Got the best birthday present this morning! A few days ago, despite the great joy Kamala’s rise is inspiring, I was feeling down about life, or at least about my writing work. Just uninspired and lost, spending far too much time reading FB, Twitter, IG, and various newspapers online and on paper. One of the toughest things about this job, about being an artist generally, is that you have no idea when it’s working and when it’s not. Not long ago I sent an essay I’d spent months honing to a literary magazine calling for work by women over 50. It wasn’t accepted. I feel in my gut they were wrong, it’s a powerful story, and, yes, I think it’s well-written.
But maybe I’m wrong.
No. I’m not wrong. They turned it down for their own reasons, and now I need to find another home for it.
Yesterday morning, I went up to my desk. Decided to write something for Brevity Blog, a great website for short pieces about the craft of writing nonfiction; a piece of mine was published there last October. Got an idea, started work, spent all day on it except for the usual Wednesday trip to Carole’s class at the Y. Finished in the evening and sent it in. The website says it takes from one to four weeks to hear back.
Had a reply first thing this morning from Dinty Moore himself, the founder of the site and a superb nonfiction writer and teacher. “This is an excellent teaching essay, well illustrated. We’d love to run it.”
Thank you! Validation from Dinty could not have come at a better time.

Another kind of validation, on FB this morning, from my daughter: Happy birthday mum/glamma! You are among our greatest blessings, and we thank the universe daily for your continued good health. Thank you for all the big and little things you do to make my life, and your grandsons lives, so much more fulfilling. Thanks for teaching through example how to welcome folks warmly into your home and life, how to care for those you love, and how to stand up and use your voice when you need to. We love you times infinity !

Does it get better than that? It does not. Sam is coming tomorrow to make me lunch. The San Miguel Writer’s Festival launched their website today, and there I am. Keynote speakers including John Vaillant and Ruth Reichl. Hope to meet them.

I love birthdays in this modern era. Although I’m spending the day alone, until Toronto Lynn comes to get me for a swim in her glorious pool and dinner, I am surrounded by love through FB and email and even cards in the mail. A gift on my bed this morning from Carol in the upstairs suite, and soon, I know, a birthday poem from dear Nick Rice, who never forgets. The gift of the garden is in full bloom; many perfect cucumbers are arriving but although the bean plants are enormous, there are no beans. Too much heat, perhaps.

Fabulous memes pouring in about the rise of the Dems and the sinking of the Repugs. The rise of the angry childless cat ladies, OMG, what a welcome miracle. Stay the course, Kamala!

It’s another scorcher. Time for a nap.

PS. In the recent NYT Book Review, a review by Mary Gabriel of The Long Run: a Creative Inquiry, by Stacey D’Erasmo. The review starts, “I do not believe there’s an artist in history who hasn’t asked themself — at least once — ‘Why do I do this?’ The designation of ‘creator’ may make for a glorious calling card, but as an occupation, it involves a disproportionate amount of spirit-crushing struggle and relatively few rewards.
And yet, day after day, year after year, century after century, we do it. We closet ourselves in our studios and workrooms and thrust our vulnerable selves on stage in order to produce art in the hopes that, to quote the poet Frank O’Hara, “someone, some day, may find it beautiful!”
And if that “some day” doesn’t come? We do it anyway. That doing — that creating, that wrestling with ourselves to exceed our limitations while, simultaneously, bracing to be ignored, misunderstood, and possibly ridiculed by a public we long to reach — is quite simply, who we are.”

Sing it, sister.