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I’m lay on the couch, and Cacio has her head flopped in my lap. Aneesah is on the other end of the couch having a nap. The setting sun is blinding me a little—it’s at that angle where it just goes straight into your eyeballs. There’s the sound of the BART, and then a firework, and then barking dogs. I’m ordering a pizza because… well… I want pizza. It’s Indian pizza though, which is a thing. It’s an actual, delicious thing.

I’m starting to write about wedging clay. I know something about it. I don’t know a lot about it. That’s why I’m writing about it. I need to order some clay and wedge it. I’m not one for writing fiction, but even if you do write fiction I think that you should try to get as close to the real thing as possible. Maybe don’t commit too many crimes if you want to write about crime, but… clay? You can wedge some clay, surely.

On that note, I have to go. I’ve got to pick up pizza. It won’t be long, and I like to drive to pick it up. It feels strange getting things delivered when you have a car. I didn’t have a car before we lived in California. I couldn’t drive until we lived in the country. I didn’t think I’d ever drive, at one point, and now I drive all the time. Mixed feelings about that, actually, but at least I’m rewarded with the destinations.

Feeling kind of flat today. Didn’t get enough sleep, probably. Rarely do. What is enough? I’m not sure I’ve ever felt truly rested, but I guess I wouldn’t know. Maybe the best I’ve felt is as good as it gets. I had a conversation that ended up giving me a bunch of energy though, and I always find it so wonderful and insane how the right conversation can do that. You could do that for someone else. That’s amazing, isn’t it?

I’ve spent a lot of the day with clay on my mind for reasons that will become clear at some point. Types of clay, types of wedging, tools. The things you make with clay end up so, so different to the material you start with. A lump of mud can turns into something strong, architectural. I thought about how meditative it can be to wedge clay. How satisfying it can feel to pull the wire through it and see that it’s so smooth.

I’ve also had story on my mind a lot. Writing stories. Speaking stories aloud. Telling a story to bring people along, or to give yourself some sort of energy. How many stories do we tell ourselves to even get out of bed in the morning? Which ones do we tell ourselves that lead us to fall in love? Which do we tell others to help them fall in love with us? Life is stories all the way down; all sorts of stories, all the time.

I’ve been trying to get up a little earlier to spend the beginning of my day in the garden, in the daylight. Yesterday it was gloriously sunny, but this morning was overcast and on the cooler side. Still, I wandered out there with my coffee and a blueberry muffin because I had a plan to keep.

I’ve been thinking about the audio stories I want to make, and I really think I’m starting to land on something good. I’m going to let it cook for a while before I say much about it, but I’m feeling good about it. I can see it in a way that I couldn’t see my other stories, and I’m excited to get started.

You know you’re onto something when you can’t stop thinking about it. Like, if there was any lull in my day—and there weren’t many today—my mind immediately filled up with ideas and excitement for this thing. When I finished work for the day, it came roaring back too. It felt good; feels good.

I felt a switch flip in me over the past couple of days. I don’t know if it’s out of inspiration or irritation, but I’m done procrastinating on the projects that I’ve been kicking around forever. I told myself that this project was just “intentionally slow” but in the end I think that was just an excuse.

One thing I will say is that a big part of this whole thing is about the art of noticing—of paying attention, and being curious, and following that curiosity. A life and livelihood built around following your curiosity and paying attention would be a life well spent, I think. I’ll try to spend it that way.

If I don’t do something every day, I struggle to do it at all. I haven’t written here in a few days because I haven’t written here in a few days. I’ve also been thinking about what it is I want to write here. I had a bunch of ideas, which I’ll spare you, but landed right back on something like a journal—but maybe with a small change: write them to someone, like a letter.

I like reading letters, and I like the idea of writing to someone familiar. Not to the entire internet, and not only to myself. To someone I know, and care for. A proxy for myself maybe, or my family, or all of my friends (or all of the above). An audience that wouldn’t humor excessive navel-gazing and who I wouldn’t want to burden with too much moping around.

I’ll start from tomorrow, but I came back today to draw a new line in the sand. To say that I’m here, to state why I’m here, and to articulate to myself what that means to me; for me. I don’t know if anyone reads this, and to the extent that anyone does I’m not sure if I know you, but I hope that you—whoever you are—receive these letters and feel a little something.

Compulsively picking at my lips today, as I’ve done most days since I was a teenager. I don’t remember exactly when or why it started, but I know that it hasn’t stopped yet. I’m hoping it will one day. Maybe I’ll live with it my whole life, but I’ll try not to. I’ll try harder than I’ve tried so far, which is not very hard.

It’s a disorder called dermatillomania, and it’s sort of embarrassing to talk about. I don’t know why I’m talking about it now, other than the fact I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I sat down to write. I’d just applied lip balm, and I knew that I didn’t want to do it, yet there I was (yet again).

These moments are the weakest I ever feel, apparently powerless to this act that I’m performing myself—to myself; on myself. I’ll add it to the list of things I should speak with a therapist about. Humans are so amazing and so capable (and so capable of change), but I suspect many of us have something like this that holds a strange power over us.

Procrastinating at precisely the wrong time.

Staying up late when you’re exhausted.

Replaying an embarrassing moment.

Doomscrolling when you’re sad.

Picking at your cuticles.

You know you’re not supposed to do it, and yet you do it. You know it will cause you some future pain, and yet here you are. They might not be all-the-time things, they might just be sometimes things, but I suspect that many of us experience this moment of apparent powerlessness.

I’m writing this when I should be doing something else, in fact, and on that note I’ll stop and I’ll start doing the other thing instead. Occasionally your mind will let you choose, even when it doesn’t necessarily want to. I’ll take those moments when I can find them; I’ll take this one right now.

Thinking about this blog again today and what the daily post could be. One idea I was riffing on recently: just something I noticed. Like, really noticed; took the time to notice. For some reason I think about the act of noticing a lot, and believe that it stretches time to notice something every day. A feeling, a sight, a sound, whatever—just taking a moment to pause.

I haven’t really paused today, so what if I did it right now? I’m sat in bed, drinking tea and writing this post. I’m tired today and I ache. If I close my eyes for a moment I notice that my eyelids feel heavy. That the area underneath my eye feels almost sore. I notice the dull ache in my back from sleeping funny and the same in my feet from walking a lot.

Maybe not what I’d like to notice every day, but it’s not all bad. My aching feet make me feel grateful that I’m able to walk, and my heavy eyes make me excited for the sleep I’m about to enjoy. You don’t have to notice positive things to feel positive, or thankful. I’m thankful for all of the things I notice, I think, good or bad. Everything teaches you something.

I had to buy some shoes today for something specific and it reminded me of just how particular you (I; one) can be about the things that you own. A lot of the time I think that most of us couldn’t really describe why we do or don’t like something. We might be able to construct some words to that effect, but I don’t know that they’d mean much.

I generally believe in the Pirsigian idea of quality. That you sense it before you can ever describe it. That there’s continuous quality that you experience moment to moment (and that you feel when you just know that something isn’t to your taste), and static quality that you interpret when you do actually try to rationalize and describe it.

I saw so many pairs of shoes that just didn’t have quality. I could rationalize a few of the things that made me feel that way, but I’d probably also just make a face, or a noise, or a gesture. I couldn’t tell you everything that made them not-quite-right, but they… weren’t quite right. This post is about shoes, and has nothing to do with shoes.