A collection from my notes app

To be honest, I’m not sure what I wanted to write about this week. So in true diary fashion, I am just going to drop anything on my mind onto the page. So here’s what’s been on my mind this month. And also what my notes app has been hiding. 

What August feels like

• The end 

• The last ginger lime poppi on the shelf 

• Popsicle melting in your hand 

• Diet pepsi by Addison Rae 

• Crowded bus 

• Thought daughter behavior 

• Asking myself why

• Slow building dread 

• Distant memories

• Lakefront wind

• Situationship that destroyed you

• Revival 

Change (a poem I wrote at sunrise on the beach)

Sitting by the lake this morning, 

contemplating change.

The waves crash into the sand

and then pull back,

taking with it the thoughts i leave. 

each wave a different iteration

changing the landscape bit by bit.

To exist is to change

To leave, then to come back, 

is to change. 

When I get up

and head back up the trail 

into the bus and to my room

i will be changed. 

By the sound of the waves,

the squeak of the birds, 

the sand under my shoes.

to return is to be changed.

Quotes on my mind

“But here I am singing songs again” - Shawn Mendes

Music has a funny way of describing everything I have ever experienced. I too ask myself why why why Shawn. There was a time in my life when I couldn’t find the joy in life, I couldn’t stay in the moment, and I couldn't break through the surface of my mind. But here I am singing songs again. I’m lighter and happier and doing things I never thought I could. 

“Art was not motivational speaking. Art was not sentimental. It had no responsibility to be hopeful or optimistic or make anyone feel better about the world. It must reflect the world in all its brutality and beauty, not in hopes of changing it but in the mean and selfish desire to not be enrolled in its lie,” (We Were Eight Years in Power: an American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates)

I’ve been thinking a lot about what writing means and what it is recently. I was digging through my notes app and I found this quote hiding in a list of quotes that I meant to add to but forgot about over the years. It reminded me that my voice is allowed to be imperfect because we are imperfect. Art is meant to show the world as it is, not as it should be. Which means that I can show up as I am, not as I should be. 

Romance book recs 

Icebreaker by Hannah Grace 

While We Were Dating by Jasmine Guillory 

Book Lovers by Emily Henry 

Better than the movies by Lynn Painter 

To Con a Gentleman by Sarah Adams

The Off-Limits Rule by Sarah Adams 

The Cheat Sheet by Sarah Adams 

Beach Read by Emily Henry

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Well Met by Jen DeLuca 

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne 

You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle 

Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez 

Beach Read by Emily Henry