I think what I’m trying to do is get away with something. Or a lot of somethings. One of those things I’m trying to get away with is writing a book that is not so long and not so focused, but that meanders through the desert, or through the many deserts I’ve inhabited. All the words I use right now are the wrong ones. Words like, “inhabited,” but also words like “yes that makes sense to me” and “no worries” and “I will.”

It is the end of the beginning of the year. Soon the yoga classes will be less full. We will go back to needing more tutors at the place where I work with elementary school kids. That’s fine. People have lives. It is weird to suddenly live a different life simply because it is January and you think you are supposed to be someone else for awhile.

What I wish is that I were in the blizzard upstate with my brother so he could cook me the perfect poached egg and give me shit for not eating it with bacon on toast like I used to.

In the first month of the year, I drove 1,100 miles from one home to the other. First there was snow, then there was not. It’s been chilly but not cold, wet but not rainy, windy but not stormy. A lot is in limbo. I am one thing that is in limbo. Always have been. Trying not to be as much. Failing.

I’ve spent a lot of time outside in January watching my dog play or riding my bike to work or walking to and from local conveniences like 7-Eleven or the bar across the street. In between being outside I am trying to get away with writing this book about the desert. I am trying to be everyday the person I was for the first few hours of the year. Unconcerned and sparkling.

There are some things I would like to do this year. Submit fellowship applications. Finish three or four dissertation chapters (one down!). Write this other book. Teach this class the right way. And then take off for somewhere new. Not forever, but for a little while. Iceland or Thailand or anywhere with land in it that I haven’t been to yet. Maybe another island.

I’m not really saying anything here, am I? Sometimes I just need a place where I can write a bunch of nothing so I can work something out of my system, and frankly I think my twitter followers are getting annoyed at always being the recipient of this nothing, so here you are.

Here are some ducks being blown away:

And here are some photos of my dog with her many best friends: