moments of clarity at day's end

I'm loving these short end-of-day reflections. They're usually not a recount of things that I did or stuff that happened during the day, but a reflection on how the day and I showed up for each other.

Waking up each morning with gratitude for the 24-hour mini life granted to me and taking time at the end of each day to reflect on the close of the mini life (although the full gamut of 24 hours have not yet passed obviously) somehow seems to make me more mindful and present during the day itself.

The first week of March Break has come to an end, and it turned out to be much more of a whirlwind than we had planned for. We went to our first soccer game as a family. We watched two movies in the theatre. There was a playdate. There was our annual trip to Mountsberg to have pancakes by the campfire and see the tapping of the maple trees. And we got new bikes too, so here's to looking forward to some family biking time as the days get warmer.

I've been thinking of fame lately. A new movie or TV show comes, makes news for a day or two, and more mention of it very quickly drowns under the flood of new news that would have cropped up overnight.

Same with the release of a new book or music album. Or something might go viral for a bit, only to be overshadowed by something else the very next morning. Every time I log on to Netflix, it informs me of a new and different release on the home screen.

I've been thinking of this because I find that I've been holding rather obsolete beliefs about how this author life works. In the old days, perhaps you wrote a bestseller, stayed on top of the charts for weeks and months on end until you were practically a household name. And every time you did something, you made news.

Now everyone is a superstar to some extent. We all have our own little communities of fans and followers. Everyone is a content creator of some kind or the other. There's only so much attention a single person or book or album or TV show could possibly get.

Even though I couldn't bring myself to admit it for years, I think the reason I wished to be a writer was that I wanted to be famous. Of course, I loved writing. But I also wanted to be read by many, many people and become famous.

If you had asked me to describe what I meant by 'famous', I'd have been tongue-tied. Perhaps I wished to be admired. Maybe I wanted people to read my stories and put me on a pedestal for my intelligence and storytelling abilities.

Now, I'm quite content being an ordinary person writing about seemingly ordinary characters and their extraordinary stories. I love it when someone reads my work and feels touched by it and takes the time to let me know, either by writing in or leaving a review or in any other way.

I don't wish to be idolized, and I find that I too have stopped idolizing authors I was once in awe of. Understanding that we're all human beings doing the best we can, and that no one is more or less important because of what they do or who they are, and that countless factors outside of anybody's control contribute to any individual's success has made me realize that no human being is better or worse than any other. We're all equal, doing our bits, navigating the paths of our unique lives.

I lead a quiet life. Most of my interaction with the outside world — other than with KrA and D — is usually by way of D asking me to schedule a playdate for him or one of his friends' parents reaching out to me to get together to do something fun.

Because at the end of the day, it's just me and my words and the process of typing words on Pages and letting the story unfurl. I'm just a fleeting presence in a reader's life. And perhaps, that is all the responsibility I need to take. No more. No less.

And this realization is frankly quite liberating.