girls that never diary: week 73

GIRLS THAT NEVER DIARY is a (temporary) series where I try, once again, to create a daily writing practice. This time I’m also trying to reset some of my associations around writing, because my brain is tired of only wrestling with things that hurt me whenever I sit down to write. I’ve started writing these little diaries in my notes app, and they have mostly been helpful in that they get me to write something, and also in that they help me, when I reread them, answer the question for myself about what it is that I actually do all day, as a freelancer with barely any relationship to routine, as a writer who isn’t writing very much these days. I’ll send these out once a week until my brain is fixed.

FRIDAY

I snooze til 8:30 then have a quick phone call with Hala. I shower and get dressed, and miss breakfast again so I grab a cold brew and an apple and some nuts from the dorm kitchen, then head to workshop followed by two one-on-one meetings with students. Lunch with faculty friends (chicken fajita bowl, a very good pear, some chicken tenders and fries Sam got for us all to share) then back to my room to nap. 15 minutes into the most delicious nap of my life, my alarm goes off. Sam and I walk to Paula’s craft talk, a brilliant close reading of Sharon Olds’ “How it Felt” as a way to talk about form, content, and meaning. Back to my room to try to nap again but the moment has passed. I make a group order for delivery sushi with some of my dormmates. I get a few pieces of nigiri, a crab roll, and a tofu roll, plus miso soup, and eat outside in the grass with some of the other faculty. We walk over to the amphitheater for tonight’s faculty reading by Dur e Aziz Amna, Megan Fernandes, Catherine Lacey, and Sarah Aziza. After the reading we hang out in the dorm common area for a bit but I’m so sleepy! I’m in bed by 10:30.