This evening I read through portions of the first notebook I began writing in after my first adult rebirth.

I began writing in the book on December 21, 2001 at 11:27 p.m. (I've always been fond of writing late at night, after the house is quiet and everyone is in bed.) However, it was a portion of the New Year's Day 2002 entry that really caught my eye.

Some context: I had left the world of academia and anthropology to be a mom. I was pregnant with my first child, who would be born approximately two weeks late on February 1st. Since vacating the ivory tower, I had been reading voraciously, reading what I wanted to read for the first time since 1994. And this reading got me to thinking, which probably wasn't that hard. In fact, I suspect these thoughts would have been disco dancing in my head whether I'd been reading as I was or not.

Anyway. I had been thinking about writing. Writing seriously. And then ...

It's 12:55 p.m., New Year's Day, and in the black and white marbled composition book I've been writing in, I begin to ponder through my pen...


I want to write, and I believe at some level I have something to say. My father once told me we all have something to say--we all come from some place no one else does. And I have plenty to write about if I'm strong enough to dredge it up, but the things I have to say aren't the kinds of things people ordinarily desire to read about. Though in many ways it's a happy ending, there's not much to draw happiness from... is there?


This passage is going to permeate through my life for the next eight years, and in some respects beyond that.

I still want to write. The only difference now is that I am writing regularly, and have had some success doing it.

And that is a happy ending, even though this is only the middle.