No Matter How Slowly They Fell

A victory! To leave your loneliness

panting behind you on some street corner

while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,

pink petals that have never felt loneliness,

no matter how slowly they fell.

-Naomi Shihab Nye | The Rider

---

This Letter is full of my ongoing projects, and it feels a little bit like I haven't got any brainspace left to talk about feelings, but all these projects have unsurprisingly come with a lot of feelings. 
As with most things parenting-related, most of the things we talk about on the podcast bring up Stuff: mother stuff, body stuff, emotional stuff, all the baggage we carry around with us, and we work through it. It's a little raw, sharing it with the world, and I'm a little nervous, but also really excited. Even if it's a little rough around the edges as we're getting started, we both really believe in it, and we're dreaming big dreams about topics and guests and all the things going forward.
My consulting work, too, is going really well; I'm on a big contract, working quite a bit and learning new things. I've started hot desking once a week at this really awesome parent-friendly space with on-site childcare, and apart from getting work done it's also just really nice to have a few hours of kid-free time a week. I don't get a lot of those! They're precious. Expensive, though, so I've been doing a lot more cold-calling than I usually do, a lot more reaching out uninvited and asking people if they need help. It's scary, but my foray into booking agents and gig pitches helped me get over the hump on it. 
In both cases I feel brave and optimistic, and it's a really good feeling. Although I've been pretty happy with my life overall, it's been a while since I felt like things were happening for me, in a personal and career-oriented sense. Sure, I have my writing, but that rarely seems to grow much. These new things feel like movement in a part of me that hasn't moved in a while. I am pleasantly busy in a way I love to be: it feels like the days of planting a garden, or painting a room, where the end result is visible and tangible, and you leave feeling warm and tired and a little bit sore but also deeply accomplished. And as much as I love Beans, and as much as I am awed by everything she does and that we learn together, it's important that these particular things are just for me. I feel like part of the world in a way I haven't in a while, and that's so important.