Pro-tip for hot coffee on cool mornings.
The air finally has that first scent of fall — the kind we wait all summer for in Florida. The kind that has my husband searching Zillow for Tennessee mountain homes in August, when I remind him how amazing the other three seasons are. That time is here. So I've been taking my coffee out to the back porch with my laptop to start my day. And if you just rolled your eyes at me, I grew up in Toronto, then spent a decade in Chicago, with some time in NY and NJ. I know — and don't love cold.
Looking forward to my new favorite routine, I opened the slider, laptop tucked under my arm and piping hot coffee in the other, and sat down in the sunny chair.
Oh, fuck this shit.
This was my first thought. I almost got right back up to go inside. A neighbor across the street is building a pool, so saws and trucks and jackhammers (and whatever other loud noises you can imagine going simultaneously at full volume) were polluting my peaceful morning ritual.
I really wanted morning sunlight on my eye holes, though. So I decided to ignore it, pretend it was quiet, and create my own peace.
And then a dragonfly landed on my right shoulder.
I snapped a picture of my dragonfly visitor after he left my shoulder.
I paused, my hands hovering over my keyboard so I wouldn't startle him. I stretched my gaze down and to the right to say hey. For a few seconds it was just the two of us. Well, and the pool construction crew. Maybe he was tired of the noise too and came for a rest.
Later that morning I joined a small group call with some female founders. After our initial greetings, the leader offered a journaling prompt:
What's already here that I've been asking for?
I wrote it down, but I didn't need to follow the prompt to know the answer. I knew.
(And I followed the prompt anyway to see where the thread would take me).
Rearranging the furniture in the same living room
For the past year or so, I've been in a liminal space in my business. I've made changes, stopped doing some things, gave some things new names, new pages, different formats. A tweak here, a restructure there — moving private coaching to this website, adding consulting to my author site.
But if I'm honest, I've mostly been rearranging the furniture. Before this prompt, my husband pointed it out one night at dinner. Same couch and chairs, just moved to a different position and draped in a new slipcover.
Meanwhile, what I'd been asking for — for years — was spaciousness. Room to think, write, and create. Mornings that didn't start with a sprint to my desk for a call or to finalize a client deliverable. This was one of those mornings when I enjoyed some morning yoga at home, coffee on my (loud) porch. I wanted more flexibility and flow, more work coming from me rather than dictated by others. A couple of years ago, my calendar was stacked with calls and deadlines, everything competing for my attention. Thirty minutes to quickly inhale lunch at my desk.
I have the space I craved now.
So much of it that sometimes I don't know what to do with it.
That's the bizarre thing about open space. When you can do almost anything with your time, what do you actually do? People talk about this in retirement. (Not my plan anytime soon. My income matters to our household and I love what I do.) But without boundaries, I can spin. For me, spinning looks a lot like moving the couch to the other wall, sitting there for a day, then moving it back the next.
When the coach read that prompt, I felt gratitude in my chest. I asked for this. It just didn't arrive in the package I expected. I'm not even sure what kind of package I expected.
That changed the question for me. It stopped being How do I get more space? and became How do I allow this space without drifting?
The same thing happens on the page
I see this with writers all the time. I've done it myself.
You have a book project you give a shit about. You've written pages — maybe a hundred of them. But then, somewhere in the middle, you start rearranging the furniture. Chapter three moves to the front. The outline gets rebuilt. You rewrite the opening for the fifth time after finishing a memoir with a banger of an opening. It feels like progress — you're touching the work every day — but the book isn't getting any closer to done.
Or you start, stop, and start something new. The fresh idea feels lighter than the one you've been carrying. Finishing is too scary. So for a few weeks, you keep going with the one that feels lighter. Until it gets heavy too, and you push it off to sit next to the others.
Both look like writing. Both are moving the couch.
From four books and over a decade blogging, I know that rearranging isn't a writing problem. There's a time to rearrange. It only becomes a problem when you keep moving the same pieces around without publishing a thing.
It comes back to energy. When your nervous system doesn't feel safe finishing — being seen, being judged, being done — your mind reaches for something it can control. If your work is out there, what if it's "wrong?" What if the time you spent wasn't "worth it?" What if people don't like it?
Structure is controllable. Moving chapters around gives you the feeling of work without the exposure of finishing. It's busy work. And for me, without a deadline — like publishing at least one article a week here, and a book every couple of years (though I'd like to shrink this gap for my books) — I'll write and write and write without shipping. That does nothing for me, for you, or for my business.
This is the heart and soul of Energy-First Writing. Before you tinker with the page, notice the energy you're bringing to it.
So the next time you catch yourself reshuffling, try this. Don't open a new document. Read what's already there, without editing a word. Notice where your body leans in — the paragraph that makes you sit up, the scene that still has heat. Mark it. Then write forward from there for twenty minutes. Leave the structure alone until you have a full draft.
AND … it's a big one — if it's time to donate the couch to Goodwill and bring in a new one, do that. Just because you've been working on one book for six years doesn't mean it's the right one for you right now. There might be another, more aligned one for you. Writers are discovering this in Meet Your Book.
Here's where I landed
I'm simplifying my offers at the School so they're clearer — for you and for me.
I'm finishing my next book by December 20. Not because I'm in a hurry, but because I want to do the things I said I wanted to do.
And I finally said yes to something that's been bubbling for over a year: teaching, leading, guiding. More of it, and in new ways. There's more to share soon, but this is the biggest shift.
I have three words written on a pink sticky note on my desk:
Write.
Teach.
Speak.
A new pillowcase won't fix this. Neither will a new couch. I need a different room.
I'd been reading about dragonflies last week, so I'll say this much. They spend most of their lives underwater — sometimes years — getting very good at being what they are. Then one day they climb a reed, the old skin splits, and they sit in the sun while their wings unfold. Only then do they fly. The wings were forming the whole time.
That evening I found a feather on the driveway. Two glimpses of wings in one day. I'm paying attention. The wings I saw that day also had something in common: they were at rest. They weren't out there chasing. They stood still.
Coming back to the question this coach asked, it might be for you too: What's already here that you've been asking for?
Where I'm stepping (flying) first
Before I walk into the new living room, and before anything else, I'm leading a small writing retreat here in Florida.
Maybe you've been asking for time to finally write the story you've been circling. A few days where no one needs anything from you. I've also added 1:1 sessions before the retreat so you can arrive ready to write, or ready to edit. Plus sessions at and after the retreat so you don't head off on your own and wind up rearranging your own living room.
A couple of the seven private rooms are already spoken for. I've been inviting people personally first, and I take my spaces seriously, online and in person. So the retreat is by application.
If you feel a pull, get in touch and I'll send you the details.
