How’s your book going?

11/30/2025, Friday after Thanksgiving

Dear friends,

You have been so kind as to ask me about my book, so I wanted to tell you the truth since you might be wondering what the existential half-thoughts on my instagram feed have to do with anything and how I can call myself a writer.

Why do I write these odd snippets? It’s because they are moments, and I love moments, like William Blake.

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.”

So much happens, so much can change, so much can become clear in a moment. I see fleeting-barely-thoughts float just enough into my consciousness to spark a word. I follow their trail back through years and channels in my mind and find, suddenly, that I am still alive. 

I was writing a book. I might still be.  Three years ago I signed up for a “write a bestseller” course as an escape from the day job. I thought I might be the next Liz Gilbert or Robin Cook.  It was a memoir about how I had gotten caught up in self-help, solo-preneur, online-coaching “success” culture for the past fifteen years. 

You know, the culture that has you chase your dreams ‘til you and your dreams both die of exhaustion.  Long story short (no, really, I’ve written about 80,000 words) I am taking a break. I don’t know if I want to finish it.  I don’t want to chase success anymore and writing a book, for a writer is . . . well, since that’s what we think of as success these days, I just can’t stomach it.  

Here’s the thing - after I got it all out, after I put down what I could remember, after I squeezed every last drop of emotion and meaning out of my story and into something vaguely coherent for my editor . . . I was done with it. I think the message is important. I have a lot to say, but I honestly can’t think straight these days. Holding the arc of a deeply self-reflective book for three years while raising a toddler and working full time with whatever else life throws at me, it wore me down. 

People like to say you should push through discomfort and never give up - but not all of life’s challenges are meant to be overcome like mile 18 of that marathon they always compare life to. (I would know, I ran a marathon too, and wished desperately at mile 18 that I had trained harder.)

Besides, I kept feeling so confused trying to put my life in a straight line for you to read. I got lost trying to outline all the lessons and make all the connections.  It was too hard. It was impossible. 

“Well, you must try again one day!”,  they’ll say. 

Our dreams these days are never allowed to die respectable deaths of old age, victims of the natural wear and tear of a life lived at all.  

“How horrible!”, they’d say, “Look at her just letting her dreams die.”

But when dreams die in their own time, like a well-loved old dog, happy and at peace with his life, they don’t really go away. The same way your old dog never really goes away. You love him all the more for his being gone and look for reasons to find him when you can.  That must mean that love never dies. If a dream is loved, it never dies. Since my dreams can’t die, I decided not to worry about it.

I decided to stop measuring my life to my dreams as if they weren’t already the same thing anyway.  I have stopped asking if I have chased them long and hard enough, if I have successfully monetized, improved or succeeded with them. 

Instead I treat them like my dog, Zeus, in his last days. Taking him on slow walks to the river, cupping cold water for him to drink. Wrapping him, eventually, in my bathrobe and then again with my body whispering:

I love you.

I am so proud of you.

I had the best time with you.

I will miss you.

You are beautiful.

Please come back and visit me.
 

And so he went, out of my arms into the glittering darkness. Dreams, yes, dreams can die too. And that’s ok. 

This is why pushing for my dreams didn’t feel right.  I didn’t have to push harder, in fact it was time for me to rest. To dream of nothing but rest and simple satisfactions.  You see, I do have a lot to say about dreams, and how seriously I took them -- enough to fill a book that I might finish one day.

But I digress - why the snippets?

They are easier to finish.  And the lack of explicit context is, I think, what makes them interesting and universal.  I can enjoy the sprint of editing something short in a couple minutes, days, or weeks.  They are exciting. Interesting. Manageable. 

They are also flags to myself of specific feelings, they clue my future self in to their inherent rabbit trails and connections. One day when I can think straight again, when my free time isn’t doled out in snippets, I will expand them.  

And I like it. It’s fun. I think they’re pretty.

This practice? It’s surprising. It’s delightful. It’s an exhale. I’m practicing writing, yes, and also practicing the awkward discomfort of showing you something I’ve written intentionally for sharing.

I had written 80,000 words, had a book coach, an editor, a big dream, an escape plan, a purpose, a website . . . and I realized that wasn’t the dream. As strange as it seems, this noticing is the dream.   These moments - these fragments of life are the dream, and I can’t help but worship the strange, lovely shape of them.

After almost two decades chasing imaginary audiences and get-rich-quick schemes, the most real thing in the world is simply sharing what I notice with actual people I know. I’ve never felt more like an artist. 

xx

-m-

PS - This is me and Zeus in November 2023 at the end of a long run of 15 years.