grapefruit spindrift

There's a grapefruit spindrift on the kitchen island where I’m sitting. The digital clock at the top of my Mac Book Air screen reads 9:16 PM. The battery is 100% full, and so am I, ready to pour out my weekend's musings onto this empty notes entry. I don’t need a reason to write. I will always find myself putting words to paper eventually, whether it’s on my ancient laptop, my even ancienter Olivetti typewriter, or just a notepad with a gel pen. There’s always something appealing about it. In my opinion, writing is an art. It takes dignity and soul, let alone presence of mind to reduce a working, growing mind to a few paragraphs. But I feel like it’s what I’m here for.

I first started writing when I was maybe seven years old. I was writing in school before that, but during the chaos of the pandemic, and living in NYC at the time, I found an escape in words and letters. We moved to Vermont, my parents divorced, and I started at a new school. Every day my mind was turning at such a high speed I couldn’t keep up with my last thought. I found writing as a way to share my thoughts, get my gears spinning, and do something good in the midst of a turbulent world. Years later, I found YWP. A community. A safe space. Somewhere that wasn’t school that I could learn something about the world, about what I could do about it. Since then, I’ve found joy and growth in a community.

So here I am, typing away on a clickety-clackity Mac Book keyboard that’s just as old as I am. Here I am, sipping from a grapefruit spindrift and pondering my life, everyone's lives, and life as a concept. I know I’ll never be able to put everything I feel and think to words. Some emotions are just too great to comprehend. Others are so simple that there are too many ways to say the same thing. But I have found belonging in a world that remains lost in a swirling snow globe of fate. I want everyone to know that they too can share. That they too can create. That their view of the world is their creation, almost entirely. But for now, I’ll just say goodnight. It’s 9:35, and tomorrow there’s gonna be more things to write about.