Hi, there. Phew.

July?!

It’s been a bit since I’ve felt somewhat inspired to write. Perhaps not merely inspired but at all sparked enough by any strong feeling to do so. Journaling privately has remained a practice. But to organize thoughts enough for an online written symposium here? Looks like not so for the past several months.

I logged back into my website today to edit something, and when I scrolled over to ‘Posts,’ I see that I had 3 drafts of blog entries. More than I would have recalled. I even read through the lot of them to see if what I had once typed out carried any similar connectedness to where my brain is now.

And then it became too much. To read where my thoughts were then (whenever it was pending the entry) and to bridge the words with where my thoughts and feelings are today. A long sigh. Click-clack. A scrunched up shoulder and wince of my eye. My stomach flips a bit.

July. What a wry month, and it’s only day 8! We have a pup in surgery in this very moment that I see letters unearthing horizontally on the screen; not to mention the heat extended, the impact of self-pressured over-socializing, an insurance glitch here, a camp goof there. July. You lie.

In my birthday card spread with Kim Krans’ The Wild Unknown Animal Spirit Deck, July this year is governed by the Raccoon. Crafty and dark, the wise subtext indicative that my own success and / or self-observance is to be done so cautiously. And how am I to create in this way, in this wonder of early-onset mishaps of July? Curious. Curious and mindful not to falter or follow too longingly into the dark caverns where raccoons engage in thievery. I decided to give myself this morning a bit of pep compassion talk.

Breathe, Carly.
Exhale, again.
It is always anew.
Yes, you’re going through some things.
Yes, your pup is going through some healing.
Yes, your family is riding the recent ebb and hopefully sought-after, inevitable flow.

July, I don’t know what I expected of you. Though I suppose this draft you’re offering up is merely the precursor to all other July’s I will embrace in my own time in years to come. It doesn’t need to be final. Nothing really is, is it?