In Search of the Very

Some nights after my work day and an unforgiving drive home I am just not in the mood to walk Yoda.
Most nights, actually.
He and I continue to have quite different agendas as we make the exact same loop through the neighborhood. I want to walk. Yoda wants to sniff, lick and pee on everything. Sometimes I feel like I’m dragging him along. I’m certain it is not pleasant for either of us and yet this series of stops and starts is our routine. It’s what we do.

Walking in that chilly night air it occurred to me that this is my life. My life isn’t what happens nine months from now, or nine days from now. It’s this dog and this walk and this air. It’s the moon in it’s current phase. It’s winter before the first snow. It’s right now and it’s under my feet.

It occurs to me, too, that I’ve been marking time. I treat my days as necessary to propel me to the next thing. I don’t have a lot of appreciation for the mundane moments. Marking time. Is there anything worse ?

I’ve decided to view my days as research. A lot can be said about 30 years in the same job, 25 of which, were spent on the same route. Change is evident everywhere. Characters are circling my orbit and a story is begging to be told. A story of hard work, sweat and the crafting of relationships inside and outside of that service.
Letters, Life and What Grew.
Letters, Love and How It Changed Me
Delivering More Than Mail
Stamps, Scamps and Mapping the Way Forward

So, research it is. Paying attention as a storyteller as opposed to someone just scanning the text and passing time. I’m not a great writer, but I DO have some amazing writer friends that can be of great help to me if I just ask. And I definitely have a story or two in me.

Off to do the research as the rain returns. Hopeful that today holds a memory or two and that I can happily “occupy the space I occupy”.