Just adjust the sails.

I’m sitting in Hartsfield-Jackson in the coziest, most perfect little corner of a gate–the end of a row of chairs, blocked in by walls on two sides, with a huge floor-to-ceiling window on the third side showing me the fluffy clouds in the pale blue sky. I just answered all of my emails and still have a solid hour until my flight boards. (Am I a person who answers my emails and schedules meetings in an airport? Apparently I am, and it feels good.) I talked to my grandpa on the phone, sitting here on the floor, because he texted me to call him when he meant to text my mother. (This happens all the time and it makes me smile.) I’m stressed and tired and excited and I *should* be working on my novel or doing actual work or taking a freaking nap, but somehow I found myself opening up the WordPress composer on my own blog instead of a client’s.

There has been so much on my mind lately, I don’t even know where to start with attempting to cobble it together into a cohesive post. I’m really struggling with not having the capacity to invest into relationships like I need or want to (or into anything, honestly, but I’m feeling the disconnect here the most). One of my major goals this year was to focus on people over projects, because I’m a very task-oriented person and I think (I know) I prioritize projects too much. But now it’s May–it’s June–and I’m just exhausted. Medical stuff and work stuff and life stuff… I just can’t see any one friend or even talk to them on the phone on a regular basis. The people I spend the most consistent time with right now are the nurses at my infusion center. I feel guilty that my capacity is so low, but I’m tired. I’m just really tired and sometimes (a lot of the time) I don’t know how I can keep going. And the state of the world doesn’t help.

I think it was when Russia invaded Ukraine that I first started thinking about the concept of bearing witness. Because you feel helpless; we all did, watching this war play out on our Twitter feeds. But the least we can do–the most we can do–is to not scroll past. Look. Watch. See. There’s something sacred in that. I thought it then, and I thought it when I stood outside an abortion clinic praying with friends this spring. I thought it when I pulled over by the side of the road to let a funeral pass by. I thought it last week, the heaviest week of the year so far, when the corruption in our church systems finally came to light and when schoolchildren in Texas had to smear themselves in the blood of their dead friends and play dead to survive.

Bearing witness. Seeing. It’s the first step to doing more, to learning and donating and working. But it’s also meaningful, important, in and of itself.

And this, too, a phrase that came into my head and keeps coming over and over, pushing at me whenever I open the news to yet another mass shooting: No more moments of silence. We’re screaming.

It’s heavy. The betrayal of our church leaders–the systemic gun violence that no one wants to take actual steps to stop–the pain in my own body that leaves me non-functional in bed for days at a time. It’s all so heavy. But we still have the light slanting through the window and the way my kitty sleeps with her paw over her eyes and the girl on the train who told me she liked my braid. And on days when both your own life, and the world at large seem covered with clouds, we have to cling to these little slivers of good where we can get them.

My body is struggling and life is a lot, but sometimes I have a minute to breathe. And when I do, I am going to live those moments for all they’re worth. I am going to rewatch a Marvel movie that makes me laugh, I am going to write a song, I am going to go to a fairy garden with my friend, I am going to start reading the thick Bible Women: All Their Words And Why They Matter textbook I got on Thriftbooks, I am going to wear my magical green dress that I love and spin around so the skirt flares out. I guess what I’m saying is best expressed by Shauna Niequist: I am learning to make a home for myself in this story.

I saw a cheesy Facebook quote last week (you know the kind–awful graphic, curly font, posted by one of your mom’s friends) that actually really spoke to me. I’ll spare you the over-the-top graphic design and give you just the words:

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” –William Arthur Ward

That’s been my outlook on life with chronic illness for a long time, and this put into words. Somehow this simplifies it–just adjust the sails. It calms me down when I’m starting to panic about all of the things I don’t have the capacity for. I’m learning to adjust the sails. Trying to measure my days in different metrics. Repeating the mantra to myself that I adopted for this year, courtesy of Grace Anne–there is always more time than you think there is.

Just adjust the sails.

I bought some night sky postcards (my ultimate aesthetic) at a stationery store last weekend. I plan to tack them up around my room, to surround myself with the vastness of the cosmos. Sometimes I need to be reminded there’s a big world out there. In one of the postcards, a man takes a cautious step next to a crater on the moon, his face hidden by his helmet.

Do you ever feel like you’re on the moon? A new lunar region. Trying to outfit yourself with everything you need, but you don’t even know what the right equipment is because you’ve never been here before. And it’s silent, and deserted, except for your footfalls on the dirt. Do they call it dirt here? On the lunar dust.

Another postcard depicts an illustration of the Great Comet of 1819; another, the Great Comet of 1881. What did people think about those small solar systems warming to our world? They’d never seen anything like that before. Maybe they thought the world was ending. But it turned out to be a thing of great beauty.

I don’t really know what any of this means. Sometimes I think I’m good at everything and good at nothing, that maybe my only talent is seeing poetry in everything. The clouds have moved and my flight is about to board and I’m dizzy (physically, not in a good way) and ready to go. Ready for something new. Will we ever get there? Everything is the same, but everything is different. But little bit by little bit–infusion by infusion, Goodwill thrifting trip by Goodwill thrifting trip, Ben Rector song by Ben Rector song–I’m making a home for myself in this story. And you can learn to make a home in yours, too.

Just adjust the sails.