Good morning writers. Where I’m sitting right now, the candle’s had to work hard to penetrate the fog-chilly dark, and I’m grateful to be up early enough to meet this part of the day. Are you still lost in your dreams? Are you sitting up with me in the thin early morning light of this new day, cup of coffee warming your palms as you sit at your kitchen table, listening to the radio to find out what beauty and danger erupted in the world while you slept? I like to imagine you there. I like to imagine me there, too.
This morning I am thinking about depletion, about replenishment (again, again). I spent five days last week — four of them twelve-hour days — co-leading the AWA facilitator’s training here in Alamo, CA, and it was a delight to get to participate. I want to tell you about that joy. I want to show you the sorts of conversations I got to have with my co-trainers, with the trainees, with this community of folks who are curious about and have been shaped by the Amherst Writers & Artists workshop method and the sort of good this work can do in the world. I want to show you our long working days, our delicious meals, the lovely sound of trainee’s voices and laughter pushing up through the trees from the pool where they’d many of them gather at breaktime to cool off and deepen their connections with one another. I want to tell you how fantastic it is to get to spend five days talking with folks about the power of supporting writers’ voices and the way that support can be a part of transforming peoples’ lives, and thereby shifting significantly the world we live in.
I want to tell you all of this. But I’m tired.
