Hodge-Podge and Mish-Mash

I’ve been quiet lately, but it’s not because I don’t have anything going on or nothing to say. Just the opposite. I’ve had SO much of both I haven’t known where to start, but like I teach in my writing workshop, when you don’t know where to begin, any word will do. Just begin. So, here I go.

The first half of this year was a whirlwind. I traveled every month, and during some, I was gone more than I was home. That’s fairly typical for me, but this year felt different. I will always have wanderlust–I’ve been home for a week and a half and I’m already starting to get a bit itchy–but I’m feeling this intense need to nest. To create routines.

Beyond my morning meditation and journaling ritual, I’ve never been much for routines. One I did keep was consistently publishing 10 Things To To in Chicago This Weekend on The Local Tourist. Every week, for more than a decade, I sent out an email helping people figure out what to do.

But then the pandemic hit. Then cancer joined in. And everything changed.

I looked back on the nearly twenty years I’d spent building The Local Tourist and realized so much had been focused on what was current and new that I had little that lasted. My body of work had an expiration date.

Finally, in 2017, I wrote my first book, Turkeys are Jerks and Other Observations from an American Road Trip, a travel memoir about a 31-day road trip. (At the time, I thought Two Lane Gems, Volume 1, was the title, and Turkeys etc. was the subtitle. Now I know better.) Now that was a legacy. That was something I could hold in my hands, something readers could hold in their hands. It was something that would last.

I was hooked.

After that, impermanence annoyed me. Fleeting posts that would be irrelevant in less than a week became something I could no longer spend any time or effort on creating. I wanted to create things that last, that have meaning far beyond a date on a calendar.

Cancer drove that point home. We caught mine early so I knew from the beginning my chances of survival were quite high. But it still smacked me with my own mortality. It screamed at me that you never know what will happen and that tomorrow is not guaranteed. That was amplified by the timing; getting that diagnosis when millions were dying during a pandemic was, to me, the universe saying STOP WAITING. DO. IT. NOW.

In the intervening years I’ve still traveled, but the more I immerse myself in worlds I create, that have a deeply personal connection and meaning, the less inclined I am to write about things that are transient.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen with TLT. I love travel. I love writing about the places I’ve been. But lately, and for more than a year (closer to two), I haven’t been drawn to it. Sometimes I feel the pull, but after 24 years of obligation, I’ve felt an incredible resistance.

At times, I’ve felt angry. Like I want to punch something. (And I am not a violent person.)

I keep thinking maybe I’ll combine my travel stories with the rest of my writing. I want to build a community that is less about the different genres I write and more about a mindset of possibilities, hope, joy, redemption, wonder. I want to connect with readers who enjoy my particular brand of storytelling. I don’t want to split my focus, which is what maintaining two different newsletters (The Local Tourist and The Joyful Storyteller) does. My travel stories belong here. They’re part of my adventure, part of my ecosystem. Part of my ethos.

I think I just answered my own question, one I’d been asking myself: do I resume writing travel stories on TLT and keep this newsletter for everything else? Or do I combine them?

Because I’ve felt torn, I haven’t known what to say. But I’m not going to let that stop me any more. When I don’t know what to say, I’ll start with the first thing. Whatever comes to mind. Whatever’s waiting to come out will emerge, as it did this morning. I began with uncertainty and within a few hundred words have focused and come to a realization that’s been eluding me for months.

Sometimes it’ll be about places I’ve been. Sometimes about places I’ve made up. And sometimes, it’ll be about a revelation, an idea, a fear, a memory, a hope, a smile.

I’m knee-deep into my memoir, and it’s giving me this unfiltered lens into the choices I’ve made in the last six years. I’m finding increased clarity in my purpose, my reason for being, and that’s enabled me to say No to things that don’t align and Yes to things that do.

I’m learning how and why storytelling drives me and fills my soul. I hope my joy translates. And I hope, that be simplifying my life and letting go of expectations I’ve outgrown, both my own and others’, that I’m able to create more things that last, and more things that bring you joy, too.

It’s funny. When I began writing this, I thought I’d be filling you in on all the stuff that’s been consuming my days and my mind. I ended up finding a way to quiet some of the noise.

OH! Before I go, I did want to tell you one big thing: last Saturday I took my LAST dose of Exemestane! I’ve been on endocrine therapy (estrogen blockers) for five years. I am now OFFICIALLY DONE WITH CANCER TREATMENT!

On that note…

Happy reading!

Theresa

p.s. I’ve pushed the launch date for the Kickstarter for Diary of a Cockeyed Optimist to August 18 - the 6-year anniversary of my diagnosis. Please follow the campaign, and I’d truly appreciate it if you’d share it. Thank you so much!