Life has been fast and slow lately… and a bit weird.

Weird in a good way. I’ve had this book, Embrace That Girl, waiting patiently to be finished and published for years and next week, it’s officially launching. Right now, I’m alone on my couch… my couch in Bryson City, North Carolina, where I moved to be closer to stillness. To have time to write and reflect. I can’t see the mountains outside my window because there is a cloud of fog sitting over them. This is normal, I’ve come to know. I have to pinch myself sometimes to remember I did it. Life looked SO different only two years ago. The me in this book was so different.

When I see Embrace That Girl in my hand, it feels surreal to hold a decade of my life in 200 edited pages binded perfectly with a cover my friend and talented artist designed. It wasn’t so long ago that I was this person in the book, the girl searching for myself at all costs.

I always wanted to publish a book and maybe a little part of me didn’t believe I actually would. I thought I’d feel different, that my life would look different, and it all feels so… ordinary. I don’t mean ordinary in a bad way. It feels natural. I imagined naively being an author would change me, but like so many goals I hoped would be the thing that made it all perfect, it doesn’t work that way. I still have my worries, insecurities, and all the good stuff right in this meat suit I’ve been living in. No milestone is a magical pill that transforms everything.

I want to be present to this perfect ordinary moment I created. It took a lot of effort to be sitting on this couch with this view and first book nearly ready to be launched.

Years ago, I was writing a piece on the release of Boyhood, Richard Linklater’s film that chronicled one boy throughout his life. I remember the movie left me with an aching heart even though it wasn’t exactly a sad story. By all counts, it was a story of an average life. I wrote this line in my essay and it always stayed with me:

The truth is life is a string of ordinary moments that pass by all too quickly.

That’s it. That’s the feeling. This is an ordinary moment and I wanted or expected it to feel more epic. In the movie, there were countless scenes that simply ended while I waited for something more to happen, but that’s life. And it’s a miracle.

This is an ordinary Friday on my couch as I write this and sip my coffee, which I added my habitual coconut milk, cinnamon and a hint of vanilla to. Once Jaime is up, we’re going to buy lumber for our new shutters. And later, we’ll cook something at home. And then next week, I’ll be a published author. It’ll go by fast and before I know it, years will pass by just like a scene that ended too quickly. So, I will savor it now. I will capture it with this entry. I will sip my coffee a little bit slower today.