Good day today. I feel like something’s shifted. I am lighter. Thoughts come with more clarity, with more willingness to make decisions. I’m grateful for that. I’m making decisions and I’m acting on them. And that’s huge because before I couldn’t even figure out which decisions to make. But now I can kind of start making those decisions, start seeing what’s not working and what I can do to change it.
My cousin Brigid sent me a signed copy of her book; I just got it today in the mail. Inside, she’d written the words “Here’s to the Pasulka writers overtaking the Pasulka lawyers.” (That side of the family is pretty much all lawyers, with a few doctors sprinkled in here and there.) Those words meant a lot to me. She’s a bit older than me and she’s had a lot of success as a writer. She’s had her short stories published in any number of fancy, smarty-pants publications, and now she has this brilliant debut novel that people can’t stop praising. I’m not in the least bit jealous — I’m super happy for her and I’m proud to be related to her. Her book is in the “Best New Writers” section of Barnes and Noble, and sometimes we cut through the B&N in Pacific Place to get from the movie theater out to the street, and, every time we do, I drag my friends over to that “Best New Writers” section and proudly show them Brigid’s book. “This is my cousin!” I tell them. “See? Pasulka.”
But it just makes me think even more about how I really want to write a book. I just need to figure out how and about what. I know, I know, I say this every three months or so. My dad says I need to discipline myself to just sit down for an hour every night and start writing. I keep saying I need a new project. Maybe this is my new project. I can approach it with discipline, in the same way I approached my marathon training with discipline. Maybe even put a schedule on the fridge of how many pages I’m supposed to write each night. I think I just have to start.
