I have an amazing capacity for foreseeing possible futures and planning how I would respond to any number of unlikely catastrophic outcomes. Sometimes I can catch myself in flight, bring me back to myself and be here. Now. Me. Taking photos of small things and writing a sentence or two about them is one of the ways I do this – I find that those five or ten minutes of writing to an image soothe me more than many cups of tea or wine, and that bringing my camera everywhere lets me see the world in far more detail. Elouise describes the same thing from another angle.

I’m tired of living towards the future, but it’s so hard to stay now!


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2 thoughts on “now

  1. scott

    Living towards the future is likely better than living towards the past. Now is great if it happens to be a good moment. Perhaps if you took the future in shorter chunks, say a month or two at a time, you might feel better about it. I remember time swirling round me in unusual ways right before my Ph.D. defense. In three weeks you’ll probably feel elated, at least momentarily, and then settle into a new “now” — maybe even feel a little bit of postPhDpartum depression, and then suddenly you’ll be in an airplane and on another adventure. And a new season of jill/txt will begin.

  2. Jill

    I like that thought. Thank you 🙂

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