Dear Reader,

It’s a muggy day in the DFW.  I am listening to Coltran on my iPad and wondering where I have left my cell phone.

It’s not that my night was so wild that my phone is out somewhere. It’s that I’ve misplaced it in my apartment as my trip to VONA looms.

I leave tomorrow for a week that is sure to be life changing in some way and losing my phone is just an example of how unprepared I am for the week ahead.

There’s been several life challenges in my life lately. Some where so big that I contemplated leaving the writing world all together and drop whatever dreams or delusions I had about writing novels.  Life beat me up pretty badly the past couple of months in ways that tested my strength and character. Some tests I’ve a passed, while other I’ve failed in a gigantic ways.

A friend of mine told me to record my life as if it is art. In this I have been slacking.  Perhaps it’s because I wonder, what in my life is art?

That’s a silly question from a silly person but it doesn’t make it any less valid.  There are times when life falls into the routine — rise, work, home, sleep. But that is where the art hides, yes? Where the art is settled in like dust, waiting to be disturbed and collected. There is art in the routine, like there is art in pain and happiness. The trick, however, is knowing where to look.

For me, the thing that will disturb the dust, is tomorrow, when I hop on a plane to Miami to hear from other writers and learn from them. There will be art and laughter and learning and growing. The dust will be disturbed, yes.

But you know the dust never settles back in the same way.

I am anxious and overwhelmed.  So I’m taking it one thing at a time. And right now, the thing is trying to find my cell phone…

                          With love,