I stumbled across a memoir I’d like to read, Hermit. The problem? It’s only available in the UK currently. So I’m adding it to my wishlist (meaning: I’m telling you about it so that I’ll remember to read it later when it’s available to me).

Jade Angeles Fitton wrote Hermit  “about my time spent in solitude and how I came to love it— about more than loving it, as it felt like it loved me back: I rebuilt my life with the help of solitude.” Basically, Jade’s book sounds like a book about a woman who goes on a solo journey to find out something about herself, and I’m here for it.

While you wait to receive your copy of Hermit, read this interview of Jade from Emma Gammon of the Hyphen for a look at how Jade began logging off of social media and how that affected her anxiety and her ability to be alone in very good ways.

She says:

Studies frequently show that, although connection is important, the more online we are – typically (though not always) – the more unbalanced we become in real life. It’s finding a balance and not letting one world take over, not letting the online world prevent us from seeing and experiencing this one fully.

As you and I have talked about before, I took a break from Facebook and Twitter at the start of the year. I later began posting on Facebook again, and I occasionally throw a fun photo on Instagram simply to chronicle something fun happening in my life, typically travel related, but I no longer endlessly scroll through Facebook or Twitter feeds. And I only interact on Facebook on my author page.

This has enhanced my real relationships greatly—both online and in the real world. When readers of my books and of this blog email me directly or comment at the bottom of posts, I’m able to have real conversations with them about subjects I’m writing about. This is way more meaningful to me than joining in meaningless online banter.

Also, when we cut our social media scrolling time, we have time to meet up with friends in real life. There have been occasions since I escaped social media that I’ve met up with friends I had lost touch with during the past several years. Imagine cutting an hour out of your social media time each day, and instead meet a friend for wine or coffee on two different occasions during the week. Or if you need alone time, take that saved hour each day to add a new yoga or mediation habit.

For me, I’m intrigued by Jade Angeles Fitton‘s Hermit and her adventure into solitude, but for now, while I patiently await this book to be available to me, I’m concentrating on the thought of balancing my online time with my offline time and being sure that I’m getting the most out of the world I truly wish to live in. And just in case you’re confused, the online world is not that world.

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Sometimes I stumble upon things that interest me as I’m reading something else that caught my eye. Often times, I trip over these items of intrigue by reading Austin Kleon’s blog and newsletter, something I like to catch up on during my Saturday morning coffee.

For example, the following quote from Elizabeth McCracken’s Bowlaway caught my eye because of my love of walking:

In the mornings he would walk…. At the start of a walk, alone or moving, the sun at his back or cold rain down his collar, he was more himself than under any other circumstance, until he had walked so far he was not himself, not a self, but joined to the world. Invisibly joined. Had a religion been founded on this, purely this, he would have converted….. Proof of God? Proof was in the world, and the way you visited the world was on foot…. Your walking was a devotion.

People who know my husband and me might argue that we treat walking like a religion, something we participate in and study most days. Something that helps us see the world, and God, through a different lens than we might have had we not walked thousands and thousands of miles.

That quote made me look up Bowlaway, a recommended book of the year in 2019 from the likes of NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine, Southern Living, and many, many other publications.

It was easy to see why Bowlaway was recommended just by reading the description for Elizabeth McCracken’s bestseller:

From the day she is discovered unconscious in a New England cemetery at the turn of the twentieth century—nothing but a bowling ball, a candlepin, and fifteen pounds of gold on her person—Bertha Truitt is an enigma to everyone in Salford, Massachusetts. She has no past to speak of, or at least none she is willing to reveal, and her mysterious origin scandalizes and intrigues the townspeople, as does her choice to marry and start a family with Leviticus Sprague, the doctor who revived her. But Bertha is plucky, tenacious, and entrepreneurial, and the bowling alley she opens quickly becomes Salford’s most defining landmark—with Bertha its most notable resident.

When Bertha dies in a freak accident, her past resurfaces in the form of a heretofore-unheard-of son, who arrives in Salford claiming he is heir apparent to Truitt Alleys. Soon it becomes clear that, even in her death, Bertha’s defining spirit and the implications of her obfuscations live on, infecting and affecting future generations through inheritance battles, murky paternities, and hidden wills.

In a voice laced with insight and her signature sharp humor, Elizabeth McCracken has written an epic family saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America. Bowlaway is both a stunning feat of language and a brilliant unraveling of a family’s myths and secrets, its passions and betrayals, and the ties that bind and the rifts that divide.

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If you asked me my favorite genre of book to pick up at any given moment, I would probably tell you travel memoirs. I like personal memoirs in general, but I particularly love a good travel adventure where the author gives us an insight into their mental journey as well as their geographical journey.

Today, I want to tell you about two travel memoirs in particular by the same author. One I read years ago, and the other I was lucky enough to pick up on a recent trip into the wilderness. And because I tend to worry A LOT, this memoir resonated with me more than I can tell you in a single blog post.

I read Love with a Chance of Drowning by Torre DeRoche years ago. Actually, I believe I received a signed Advanced Reader Copy when that book came out. And I loved it! It’s a travel memoir about a girl who falls in love with an Argentinian about to set sail around the world in a small sailboat. The good news? He invites her to join him. The bad? Torre is terrified of the open water.

Love wins out, and Torre goes on the “voyage of her nightmares.” You should definitely read that book. It’s one of my all-time favorite travel memoirs. I might need to reread this one so that I can talk more about it here. And because it was an amazing read!

When I discovered (also years ago) that Torre had written another travel memoir, I, of course, wanted to read it. I have absolutely no idea why I didn’t immediately order and read The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World: Love, Loss, and Other Catastrophes — Through Italy, India, and Beyond. But here we are.

As fate would have it, I spotted Torre’s second travel memoir in a Little Free Library while my husband and I were on a hiking trip to Getaway House near Nashville, Tennessee. I couldn’t not grab it.

And because we were planning to spend the evening by a campfire drinking wine and reading, I couldn’t wait to read it.

Because you see, Torre is a fellow worrier. She and I have that in common. We like to catastrophise things in life. Here’s an excerpt from The Worrier’s Guide:

“In order to survive all the perceived threats, I became a strategist, and at all times of the day, and often into the night, my brain worked at a vast blueprint for my own survival and the protection of people I loved, with branching diagrams to troubleshoot every imaginable catastrophe. It was an epic handbook that I carried inside my brain: The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World.

In order to have inner peace, all I needed to do was scan for dangers during every waking hour and then simply anticipate, well in advance, any possible disaster that might befall me, the people I loved, any human or animal in my immediate or far vicinity, and the planet as a whole—and have a complete step-by-step action plan in place ready to go. All I had to do was keep asking myself the same question—What if?”

I felt that!

Like in Love with a Chance of Drowning, Torre is at a crossroads in life for the start of The Worrier’s Guide. She’s at a self-described “rock bottom following a breakup and her father’s death when she crosses paths with the goofy and spirited Masha, who is pursuing her dream of walking the world.”

Also like in Love with a Chance of Drowning, in The Worrier’s Guide, Torre is invited along on another soul’s adventure around the world. And Torre steps up to the challenge. She embarks on a pilgrimage through the “hills of Italy” and “the dusty and merciless roads of India” where they come “face-to-face with their worst fears” and “discover the power of friendship to save us from our darkest moments.”

The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World is a beautifully written story of a woman’s journey to put her worries and grief aside in order to embark on a pilgrimage alongside her soulmate.

I will forever read anything Torre writes. You can check out more of what she writes on her website: The Fearful Adventurer. Her blog posts are an extension of her memoirs and definitely worth the read.

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Whoa, it’s been a tough, busy spring. But I won’t bore you with the nasty little details of life (and by nasty little, I actually mean big). You can read about pieces of it here and here. Believe it or not, those stories only scratches the surface.

What I want to tell you today is this: you can delete aspects of your story.

I’m talking specifically about an actual story—a novel. But you can use this advice in life, if you wish.

As many of you know, I’m attempting to finish a novel I started a while ago—so long ago that I’ve lost track of how long. This novel will be the fourth book in the Paynes Creek series. It will be a standalone novel set in the town of Paynes Creek (like this one, this one, and this one), and it will feature a few crossover characters from those other Paynes Creek novels.

The big question today is this: Why has it been do difficult to get back into the writing of this novel? I’ve already written 32,025 words of this novel. It’s more than a 1/3 complete.

I could use the usual excuses: I’ve been too busy or life has gotten in the way. Or how about this one? Writing is just so hard.

All of those are true. But here’s the deal… Writing is the job. If I/you want to be a writer, you have to do the work.

Yesterday, I sat my butt in the chair, and I began the process of re-reading through the more than 32k words I’d already written with a critical eye. The story is good, or at least the story is what I intended for it to be. But there was something wrong. As I read, I realized what was making me stall. I had too many messy characters with too many messy plot points.

Too many people causing too much conflict can be overwhelming.

Today, I will be deleting an entire character and all of the conflict that character brings to the story. Don’t worry, there will still be drama, even without this particularly terrible person, but it will be a smoother read (and a much smoother write) without him. It will be inconvenient, but worth it.

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Photo by panyawat auitpol on Unsplash

I attended a funeral this week that was executed perfectly by the loved ones of the recently departed.

It was absolutely beautiful—the visitations, the funeral church service, the gathering after the funeral. Everything about it reminded you of who this beautiful woman was, what she stood for, and who and what she had lived for.

I don’t know if every detail had been written down in advance, but enough of her wishes had been expressed, and her family knew her so intimately, that her funeral was perfection and filled with an infinite amount of love.

While talking with friends I’ve known for years this week, the subject of our own mortality and the kinds of funerals we might want came up. And most of us admitted that this subject had come up a lot in recent years mainly because many of us had lost people close to us and because pretty much everyone faced the possibility of their own mortality during the early months of Covid. Tell me I’m wrong!

We talked about whether we wanted an open casket, to be cremated, or both. We discussed cemetery burials. The spreading of ashes. We talked about traditional funerals that may or may not involve religious services. We discussed celebrations of life and good ol’ fashioned cocktail parties for saying goodbye. The myriad of ways we can say goodbye to our loved ones and friends is endless. And if you’ve ever planned a funeral for someone who didn’t make their wishes known, you know that it is a terribly painful and difficult task.

I can tell you this week’s funeral left me nostalgic for my childhood because it was 1) the funeral of one of the mother figures from my childhood, 2) held in the small, rural KY town where I grew up, 3) filled with love and memories of my childhood, 4) for the mother of my very best childhood friend and maid of honor at my wedding, and 5) for a woman who knew my own mother.

But in addition to feeling nostalgic, my memories of this woman and how her family honored her left me reflecting upon my own life.

I will remember the woman who died this week for the incredible life she lived—a life of love for God, her family, and community.

I have many memories of things she taught me throughout the years, but even in death she continues to teach me how to live. And love.

And for that, I am grateful.

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