. Sometimes all I want to do is do the thing. I just want the experience of throwing the cup, making a tasty loaf of bread that perhaps is underfermented or overproved. I want to not bother to understand the difference between those two things. And that’s okay. We don’t always have to be searching for progress or mastery. We are allowed to enjoy imperfections, messy experiences, flawed results.

Sometimes all I’m hoping for is to just do something enough that I’m not losing ground. Maybe I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I’ll never be as fast as I used to be running, which, to be clear, was not very fast at all. I really just want to have my body keep cooperating with my desire to keep at it. I don’t know if there are any time drops in my future, but I want to feel strong, capable. I want to keep going, you know? Boldy, curiously, lustily, joyfully.

For me, to enjoy exercise, it needs to feel playful. And if I enjoy it, then it is so much easier to keep at it. And my morning runs have felt playful these days. The program I’m following along with online is one that has a “walk-before-you-need-to” approach. In this way, you’re never running exhausted, which enables you to actually keep liking it. For me, that feels fun and playful. And my route, as I mentioned, follows the coast of Muskegon Lake, so there are always beautiful scenes unfolding in front of me. Birds to spot, wildflowers to smell. I get to hear the lapping of the waves, the way the cattails rustle in the breeze.

I just finished week two of my 30-minute/3 times a week running plan. It has stayed fun, and I’m figuring out where to sprinkle in the other things I’m trying to do consistently into that plan. There is a tremendous sense of satisfaction with having a goal that makes sense and that I have proven to myself is achievable.

All this is to say that I’m sort of learning how to be patient with myself, and reasonable too. I’ve stopped expecting myself to magically be improving my running pace or my throwing technique or the crumb of my sourdough bread. I know that even when I try and focus on a particular element I’d like to improve, and I study it, and I try harder, and I try more consistently, there’s still no promise that there will be noticeable improvement. Some folks say that improvement is inevitable when you’re dedicating time and effort. Sometimes I don’t see it though, in the things I’m trying hard at. Maybe I’m being too critical of myself, or maybe I’m not trying as hard or as consistently as I could be. But what I’m starting to understand is that while I might get frustrated to not see a better loaf, a better mug, a better mile, I wouldn’t feel like myself if I didn’t try anyway, improvement or not.

These things we try—the things we squeeze into the spaces in our life not filled up by work and other responsibilities—they’re not easy, and they simply can’t have our full attention. But finding these things and trying—as messy and nonlinear as that process is—is what makes life feel alive for me.

I was the type of kid who (probably for a thousand reasons that still need to be unpacked) was afraid to try anything that I didn’t know I’d be good at right away. Though I did make some attempts here and there, this mindset meant that for a long time, there was a lot I simply avoided. I just couldn’t bear failing, or having others witness my failing. It felt excruciating. I did run track in middle school and high school though, so whenever I come back to running, there is a sense of home. But when I first tried pottery as a 51-year-old who’d never touched clay, the courage I had to muster in order to pursue my curiosity cannot be overstated. It was hard for me to try this new, intensely challenging new thing. In my first semester, I thought of quitting countless times, or at least, never signing up for another class.

But then something shifted, kind of slowly, and I realized that the joy I was feeling in actually figuring things out, in getting incrementally better—at least enough to make a rudimentary vessel that survived the kiln—was something I could have for the rest of my life. There would always be more to learn, always new variables that kept my curiosity engaged, but also, as my skills grew, always a foundation I could keep building on.

Life shakes us sometimes, shakes us hard. Sometimes the foundation that we’ve built everything on—our family, our very identity—is destroyed, and we are left rebuilding ourselves from the ground up. Once we remake ourselves, it’s easy to avoid risking the integrity of the foundation again. Once we remake ourselves, it’s intoxicating to stand on new foundations that we remade. So when we build other foundations—like the foundational knowledge of a new “hobby”, or when we return again and again to foundations we’ve already built but need to dust off from time to time, like with running, there is an easy joy that comes with it, because we’ve already made it a safe place for ourselves.

What a gift to give ourselves, safe passage to a safe place, and not just a place that simply contains us, but one that steadies us while we continue to grow. It is a luxury and a privilege, I know, to be able to pursue any interest outside of one’s responsibilities. I’m in a place to do so because my children are off pursuing their own lives and dreams, and doing so with a glowing sense of their own independence. I’m in a place to do so, too, because after my last breakup, I decided to not get back on any dating apps. There have been so many shifts happening in my own life, all I have been able to think of is shoring up my own foundations once again, and there is such a strong sense of peace and security in doing this. I don’t know if that will change in the future, but right now, when I can give myself these gifts of safety, security, curiosity, and the time and energy to pursue my interests and passions, it seems foolhardy to tamper with what’s working, occasional loneliness aside. It’s a price to pay, but not an exorbitant one.

Whatever your situation, I hope there is at least a tiny sliver of time to find or return to a passion, an interest, a curiosity, and build or shore up those foundations. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it is that our own individual foundations should not be overlooked, because that rebuild is indeed a costly, exhausting one. Safe passage to safe places, friends.

Love, Cath

On Change, Evolution, and More Lake Magic

By Catherine DiMercurio

The more I write about journeys and transitions, about navigating them, the less I know. In my experience and from what I’ve observed, it’s as if we rarely get a chance to process one thing, when something else changes. I don’t know that this is a bad thing, but it is a thing to get used to, in the same way that we acclimate to the cold of the lake. I used to just run right in when I swam at the various inland lakes I used to live near. Now, being in close proximity to a Great Lake, I’m experiencing a different kind of cold. I used to think that by late August, the water temperature would generally feel warmer than it does at the beginning of the summer, and that is sometimes true. But there is nothing linear about the way lake water temperatures trend. I’ve learned about upwelling, where a wind shift pushes warmer waters near the shore back toward the middle of the lake, and brings up cold water from the lake depths. This can cause the water near the shore to drop by about twenty degrees. One day the water temperature could be 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the next barely 50.

So, you test the temperature, you wade in. Are your feet normal-cold or do your bones ache with it? I don’t acclimate as quickly as I used to, even in those warmer temperatures. Sixty-five to seventy degrees can still feel chilly for lots of people. I take it slowly. Somewhere between waist-deep and chest-deep, I dunk my head under, then swim in the unaccomplished, untrained way I do, staying where I can still touch the sandy bottom.

Lately, with all the transitions that continue to happen in my life and in the lives of those close to me, I’ve been thinking about the lake a lot, especially when I feel overwhelmed. I think about the way I float on my back, the way I’m able to move with the waves this way, the way the water sways me. I think about floating along with the changes that are happening, rather than trying to swim against them.

Photo by gu00f6ku00e7e erem on Pexels.com

It doesn’t always work. Sometimes the waves are too big. Sometimes you try to stand solidly and take the hit, keep your feet on the ground. There’s so much we cannot control when life is changing. Least of all the velocity of changes, the timing. Even when everything coming at us is a positive development, a series of open doors we’ve decided to step through, once we decide, everything takes on its own momentum and we must simply try to keep up.

I feel as though the only wisdom I’ve gained through any of this over the course of my life is that to acclimate to change, the best thing I can do is to keep shifting my perspective until I find the one that allows this particular transition to make sense. Eventually, with the right metaphor, I can find a way of looking at something that helps me to manage the change.

My hunch is that everyone is doing something similar when confronted with changes, good, bad, or otherwise. Because, you kind of have to. It seems that the only thing that you can predict accurately in life is that things will change, whether you want them to or not.

I try to see the beauty in it all, in the way people recalibrate their lives, their perspectives. Even when it’s messy, even in the struggle. I’m always especially impressed by my children. Watching the way they adapt to change, explore opportunity, embrace the new is inspiring. I often have the thought that I want to be just like them when I grow up. When I observe the way they handle things, I don’t see them the way I see myself: as a clumsy human navigating the lake by floating with the waves or trying to stand firmly against them. Rather, I’ve watched my children evolve, shift into whatever shape is most amenable to the situation, becoming a gull bobbing on the surface of the waves, a fish swimming deftly beneath the surface. They don’t resist, they efficiently grow into what each change requires. I wish I’d been able to learn that skill, that magic of being able to shift so effortlessly and beautifully into the next form. I don’t know that I ever had it; maybe I did once. Maybe I can learn it again.

It’s easy, after enough time, enough life, to forget that such magic ever existed. But witnessing it now, recognizing it, maybe that’s the first step to getting it back. Maybe my magic has always been different, though. Maybe I don’t adapt efficiently and elegantly and wholly. But I can find my own way to acclimate, find the metaphor that helps me see what to do next. Where others transform, I can watch and mimic, I can imagine myself a gull or a fish, even if I struggle to become whatever is next. Maybe that’s enough, for now, and if I remain imaginative enough and pliable enough, perhaps with enough lake magic I can keep moving from acclimatizing toward transforming, however slowly and inelegantly. We are all moving toward our next form, and we each accomplish it in our own way. Perhaps all we can do is be observant, be gentle, be open. I wonder sometimes if I am trying so hard to meet the moment, to evolve, to get it “right,” that I become my own obstacle. I am not the first person to get in my own way, to think that if I prepare and study in all the right ways, everything will fall into place. It’s as if in order to learn, we must unlearn so many things first. As if we spend so much time thinking about how to become a certain version of ourselves we lose our ability to become what was already on its way without any friction or intervention on our part. Maybe we can’t think our way toward our own evolution, we simply have to allow it.

Love, Cath

On Gifts, Ghosts, and Gathering

By Catherine DiMercurio

It was one of those mornings where I woke up feeling melancholy for no apparent reason. Was it some residual sheen of sadness from a dream I no longer remembered? Who knows. Rather than fading with the darkness, the feeling amplified as I rose, took the dog out, brewed my pour-over coffee. Decaf to start, half-caf later. I am mindful with caffeine these days after decades of turning a blind eye to how it impacts my anxiety.

As the coffee dripped slowly through the five small holes I’d scooped out of clay, I tried to comfort myself by laying my hand on this warm, useful item I had made, the ceramic dripper through which my coffee now made its way and into the little pot I’d also crafted. It’s grounding to make and touch functional, pleasing pieces like this, and like walking across wet sand in bare feet, it often soaks the sadness right out of me. That morning though, it didn’t. That day the strange, seemingly source-less sadness built like a gathering wave and I stood in the kitchen and cried a little. I let myself, let myself run through possible reasons for the tears. I don’t usually get sad around birthdays, but I do have one coming up. Was there something in me grieving while the rest of me walked around, unaware that we should be doing something other than celebrating? After all, it will be my first birthday here in the new house, and I’ve given myself the gift of the lake. I had plans I was looking forward to, and had been feeling light and cheerful about it all. But some part of me held back.

As I stood there with the tears and the coffee dripping, I saw flashes of people I missed, and flashes of people I didn’t, and recalled one particularly painful memory of an ex-boyfriend who was aggressively mean on my birthday. I stayed with him a little too long before I got out of that relationship. That ugly memory resurfaces sometimes but it had been a while since I’d thought about it, about him. By the time the coffee had finished its journey into the little green pot, my tears had ceased falling but I still felt heavy and confused by the unexpected emotions. I hadn’t consciously been troubled by memories of loss, by recollections of unpleasant past birthdays, or anything like that. It’s always a little unclear what the path should be when those things arise: let the memories come, and “feel the feelings,” as they say, or distract myself so I don’t “dwell on the past.”

I took some deep breaths and then chose a mug that had been a gift from one of my children. Sipped the good coffee as I stood in the kitchen and waited to see if there were any more ghosts hovering about that needed some attention. When things seemed quieter if still a little cloudy, I sat in the living room and opened my laptop to write. In that instant, I felt dramatically and surprisingly better.

It was as if in that one small movement of opening the laptop, I had opened a little present. Here, let’s be purposeful now. It wasn’t my work computer and it wasn’t about being productive in that prickly, capitalistic way. Just, purposeful. Let’s write. See where we left off in the novel we’re revising, jot down these thoughts for a blog post, see if anything moved from “received” to “in progress” on the writing we’ve submitted.

(I’ve done it again, started talking about myself in the plural. My brain does that sometimes, gathers all of my selves together this way. It’s ok. We sometimes need gathering.)

I realized in that moment that even if all the thirteen active writing submissions I have out there in the world all get rejected, I will keep doing this. We will. While sharing my writing via publication is a delight—a rare one, to be sure, but definitely a delight—the physical shift in my body when it was time to write this morning was as big a gift to myself as the lake is. It’s nothing short of remarkable. I love that new things are always unfolding for me with pottery, and that sitting at the wheel makes me feel the same way that writing does. Yet writing is an older friend, one of my first friends. I still have a little bright green notebook of odd poetry I penciled onto those pages when I was ten. I love that writing keeps me connected to that someone I was so long ago.

I have grown used to the way the early sun angles through the east window in the living room at this time of the morning in the summer. The way it spills across my fingers on the keyboard, the way it spotlights my dog’s sleepy face next to me on the sofa. To digress on the sunlight for a moment: every day since I moved in last September, I have made a mental note of the way the light floods the house at different times of day, in the living room, the office, the kitchen, the bedroom. It’s well-positioned to receive sunrises and sunsets, and I’ve marveled at how the position of the sun changes with the seasons in a way I never really noticed at the old house, which was designed and situated in such a way that there was enough natural light.

I’m grateful that while some old griefs needed some tears and attention that particular recent morning, they lead me to this reminder of all the simple gifts we can give ourselves. For me it is writing, as an experience rather than a task, and one that feels purposeful and meaningful, even if no one else ever reads it, like a little clay vessel that might only ever live on my bookshelf or in my cupboard. No one else might ever use that oddly formed mug with its pretty sheen of subtle glazing, but that does not diminish its utility or the delight it gives me.

So here’s to our memories, the bad as well as the good, because they all remind us that we’re living full lives and chasing dreams. We’re following through and paying attention. We’re gathering joy and wisdom along with all the heartache we’ve also pocketed along the way. We keep trying to live a life that feels authentic and full and just right for us.

On Catkins, Cosmos, and Creativity

By Catherine DiMercurio

Feeling creatively stuck is especially challenging when doing creative things is what reconnects us to ourselves. Here, though, the weather is finally unstuck. It is warm now, and not only is there more work to do in the yard, but warmer days also mean that getting outside to run, walk, bike, and hang out at the beach is more appealing. It’s been easy to turn toward those types of activities rather than figuring out how to revive the creative spark.

My topsy-turvy spring forced me to focus on the practical particulars of how to move forward, but also left me feeling unfocused creatively. I simply didn’t have anything left, energetically-speaking, to pour into artistic endeavors.

Like several of the challenges I’ve come up against over the past year, what I’ve been dealing with most recently is something I can’t really share about in a detailed way in this format. Given that in-person, I tend to overshare, it can be difficult for me to exercise restraint in this space. Interestingly, though, I’ve been reading a lot these days about restraint within the context of writing, specifically in terms of character and plot development. It’s been argued that readers today have come to expect things to be spelled out, over-explained, and yet when we as authors trust our readers to connect the dots themselves, the writing can truly shine and the reader’s experience is richer and deeper and more personal. It’s tempting to write in such a way that our readers feel exactly what we want them to, when we want them to. But is there actually value in controlling the experience in that way?

When you look at it like that, it doesn’t matter much what the particulars of my personal experience are as I attempt to reach out to you, as a reader, in this format. It doesn’t matter because you probably also know what it is like to go through a challenging period that you feel obligated to keep a little private. Inside, you’re managing some kind of turmoil, but you still have to go to the grocery store and thank the cashier, perform your job with a measure of excellence, feed and play with the dog, tend relationships, go to the dentist. Sometimes we want to stop all together. We freeze in place, wishing someone could just wake us when it was all over. When the new path forward has been settled upon. Sometimes you even imagine what a luxury it would be to have someone else work out all the details and just point you: this is your path now; it might not be easy but you don’t have to decide anything, it’s been decided for you, just keep walking.

I think the dust will be settling soon for me, at least for now. I’ll learn the new path, and I’m grateful that it revealed itself and that I had people in my corner urging me toward it. And while I’ve been disappointed that through this and other changes, I’ve found it challenging to give my writing the attention it deserves, I’m trying to shrug off the disappointment and tell myself what I’d tell anyone going through a challenging time: Be patient with yourself. Give yourself grace. Work on small creative exercises rather than trying to make progress with on-going projects. There is a way; you will find it.

I think sometimes we waste our creative energy telling ourselves stories about bad things that happen. When life knocks us down, especially after a few consecutive knock downs, it’s easy to wonder something like: why do bad things always happen to me? I’m trying to avoid this line of thinking though, and go the route of the erasure poem. An erasure poem is where you take a section of printed text and strategically strike out words and lines, and the remaining words and phrases create a poem. This is an oversimplification; apologies to the poets. So instead of “why do bad things always happen to me?”, I strike out words and what I’m left with is: things happen. It’s not personal, it’s not always, it’s not just to me, and it might not be as bad as it seems.

While this can take the sting away, it doesn’t always remove the obstacles to the creative flow. But it helps. It also helps to turn toward other creative pursuits. Writing has proved thorny lately, but I played with watercolors recently, and clay, too. Both of those pursuits do wonders for my brain, easing me into that state of mind where thoughts quiet themselves for cherished minutes or hours.

Right now, I’m hoping that I have a break from big changes for a bit, and that things settle down into more mild domestic tribulations, like the irritation of pesky, nearly empty jam jars. I don’t feel like washing them so I never quite use the end of the jam, so they clutter up the fridge door. Or, the adorable bunny that breakfasts on the bright pink and orange blossoms of my newly-planted cosmos and zinnias. Or the way the oak catkins—long, fringed, and the color of toast—have fallen from the red oaks, blanketing the yard and clinging to my dog’s long, fluffy coat like little burrs.

A few months of nothing extra happening sounds like a blissful proposition but I am not naïve enough to expect this. But I am still naïve enough to believe that being grateful for the stretches of calm and peace I do get is some kind of ward against bad things happening. So I will be exceptionally delighted to wash out the jam jars and monitor the bunny situation and painstakingly pluck oak catkins from Zero’s long, fluffy tail. I will be grateful for the mundane tasks that irritate but do not involve upending the normal flow of life.

These days, I try not to expect anything, good or bad, and just take things as they come. For a long time, I still wished and dreamed, but since I’ve moved near the lake, the sense of longing—longing in a large way, not little longings, like hugs and nice weather, a sweet text from an old friend—has largely dissipated. I’m here. I do have the sense that I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m not precisely sure what I’m supposed to do here, as in, is there a cosmic purpose I’m yet to fulfill, but I’m here and it feels like I wanted it to, the way I hoped it would. I feel like that part is settled.

But now I have the feeling that putting down roots is something different than I thought it would be. It’s not enough to have landed here. I look out the window at the flower bed I planted, the one with the zinnias and cosmos, the sage and the daisies and the boxwood, the spirea, lilac, and Russian sage. It all looks so newly planted, so unfilled out, nascent. I can easily imagine how it will look as everything grows, how the perennials will fill out year after year. But right now, every plant is standing soldier-straight in the same position it was in in its little pot from the nursery. I imagine the roots underground not even unfurled yet from the shape of the pot.

I wonder what life will look like at this time next year, when I’ve been here a little longer. If my life will have filled out a little more like the perennials out front. I’ll have stretched and grown twelve months longer. Right now, my dreams are about writing more, seeking out the literary journals and small presses that might be homes for my work. Expanding my proficiency with clay, creating (hopefully) beautiful, functional pottery and finding ways to share it out in the world. I dream about centering this creative work in my life, finding a way for it to live more harmoniously with my 9 to 5 work life.

Sometimes I wonder if my dreams themselves are naïve and simultaneously question whether they’re big enough. But does the rabbit at breakfast dream of anything except the pink cosmos flower? Does the oak catkin dream about anything other than the acorn it will be? Maybe being what I am, who I am, the person unfurling her roots and growing creatively, is all I need to be dreaming about right now. And maybe now that I’m in the right place to do it, it will make sense, it will just be the way it’s supposed to be, all in its own time, without me chasing it or worrying about it or deciding things about it. It will just be. I will be able to just be.

Here’s to being and the kind of growth that happens tenderly and gently, in the warmth of the late spring sun, all in its own time.

Love, Cath

On Dirt and Clay and Flux

By Catherine DiMercurio

It’s been a cold spring here so far, though things are starting to budge. Until recently, the daffodils surged about three inches above the soil and then stayed put. Usually, I’d see their lolling yellow blossoms by now, at least at the old house. It’s my first spring here and aside from the bulbs I planted in front of the house in the fall, everything else that might come up in the sandy soil in my new yard is a mystery.

I’m a haphazard gardener. I like to plant, and to nurture, and I love to be surrounded by flowers, but I’m not the most attentive in terms of what plants thrive where. I don’t want to drown in data, but I could be paying closer attention, and maybe with this yard, I finally will, instead of just plopping into the dirt whatever was on sale at the nursery, or whatever colorful bloom caught my eye. But it is also very likely that I will plant something that was on sale, in what I hope is a good spot, and cross my fingers.

At the old house, I prided myself for taming the overgrown yard I inherited when I moved in. In bringing back what had gone neglected. Here, there is much to do too, though I am pleased what is already on the property, a mature rhododendron, a forsythia deep in the back yard, the irises and hostas.

My gardening efforts represent slow processes of growth and discovery and labor. Moving into a new place, waiting to see what will bloom, deciding what to do next, then planting, but also pruning, tending, and doggedly removing invasive species that tend to take over neglected spaces. Already I’ve been yanking out the strangulating vines of an old honeysuckle. I go outside to play with the dog but suddenly my hands are in the dirt.

The slow rhythm of gardening appeals to me, and it’s similar to what I enjoy about pottery. There are many long steps in each process in ceramics, so many techniques to learn, skills to master. Sometimes I think all I can hope for is mild proficiency, not mastery, but I am pleased to be producing functional forms whose shapes and colors are appealing and often delightful. I’ve described pottery as a hobby but it’s really more of a practice. Like writing, it is something I need to do. Making something that is both artful and useful nourishes me, whether it’s a blog post, a poem, a story, a mug, a bowl. These all can be shared, held, used to connect. The haphazard gardening I do is a little different; the need is there but what I’m producing is more amorphous. I want my space to be both safe and pleasing, and the process is long and grubby (and in this way is much like pottery).

In all these things I find the slowness of the processes appealing and soothing; they complement another task I’ve been tackling. I feel like inside me are all these crumpled pieces of paper and I’m trying to find them and smooth them out and understand if what is written there is a riddle or a love note to myself or some secret key to understanding myself or life in general better. Maybe that’s why I’m often at peace in being alone these days, despite the periodic loneliness I wrote about in my last post. Deciphering myself for my own growth is one thing; doing that while interpreting myself for someone else is quite another. I guess that’s what everyone wants, in some fashion. To be known. Just to be known without translation or explanation.

The slowness I seem to be cultivating brings me the opportunity to understand. I try to remember who I was as a child, what delighted me, what made me laugh, what made me cry. I wonder when I began to feel the pressure to fit in, to behave differently, and why it was so hard. I recall that while fitting it in often eluded me, I could achieve a semblance of acceptance by being accommodating, by trying to be less intense, less sensitive, by hiding those things. Looking back, it is easy to see the ways in which whenever I slipped up, conflict brewed, or some other negative reaction surfaced. Now, I love laughing in the kitchen all alone with my dog at something one of us did, talking to myself, delighting in the moon, in my own kite-hearted joy every time I see the lake. I talk to the tree in the yard and make up silly songs. I have stretches of seemingly unsourced sadness that lingers until it has run its course, and then it dissipates. I allow it. I allow myself all the weird and plain and quirky and sensitive and everyday things about me to flourish, things that over the years one or another person has mocked or announced as strange or made me feel uncomfortable or ashamed about.

I am making up for lost time. I am making up for hiding from myself. I am making it up as I go along, how to live now, how to live well on my own terms. And, yes, it’s sometimes hard and sometimes lonely but it is a relief also to not be laughed at for my quirks and my foibles, to not be misunderstood or quieted or subdued by someone who found things easier if I carried myself through the world differently. I want to be around people who recognize my joy and want to share in it, or who see my periodic melancholy without assigning to it sources or blame; it’s just mine, and it will pass. Like anyone, I want to be accepted, respected. I don’t always expect to be understood, especially as I am still learning to understand myself. But it is always a relief when that happens.

I’m perpetually perplexed by people who seem to have themselves all figured out. Perhaps no one does but people carry themselves as if they do. Or maybe it’s not something most people think about. It has become plain to me over the years that the things that often trip me up offer no such obstacles to some other folks. I’ve been teased for being physically clumsy but I think that’s wrapped up in some other, internal clumsiness as well. Maybe that’s too pejorative of a term. There are things I want to make sense, but they never seem to, and they are hard to ignore. It could be something about a past event or a current situation, or something more, but I hate it when I can’t untangle it. Unsurprisingly, I’ve been called an overthinker.

I wonder what the trick is, to be confident in the midst of feeling that everything is in flux, in a state of change, or still being assessed, figured out. In pottery, there’s a type of glaze called a flux and it’s used in conjunction with other glazes. Its components work to bring about movement in the other glazes it is layered with. It’s gorgeous and tricky and fun. Maybe the secret to that confidence I envy in others is seeing the flux of life, of the own innerworkings of my head and heart, as gorgeous and tricky and fun, instead of an unsettled, clumsy thing that I won’t feel comfortable with until it is figured out.

Over the years, I’ve learned to accept some ambiguities that used to cause a lot of discomfort. I’m okay with not knowing how a piece of pottery will turn out; I’ve even grown to be okay with things not turning out well at all. But in life the stakes are higher than clay. We are often in situations for years before we’re aware of whether or not they are “turning out okay.” And typically, it is only after some time has passed can we evaluate what “okay” even meant in any situation.

I think one of the hardest things to do is find the peace within a moment when the larger situation is quite flux-y. Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to things that urge me to slow down, to ponder the incremental inching of the daffodil stalk, to stare at the lake endlessly and simply hear it and watch the waves undulate, to nurture a lump of clay through all the steps that turn it into the vessel I sip coffee from. If I can stretch out a moment, I can find reprieve from the churning of my brain and its efforts to figure it all out. But what I want to work toward is being able to hold it all, hold the slow, stretched out moment not as escape from the churn and flux but as part of it. I want to feel how it’s all connected, but maybe getting there is a slow, clumsy process too. And maybe I’ll finally accept that there are things that will never make sense, aren’t supposed to make sense, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have something to teach us.

Love, Cath

On Loneliness and Patience and Weather

By Catherine DiMercurio

Sometimes I’m never lonely at all and sometimes it’s always winter. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about loneliness is that you don’t talk about it. Discussing it creates an awkwardness people don’t know what to do with, which leaves me with the feeling that I’m somehow obligated to feel shame about it, as if I have done something wrong by putting myself in this position.

The hard thing is that casual social interactions don’t assuage the type of loneliness that strikes me sometimes. It’s true that making new friends in a new place can be challenging, and I do feel the ache of that sometimes as I’m adjusting to life in my new town, but what is harder for me is the realization that none of the relationships I tried to build in the past ever blossomed into something with the kind of longevity I once hoped to be enjoying at this point in my life. There were recurring losses: of the possibility of various futures, of that close emotional intimacy with someone who really gets you.

Which is not to say these endings weren’t necessary. But also, I didn’t anticipate the way those accumulated losses would feel over time. What is astonishing is the way my own perceptions of loss and gain shift and morph. There’s a certain bliss I cherish, the peace that I have gained/earned that is the absence of the friction of being with the wrong person. [Obviously, friction happens, even with the right person, but with the right person, there’s enough underlying love and good will that occasional friction is simply something to work around.] There is also the absence of the anxiety I felt being with emotionally unavailable partners, an absence of the loneliness I felt upon recognizing when someone did not have the capacity to try to hold my pain as fully and as tenderly as I tried to hold theirs. And yet, sometimes the absence of not having someone to lean on, a shoulder to cry on, feels greater than those things. At times it seems I’ve traded one type of loneliness for another.

And then, the next day or the next week, I feel changed. Clear headed. When we’re in the depths of loneliness and the grief that comes with it, it’s easy to identify with it entirely. When it lifts it’s plain that it was not so much “just a feeling” but more like the weather, more like atmosphere, something we breathe in, something that impacts our daily living. But also, something that shifts, changes, improves. I wonder if in some language, the way we say I’m lonely is in my heart there is bad weather.

What I keep relearning is that so much of everyone’s lives involves the intricacies and negotiations of competing compensations: I lack this, but I have that, and this compensation is amenable to me. I have also found that winter whittles away at the balance that can be easier to find throughout the rest of the year. On a recent rare sunny day, I found that the gloomy internal cloud that made me feel so dark had dissipated and I wondered if all I’d really been missing was the sunlight on my face.

I’ve started pottery again. Waitlisted for a long while at a couple of studios, I decided to take matters into my own hands and set up a small studio in my basement. I found another potter who rents out kiln space. While this set up means I’m losing the social connections of a pottery studio community, it means I’m gaining the flexibility to be creative on my own schedule, rather than being tied to studio availability. There are other losses and other gains of this set up. It is amenable to me. It’s also been about as challenging as I expected it to be, reintroducing my hands to clay, to the wheel. I enjoy practicing. I love it when I easily center the clay and pull up nice even walls. It’s disappointing when I fail to do so. And I hate that I’m frustrated by such minor failures. I want to be a person who sees failure as part of the process, to respect it as such. I want to be in love with the whole process, not just the successes. Once again, pottery teaches me about life.

This winter has been a long process of slow growth and many frustrations, and little griefs that I mistakenly have counted as failures. But also it’s been a winter of little joys that don’t get celebrated enough, that I don’t celebrate enough.

I once had a pottery instructor tell me you’re really bad at being patient with yourself. She also admonished me on more than one occasion to not be so hard on myself. It’s not that I expect to make flawless art, but it is true that I’m constantly changing the rules for myself about what “good” and “enough” look like. I have learned that I often create a sense of urgency in situations where there really isn’t one, as if I have to get things “right” as quickly as possible. I’m trying to pause when that kicks in so I can discern if the urgency is real, so I can slow things down, let growth happen. So I can practice. So I can appreciate practice and process, all of it, in all kinds of weather.

It’s mid-February and winter isn’t over by a longshot, but you can sort of see spring out there, off in the distance. I feel a shift beginning, where I can recognize that while I’ve had some low points this winter in terms of my mental health, I can also give myself credit for the on-going process of getting through my first lakeside winter.

Sometimes you need to write about loneliness or grief or the failures so necessary for growth in order to explain it all to yourself. Concepts like loneliness become transmuted into something solid, into a noun, into a thing to be turned over in your hands like a stone worn smooth by water, instead of a verb that scrapes across your heart and leaves it feeling like a skinned knee.

I feel as though I’m losing a little of the hollow feeling that has plagued me on and off over the years. It used to be that I believed myself less hollow when I was in a relationship. But after I had a long stretch of solitude/solo-ness/single-hood [I don’t know which nomenclature I prefer] and the hollowness began to fill in, I thought, don’t ever lose this, don’t ever forget how full you can feel on your own. I hadn’t known truly, up until that point, that it was possible.

[When I did meet someone new, I was fearful of losing what I’d gained. I think part of me fought the relationship the whole time, and part of me fought for it because it did have many good qualities. I talked about the struggle with him, not wanting to fight this war alone. But I suppose once the other person knows there’s a war they don’t feel much like fighting with you, or for you.]

So now I’m in the process of filling the hollow back in with the marrow of my own living. It looks like beach sand in my pockets, driftwood and rocks all over the house, clay beneath my fingernails, notebooks with random thoughts and little poems. Sometimes, too, it looks like loneliness clutched to my chest, a ruined lump of clay I couldn’t center, a dog struggling with his own anxiety despite my efforts to help. But, weather shifts. Atmospheric patterns change. It’s true that some griefs don’t ever truly abate, and a little part of our heart might always be stormy, but a heart is a great big world and the clouds can clear in other territories within it. It’s just hard to be patient with the process sometimes, especially in winter. But there’s no shame in any of it.

Be well. Be patient.

Love, Cath

On Low Points, Letting Go, and Leaping

By Catherine DiMercurio

This year was not my best in terms of writing output. Too many BIG things happened, things that consumed my energy, the way whales swallow krill. Family medical issues, a break-up, selling a house, buying a house, and moving across the state, alone. And a kiddo starting grad school, which though more an event in their life than mine, was something I wanted to be present for to a greater degree than I was able to be.

Still, I managed to write a couple of small things, do some revising, and I’m ending the year submitting short new pieces, along with longer, older ones that have not yet found a home. I have pieces out at journals and small presses in the poetry, creative nonfiction, short story, novel, and short story collection categories. Not bad for a slow year. I’m eager to see what 2026 will bring, and like any writer, I’m hoping for some acceptances.

But more than anything, I’m eager to get back to creating. I’m on the waitlist at a pottery studio and I’m so missing the wheel, the feel of clay beneath my hands. I’m excited to delve back into ongoing writing projects and begin some new ones.

This year was not without other creative efforts, though. Turning a house that was someone else’s, and then vacant for two years, into my own home took a lot of creative energy. I’m loving the way things have come together in this small space. It has the cozy cottage vibe I hoped for. And I haven’t even started on the yard yet. So much fun—and hard work—ahead. It’s the type of hard work that feels especially good, digging in the dirt, creating something beautiful. Maybe I will finally plant a vegetable garden again after so many years of not being able to do so.

In many ways, this has been a year of letting go. I had a low, low point this year. I didn’t know if I was going to proceed with my plan to move toward the lake, and there were many things happening that made me feel frightened for myself and for people I love. In that moment, I turned to someone whom I thought had my back. I poured out my heart, overwhelmed and full of uncertainty. That person’s reply to me was brief, a single line of text saying that I’d get through it. It was the last thing I hoped for or expected to hear. I hadn’t felt so alone in a long time. I thought there would be a sentiment of being in it together, an offer of support, a show of love. At the time, I didn’t know how I’d get through it, and I just wanted to know I wasn’t going to have to figure it all out on my own. Again. Still. You get exhausted from doing that sometimes; I was. But they seemed to be telling me that alone was precisely what I was in for. Sometimes people are (intentionally or otherwise) clear about what it is they can and can’t offer.

I had to let go of a lot of expectations this year. They’re not that useful, as it turns out, expectations. I learned over the years that there is a line between how much you need and how much others think you should need, or how much they are okay with being needed. It’s a blurry line and it shifts and you don’t know when you’ve crossed it until people sort of pull away. You can’t begrudge them this; everyone has their own energy and resources to protect. There’s not a lot of communication about it though, so you’re left a bit fuzzy about the state of your relationships, romantic or otherwise. And then you stop asking for help because you realize that there is a mismatch between what is offered and what you need, so to protect the relationships that you have left, you do what you can on your own and try to tame the needs that go unmet. Tuck them away. Try to silence the voice in your head that shames you for needing too much, for not understanding what “too much” means.

We’re humans; our evolution as a species involves community as well as self-reliance. But the balance is always tough to achieve. Some people are drowning in the micro-communities of their own households. Or they feel like the krill, and their world is a whale. So many married people have confessed to me that they long for solitude more than anything else; they tell me how much they envy me. I cherish my solitude, and I’m attuned to the gifts it offers. As happy and satisfied as I often am, it doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes miss having my own micro-community larger than me and my canine housemate. But as I sit here in the cozy little house that I have created a home out of, and as I look at all I’ve managed to accomplish on my own, I know I’ve made good decisions.

Following that lowest of low moments earlier this year, I had little confidence in my decision-making abilities. It’s taken me many years to have any surety that I could trust my gut again. And in that moment, I struggled to make out what my gut was telling me. Luckily, I had some truly supportive voices that were able to amplify my own instinct to leap into the big new thing that I imagined for myself: life near the lake. My children and a few key family members and friends reminded me of the reasons why I had hatched the plan to move near Lake Michigan in the first place. They kept me going in ways they probably don’t even realize. And once I had been reminded, never wanting to forget about the importance of this leap again, I commemorated the decision with the leaping rabbit tattooed on my arm.

I feel as though it has taken me half a year to even start processing the spring break-up, not to mention everything else that happened. I’m grateful for the luxury of this downtime between Christmas and New Year’s Day, where I can write, paint, work on a puzzle, bake, rearrange furniture, exercise, look at the lake, and simply sit with a cup of coffee and think, feel. I can hurt and cry, laugh and dance, and watch my dog watching me figure myself out all over again. I am thankful for the constant he is in my life; a solid, loving, loyal soul who lets me be whomever I need to be, need however much I need to need.

And I’m thankful that each new day offers us all the chance to take leaps large and small, to trust our gut, to reinvent our lives, completely or incrementally at whatever pace feels good. In my case, that reinvention was about me meeting my own greatest need: to create the space and the conditions necessary so that the person I’ve always been has the room she needs to fully exist, to grow and thrive. Any creative effort is a leap into some unknown, and things usually don’t turn out the way you expect. Sometimes they’re even better.

May all your leaps be lucky.

Love, Cath

On Winter Gifts and Safe Harbors

By Catherine DiMercurio

As I walked along the snowy beach, the lake splashed against the frozen droplets of former waves at the shoreline. It was wondrous with the sun sparkling across the waves and the icy beach. I slid across frozen puddles, crunched across the ice that rippled like a memory over the windswept sand. I never expected to enjoy a wintry beach walk quite so much. I talked to the lake like an old friend, thanked it for being deep enough to receive my troubles and old griefs without finding me “too much,” without resentment or judgement.

It has been a year packed with some big transitions, which is why, when winter hit so suddenly and forcefully a couple of weekends ago, I didn’t feel prepared. It was a big snowfall, followed by another heavy round a couple of days later. And since, we seem to get another few inches every couple of days to add to the two feet of snow already on the ground.

I remember my father taking my sisters and I sledding when we were little, ice skating once or twice too. I wanted to like it. I did enjoy playing in the snow, building snow men and snow forts and making snow angels. But I remember being at the top of the sledding hill and feeling a sense of apprehension, a worry that we’d collide into the other children sledding down the hill. I wonder if I would have enjoyed it more if it had been just us. Skating never made sense to me. It wasn’t the kind of thing I was going to get the hang of on the first time out and since we only went a couple of times, there was not really a chance to improve, but I also didn’t enjoy the slipperiness, the falling. I felt clumsier than usual, and I was already a kid that got called klutzy. Despite growing up in a state known for its winter wonderland, I have always had complicated feelings about the season.

One Christmas Eve when I was still quite young, we were returning home after visiting my grandparents’ house. Our car spun and skidded off the snowy road and when it stopped, we were facing the Saginaw River. I don’t know how close we were to the river, but in my memory, I have this sense that we had narrowly escaped careening into the water. Maybe that’s why, years later, after I learned to drive, I would become extremely fearful of driving in snowy conditions. Of course I adapted, as you do when you have places to go. You do what you have to do. But possibly this early memory is at play when my driving-in-bad-conditions apprehension surfaces. Perhaps I also just have a strong survival instinct. That, and I don’t really trust other drivers who seem to have no sense of caution.

Combine all this with the anniversaries of some Bad Things happening in early December many years ago, along with the short days and lack of sunlight, and you get a very tricky time. Yet, there is a kind of unexpected vibrancy in this community I’ve landed in, a recognition of and appreciation for the natural beauty we’re surrounded by. People get out there and enjoy the lake and the woods and the fresh air in all kinds of conditions. It’s a bit contagious, even if, especially in winter, I have to work a little harder to get motivated to spend lots of time outside.

I’ve been doing okay though—snowy hikes, walks or drives to the lake, icy beach strolls, sunsets. Some days though I get hit with melancholy, or fatigue, or some other cocktail of emotions that seem to rise to the surface more readily in darker, cold months. Like many people, I walk a fine line between knowing when to let those feelings in, acknowledge them, feel them, deal with them, and knowing when to get out of the house and out of my head. I’m still learning what it means to feel the heavy feelings without falling into ruminating, stewing, spiraling.

At the worst time in my life, I felt as though I was constantly at risk of falling into a deep darkness that I would not be able to climb out of. In retrospect, I think I did fall in sometimes, though, at the time, I believed I was pulling myself up and out just in the nick of time. So when things seem heavy, I occasionally get a feeling of dread, as in, please don’t let this be that. But it has never been that again, thankfully. I have a lot more tools now, and I’ve had a lot fewer reasons to ever feel quite like that again. I don’t often give myself enough credit for the navigating I’ve done, away from dark places.

But here, where I’ve landed, I often look around at the beauty of my surroundings and thank myself for captaining myself to this shoreline city. Sometimes there are two selfs, the one who doubts and is often fearful, and the one who sees the path and makes the necessary choices and journeys. Do you believe me now? I’ve asked myself. Do I believe now that I can make the decisions that land me in the right places at the right time? Do you trust me now? We made it here, after all.

At the end of my street is a marina. The joy those docked sailboats bring me, when I see their masts jutting into the sky as I stride down the hill, is both reliable and exhilarating. Reliable joy? What a gift! A sign reads “A SAFE HARBOR MARINA.” Safe harbor. How wonderful to discover that this is what we can be for ourselves, and what an actual place can feel like. Finding that feeling after a period of drifting and searching, of looking for belonging and not quite getting there, is as magical as the icy beach, or the gathered boats snug in their harbor. I hope this winter finds you in a safe and wondrous place.

Love, Cath

On Crescent Moons, Kaleidoscope Progress, and Feeling Move-able

By Catherine DiMercurio

The moon was so pretty the other night I cried a little. It was a tiny little sliver of a moon and just glimpsed between the oak leaves and the pine boughs. I don’t know what moved me so much but to feel move-able is wonderous. I thought, well, that was strange. I mean, I always love glimpsing the moon, but it doesn’t usually bring me to tears. I figured maybe that’s what happens after a long period of stress when things are kind of calming down, relatively speaking. Moving felt like a year-long obstacle course and while there are still post-move things happening at the house, the bulk of that particular effort is over. Talk about a heavy lift.

But now my attention is shifting, away from the chaotic multidimensional problem solving and navigation of moving, to where I am, what I’m doing now, what is next on the horizon, so I guess I have a little space for feeling actual emotions again. I guess that looks like crying at the moon. I thought it was maybe a one-time thing but I also teared up at the stars the next morning. I can see so many of them here. While I can’t see the lake from my property, the sky looks bigger and more open in that direction. Undoubtedly there is less light pollution so maybe that’s why the star gazing is kind of spectacular here.

It’s a beautiful fall here and I’m exploring the trails at the closest state park. The landscape is gorgeous and hilly, featuring marshy wetlands as well as steep, sandy dunes. I started out on a trail I’d been on the week before with my sister, except this time, I ventured out onto the spurs and loops that could be accessed from the main trail. One of the loops was labeled “challenging.” Given that the trails designated as “moderate” were fairly easy, I thought I’d give this challenging loop a go. It was definitely more challenging for me – more hills, and steeper ones. Rooty, narrow paths. But manageable. At one point, I peered out over a section of trail that went sharply downhill, all sand. The trail I was on went past that section and I marveled that anyone could get up or down it. And I went on my merry way, deciding at one point that instead of just skirting out and back to check out the trail, I would do the full loop. I was feeling pretty good about things until, after a bit of a downhill section, I found myself at the base of the big dune I’d spied earlier, and now I was going to have to go up it, or turn around and go all the way back. I stared at it for a while, dumbfounded, and then decided to give it a go. There were a few trees at the edges, so I figured if it got tough, I’d have some branches or roots to grab on to (which I only needed to do a little bit). I made it up, and while it was difficult, I was about halfway up when I realized I could do it, and that I wasn’t going to keep back sliding in the loose sand.

While this was a challenge for me, I’m sure for people who grew up around this terrain it was more moderate. I’ve never been athletic, though I had a chunk of time in my 30s and 40s where I was running regularly and completed a few half marathons. Once I stopped freelancing and went back to work in the office full-time, my running tapered off. Between working and commuting and single mom-ing, I struggled to find the time to go consistently, but I managed to feel like I was still in it. In the midst of the pandemic, I moved, and that process was extremely taxing, especially since both the old place and new place needed a lot of work. After I was settled in, I was so exhausted that I stopped even trying to run, and before I knew it, it was winter. By spring, I was starting from square one with running, and I feel like I have been doing the same for the past 5 years. Throw menopause into the mix of major life changes along with moving and empty nesting and breaking up, and there I was, starting from square one, and barely making it to square two, and then getting derailed, taking a break, and starting from square one again. Which is where I am now. Post-move again, and now trying to get back into running, but also trying to mix in weights, yoga, hiking.

It’s harder than ever to push myself. For the longest while, I kept telling myself that I needed to work on consistency first, and then I could work on building from there, longer runs, heavier weights. The lines are blurry. When have I been consistent enough to start building? How much is too much too soon? Can’t I just work on consistency a little longer? But even when I’ve been working on that, a lot of workouts feel harder than they ought to, which is frustrating. It used to be easier to stop and start up again, to make progress and build on it. That’s something that I’m still getting used to as I get older. Trying harder used to work, or, it used to work faster. Now, I feel as though the best I can do is to keep nibbling away at things, and so far, I can’t really measure progress in terms of a longer run, or one that felt easier, I can only say I keep trying. Maybe farther down the line something will feel like strength or speed again, but for now I am pleased that I challenged my brain to navigating new trails, and my body to steeper climbs up sandy slopes, and that I’m still trying with running and lifting.

At the end of that particular hike, I returned to my car and drove a little further on to the beach. It was deserted, except for the gulls, and I strolled barefoot in the cold sand, played a little tag with the waves. I wanted the feeling of running on the beach so I started out at a jog, and the Rocky theme came into my head, the training montage where Rocky and Apollo are racing on the beach and I pushed myself into a short sprint, which felt amazing. It felt like playing. It felt silly and joyful, full-body laughter. In a way, it was the same feeling as crying at the moon, my body releasing the stress of the last year in little doses, trying, starting over. A different kind of progress, like a kaleidoscope instead of a straight, solid line.

I don’t know what any of this means except that I’m definitely in a new chapter and my body knows it and my heart knows it, and I’m sure my soul or spirit or whatever you want to call it has known it for a while, that this is where we have been heading. It’s all good even though it doesn’t make sense in the strictest sense of the word. I’m just here and floating in it.

I feel quite positive about it all in general but there are things that weigh on me, things that need to be addressed now that I’m feeling settled in. And the missing of my people is something that’s always nearby, an awareness I have of the physical distance between us. I love the ways we stay connected in spite of that distance, but I do miss hugs. I have some trepidation as “the dark season” approaches; I know the things I struggle with in the winter. We all have heavy things to carry. But I’m also curious, about what the lake will be like in the winter, how life is lived in this particular place each season. It’s a gift to be able to keep figuring it out, to move across the state and across the sand and through the woods and feel moved by the sight of the moon.

Love, Cath

On Be-ing, Figuring, and Breathing

By Catherine DiMercurio

I don’t recall a time when part of my long walk entailed two miles barefoot at the water’s edge. Where Lake Michigan splashed at my ankles as I strode south. I don’t recall ever being able to go to the beach four times in one week. These are some lovely benefits to completely reshuffling your life.

It’s still a bit surreal, the move. There is so much that I’m still processing with the way this year has unfolded so far. I’m trying to pause more. Throughout this whole process, with a million little and huge steps along the way, I have felt catapulted from one thing to the next. Have barely been able to take a moment to enjoy a sense of accomplishment at meeting various milestones, because the process doesn’t let you rest. Even on the day of the move, an enormous, choreographed event, I was barely able to take a moment to consider the enormity of it, to congratulate myself for choreographing it. There was a brief period of time where I sat with my sister at the picnic table out back while the movers unloaded the trucks when I tried to catch my breath, tried to let the big truth of the moment sink in. I had done it. Moved to a lakeside town. Gotten myself as close as possible to the lake. I had, against the backdrop of some heavy personal turmoil, gotten my old house ready to sell, endured the ups and downs of all the showings and waiting for an offer, accomplished all the work to prepare the new house for my occupancy. Shepherded my anxious, reactive dog through it all. And I had moved farther from my children, from most of my family, from all of my friends, too. All of these things swirled through my mind—the work, the pros, the cons, the hopes, the fears—for a few overwhelming moments before I was pulled back to the reality of a house so chocked full of boxes I could barely make my way through it.

And then I faced the next enormous task. Unpacking. The tiny home was barely navigable. A narrow path led through a maze of boxes. I slept on the couch, unsure how I would even move things around in order to put my bed frame back together. But in two days I created some sense of order out of the chaos, and then I worked for two days in the office I’d managed to set up, and then spent most of the weekend unpacking the rest of the boxes. I can breathe a bit again and am no longer surrounded by cardboard. The basement is still a disaster and will likely remain so for some time. I want to take a few days and just feel normal, want to immerse myself in my regular routines, but my brain is already worrying about organizing the basement, and finding a new vet and dentist and doctor, and calculating when I’ll upgrade the electrical panel and replace the aging appliances.

There is always The Next Thing. There is never a clear deck with no items waiting for our attention. I’ve known this for a long time. It’s a lesson everyone learns at some point. It makes no sense to scramble and scramble trying to get all the Things attended to for the foreseeable future so that you can relax and be happy. It just is not reasonable to postpone feeling okay until all of the worrisome items are attended to. We have to keep figuring out how to find peace and joy in the middle of it all.

But knowing this doesn’t make the mindset adjustment any easier. If there are simple ways for moving the Things to Worry About to the edges so there’s some clear space to breathe, I don’t know them. The ways I know are about conscious, deliberate efforts. Maybe this work is easy for some. For me, it’s a huge mental challenge, a heavy lift. Some of it is self-protective. There is a part of me that is convinced that the only reason I get things done and avoid having important things fall through the cracks is because I do worry. It’s as if I need to worry because that’s the only way things will be ok.

It might seem like a whole lot of exhaustive nonsense if this is not the way your brain works. I think one of the things I love so much about being at the lake is that it is capable of taking me out of that mindset. The water is a live, physical presence; the experience of being there is multisensory. It diffuses worry, calms the loud thinking and overthinking. It’s the only shortcut I know. This past weekend, I took a long walk, some of which was barefoot along the shoreline. At one point, the absence of racing thoughts became apparent. It was shockingly peaceful. For a moment, I felt like Winnie the Pooh, just strolling along, with a hum-de-dum sort of song in my head. “Pooh just is” is a line I remember from Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh. And striving for that state of just be-ing feels impossible sometimes.

Part of the problem isn’t just a brain that is wired (by so many things, some of it innate, for sure, but some of it experiential) for worry. Part of the problem is a world that’s all digital and hurry up and loud and bright and urgent and in so many ways frightening and terrible. Of course we want to remain in a cozy bubble, try to feel good and safe and separate. To eliminate as many of the things to worry about as possible until there’s nothing to worry about anymore so we can just be.

I want to believe that while there is no end to worry (do you ever worry that there is something you forgot to worry about?), that the opposite is true, that there’s no end to peace, as in, isn’t there a well of peace within us, a transcendent and universal peace? And if so, how do we get there, how do we find it when we’re lost in all the other stuff. I don’t expect to stay there, I don’t know how people could do that with life being what it is but finding a path there, an easy path, a good path, a clear one, would be nice. I’m trying meditation but it’s quite a challenge.

Maybe I have found a path, maybe that’s why I moved here. It’s surely different for everyone and probably not everyone wants to go looking for that kind of peace. Maybe we’re not supposed to because don’t we need to stay worried so that we can fix little parts of the brokenness in the world? Or do we do that by finding and being peaceful within ourselves, and bringing that energy to everything we do?

Yesterday after work I attended a program at a beautiful historic library. It was a book discussion led by a professor from a nearby university, for a book I really loved, about a man who sails Lake Superior in a dystopic, near-future Midwest. The framework of the talk was “dystopia and hope.” I contributed a lot to the conversation. It felt good. And then I drove the few minutes to the lake, strolled on the beach, watched the sun start to set behind the churning waves. I didn’t worry about finding a vet or a dog trainer or a dentist, or work, or what I’ll do with Zero if I want to go visit my people on the other side of the state. I didn’t think about the boxes in the basement, and the logistics of that space. These are things I have to figure out. But for a brief window of time, I was exploring my new community, interacting, living outside of my own thoughts, and getting soothed by the lake. I felt a greater sense of belonging than I have in a while.

I probably won’t ever stop being a worrier, but here there seem to be more opportunities to take breaks from it, and that’ll be good for me. I don’t worry that I will fail to figure out the things I need to. I just don’t always want to go through the figuring out process. It gets tiring dealing with the obstacles that come along with so many decisions. And obviously I feel a bit drained from having navigated a major life change, and that’s okay, is what I remind myself. We get decision fatigue, along with plain old regular fatigue.

But, I do know that I’ll figure out a lot of it. Maybe not all of it, and not at the same time, and often not elegantly. But I’ll do my best, as we all do, and maybe it’ll be a little easier now, here, to stay even-keel through it most of the time.

Be well. Love, Cath