When I sit down with my notebook, when I start scribbling words across the page, I find out what I’m feeling.

There is no end to the promotion. There is no end to the possibilities. You can continue to promote a book for years, literally.

Those memories that are engraved within me become teaching tools, ways of connecting with others, of creating an empathic bridge, of reaching out a hand and saying, I've been there, too.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

I don't want to lean back into the past, or forward into the future. I don't want to wish the present moment away. The truth is in the present moment. The great paradox is that when I'm really able to do that, time slows down and opens up. Time feels suddenly and inexplicably without end.

What was going on inside of me became louder because everything around me became quieter.

If I waited to be in the mood to write, I'd barely have a chapbook of material to my name. Who would ever be in the mood to write? Do marathon runners get in the mood to run? Do teachers wake up with the urge to lecture? I don't know, but I doubt it. My guess is that it's the very act that is generative. The doing of the thing that makes possible the desire for it.