Stuck in the minutia of conference planning (it will be wonderful but right now I am so down deep in the itty bitty details that I could very well lose my mind), and rising early for hikes through the woods (literally) with my son's forest discovery program, I find myself falling ever further away from any sort of writerly life. This happens to everyone from time to time (I even washed dogs today - could my life be any more pedestrian?) but it rocks me away from any sort of reality that is not about the mundane. It's hard to remember you are indeed a writer when the most important thing at the moment is sorting laundry and paying bills.

I don't want to forget the things I have to write - or what it means to write. And days like this I wonder how so many others could remember all the things they wanted to do and what their mundane moments were like.

[Dorothea Lange, changing the world, photo by Rondal Partridge, Farm Security Administration 1936.]