Oh hello. You’ve caught me here exploring this Seattle wharf on a fish shipping adventure.

Ain’t she a beaut?

Today I knew I had to write.
I tried my new method of choosing  a picture at random from my travels
and writing that story in a couple hundred words, but I realized I had
forgotten how to even start. My heart broke a little and two snotty
little tears fell out. I had so neglected my craft that I didn’t know
how to approach it anymore.
So I turned to the Internet. I searched around on some award-winning
travel writing sites. I read nothing that inspired me.
I decided, if nothing else, I had my shitty journal writing scraps of
observations and emotions usually written on a two-beer-empty-stomach
burst of sentimentality while traveling. I checked for it in two bookcases with
no luck. Finally I found my the notebook in a piled-up box in my closet,
tucked in next to a sweet little mirror bordered in Guatemalan
embroidery – a gift from a good friend who spent Peace Corp time
there.
I felt something twinge. Some rusty, neglected cog in a creative motor
that seizes up during the long right-brained season of fisheries.
But I saw that journal with its silver letters embossed on the black
cover.

Mainard said she bought it for me for two reasons:
1. I’m a writer, and writers need something to write in.
2. Something about the Ginsberg quote on the front caught her eye and
reminded her of me.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.
Starving. Hysterical. Naked.”
She wrote an explanation in the front cover – “…maybe because you
like to live your life with passion and intensity…”
And more movement from that rust-seized cog of creativity.
A feeling of relief in my chest.
A sense of return to self and skill and left brain.
I flipped to pages with scribbles from the same trip as the picture I
wanted to write about originally. I read my words in the pages, and I
liked them. I felt inspired.

{And hey – thanks again to Maire for the word holder and to T-Pain Handsome for encouraging me to write something…}