by Ayesha Siddiqui

I speak often and often only of whatever is growing around me. How else are we to ground ourselves in life if not by the state of what lives near us too. In California especially, you must look more closely at the subtle changes happening around you, or you might miss the gentle shift of seasons that are taking place. 

As we paint the canvas of our year, the boldest streaks of paint are of course, the unforgettable days when the outdoors dominated. The heat wave that caused rolling blackouts. The endless weeks of rain. The immense relief when the change so visibly came: the sun, the break in heat, the drop back to clear warmth, the kind that blurs the days together.

But I don’t want to miss what’s in between the moments that draw your eye first: the bougainvillea are blooming yet again. The grapes that crawl along the fence are beginning to turn from green to purple. New birds have moved into the neighborhood, there are new songs in the morning. Our foliage might be non-existent, but surely you can see that the sunset has turned from honey to amber now.

Our writing is like this too. As we begin to near the final stretch of the year, remember to ground yourself not only in the boldest marks you’ve made, but in the moments in between too. It is not about just what has been finished, but the pages started and abandoned, the thoughts you wrote down on a piece of paper and subsequently lost, and perhaps most of all: what changed in you this year, subtly, a small seed planted that you aren’t even aware will bloom your next work, maybe next year, maybe ten years from now. Take stock of your harvest. Even if there is not much visibly on the table today, that says nothing about the hard work taking place inside you.