This is what a lot of people call writer’s block. What I’ve learned in the last couple of years is to focus on what is pushing on the block instead of on the block itself. The block is inert, but something behind it is dying to push through. It’s what I call opportunity.

It’s easy to write what you hear other people say, to write what you think other people want to hear, to write what you have read before, to write what you think may earn you love. That’s writing, but there is a hollowness to it, no guts, no blood. 

Do you have any tall, beautiful, wildly creative magical fairies in your life? I didn’t until I met Laura. She is funny and kind and strange in the best sense of the word.

You can do this anywhere there is a tree within sight. You can be in bed looking out the window. You can be out on a walk. You can be lying in a hammock. This is a kind of energetic dialysis.

Before I stopped drinking coffee, I walked around feeling as if someone had punched me behind the eyes. Like my brain had little arms that kept whacking the dark side of my orbs. I thought it was fatigue, allergies, a possible need for glasses. I never thought: caffeine.

You, also, are a wonderful writer because you are a wonderful person. If you write what is true about yourself, your heart, your life experiences, your writing sings. 

What if in the moment after a child is born, the mother reaches out and touches the child and, in that moment, all the stars in the universe gather and the child knows itself as an I?

When you get acupuncture, in addition to having your pulses read, the practitioner looks at your tongue. It makes so much sense. The state of the tongue reveals the state of your digestive system.

When you give up something, you create a space, and that’s when the wild can step in. I gave up coffee and ended up with a gorgeous pencil made from coffee grounds. There are many wonderful things about life. One of them is irony.

Being high on sugar or caffeine is a way of outracing the devil. You can’t get me if I’m high.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” I whispered to the doctor and his students, “but don’t tell me to stop.”

“That’s spleen energy,” he said. “Too much thinking. It’s all connected.” Spleen imbalance shows up as stomach and digestive issues, the very things that had gotten me started on this 93-day project.