Hello, friends! How is life treating you?

Here in Coastal Georgia, we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Hurricane Milton, but judging by the gorgeous blue sky peeking through my window, he may have taken another route.

My fluffy white dog is at my feet, utterly unconcerned with all the talk of bad weather. She’s attempting to make peace with me after digging through my tennis bag during the night and polishing off a ziplock bag that housed two granola bars. The audacity!

Wallace, my fifteen-year-old is lounging on the sofa with his laptop. He assures me he’s doing his school work, but I have my doubts. Our school district declared an e-learning day today because of the weather. Tomorrow and Monday were already scheduled for Fall Break, so what’s one more day?

I haven’t written much here lately. I go through phases of feeling like there’s not much to share. Yet, I truly love looking back to times when I felt there wasn’t much going on or worth writing about. More often than not, I find gems. This morning I was instantly transported back to the day school let out for Winter/Christmas break as we were packing to go on a cruise. It reminded me of the importance of putting the seemingly mundane down on paper. Often times I don’t feel like my words are descriptive enough. In the moment they feel repetitive; they don’t paint a picture. If anything, they lack luster.

Perhaps ordinary is more than enough. When I look back, I remember more. The scene is more vivid, and I’m able to see it more clearly in my mind than when I originally wrote about it.

This morning I read something I wrote about my experiences the morning of September 11, 2001. It wasn’t especially profound, but aside from the tragedy of that day were some of the smaller details. I described walking downstairs to the kitchen of my in-laws’ house. This particular house had unusual skylights both in my bedroom and above the staircase. Reading those words took me back there. The smell of coffee, the warmth of the early September sun and the way it beamed down onto the stairs.

My in-laws moved out of that house less than a year after 9/11. My father-in-law passed a few years later. Neither the stairs nor the skylight were all that monumental in my time living there. The smell of coffee is certainly nothing I haven’t smelled since, but when you mesh all of it together, a moment and memory were sealed in time. I looked back on that moment differently than I might if I’d never written about it.

These memories aren’t miniscule. I like having records of such moments. Are we losing the written word to media? I think perhaps our records of snippets of time are evolving, but isn’t it important to keep a bit of that? As a lover of the written word, I certainly think it is.

I recently read a fascinating book about a school teacher who came from New England down to Savannah in the 1840s. The book is a diary of her time in Savannah. I have no idea where I heard about the book, but it’s called Pleasure and Pain by Emily Burke. Her recount is a perfect example of someone writing about day-to-day happenings, and I was mesmerized. Emily Burke’s descriptions and observations are cemented in time – before the Civil War. Burke titled her book Pleasure and Pain because that summed up her time in Savannah. I understood this immediately. Savannah is a beautiful town. The weather is pleasant and it’s surrounded by marsh, rivers, and the Atlantic Ocean. Yet, Burke’s experiences of her time in Savannah were mixed. Yes, it’s a beautiful location, but she often wondered about the experiences of the enslaved people she came in contact with and observed regularly as well as some of the extreme poverty she observed on the outskirts of town. Many of the locals’ experiences were certainly more painful than pleasurable. Burke’s writing is enchanting, and I couldn’t put it down. I’m not sure why this book isn’t better known.

In addition to writing on this blog, I dabble in copywriting. I have a few regular clients that hire me to write things like newsletters, emails, and website content. This type of writing pays the bills, but I can’t say I feel super enthused about much of it lately. I prefer different kinds of writing. Lately, I find myself thinking about writing more than I have in the past. Maybe because I have more time to write now. I also find myself pulled in many directions. I know I think better when I journal regularly. I’m able to put my thoughts down on paper, and I walk away with more clarity. I don’t always look back on my journals because my words often feel incoherent as if my brain is mush. However, when I do read back through what I’ve written, I pick up something unexpected.

I hope all of you are well. Hurricane Helene did a number on so many people. Those in North Carolina suffered the most and will be picking up the pieces for a long time. We still have a lot of debris down, but considering the overall destruction, we came out okay.

What’s new in your world? Do you have any thoughts on the written word and how this medium is evolving? Do you journal? I’d love to hear your experiences. Until next time…