well with my soul.

It's fall! Today I woke up and it felt crisp outside. Woody felt it and he leaned hard into the breeze, snout lifted, nose twitching. He takes things in with his whole body. Storing that little detail for later, when I need the reminder to do the same. Yesterday I had lunch bunch with four of my students and one said, "Don't you wish the whole class was eating out here? So they could feel fall, too?" (For the record, yes, I absolutely did wish the whole class was out there.) My sister is in town and we got dinner last night, sangrias and all. We also got gelato and then sat on the couch and watched Parenthood together. Pure bliss and the perfect Friday night, if you ask me. Maybe it's the breeze or the crisp air. Maybe it's the fall leaves my students plastered with October goals and then decorated. Maybe it's all these things combined, but I feel the shift. The light is peeking through the cracks, seeping into the corners. I feel my entire soul finally looking up. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

life fuels life.

This has been a hard month for me. Without being too specific, I began my new career and found it to be so much harder and more difficult than I could have ever possibly imagined. I am an optimist and believe I will always remain that way. Leading up to my first day, visions of my new career ran through my head in a candy colored, pleasantly blurred panorama. As the onlooker, I was pleased.

Over the past month, every single thread and fiber that held my optimism together in its bright, warm presence was stretched thin and taut, ends unraveling and seams pulling apart to carry the burden of reality. Things did not look all that bright and sunny, a perspective that was new and quite frightening to me. Even typing that out makes me feel uncomfortable because positivity is what radiates through the very center of my being. The past month quieted that and what replaced it was a chilly, uncertain, hard, black, grainy ball of doubt and anxiety. It was alarming to me that something could slip into my life so easily — that I could feel a sense of discontent and be knocked off my perch so easily. I think that's the thing about life's more trying moments — you don't really prepare for them so you're not shielding against them. At least I wasn't.

Well, I can tell you that I walked that path. I walked right through it. There was no detour, or scenic drive, or simple shortcut. It required good, hard walking, straight through the heart of those difficulties and right on through to the other side.

The truth is, there is no simple way to end this post — to tie all my words together into a conclusion or point. I guess the point is that it is a work in progress. I wake up and am thankful and I find the happy moments in life and I use those to fuel me through the more difficult ones. When I begin to look at things this way, it seems as though more and more moments turn into the beautiful ones — sometimes even the difficult moments (In fact, some of those moments become the most beautiful ones.). So it is that life fuels life.

Photo taken in Micanopy, FL — the sweetest and most darling little town, perhaps ever.