"Somewhere in the middle of the pandemic, I started driving west. The instinct was as startling as it was insatiable. I lapped up skylines like honey after famine. Then came six weeks of climbing mountains, avoiding clients and swallowing as much sunshine as I could. One morning in the middle of Arizona, I sat down with my laptop. A desert hummingbird--its whole body, the shape of a shining comma, hovered out the kitchen window. I told myself to write, really write for myself. No clients. No strategic messaging. No keywords or SEO. Just the truth of my life trembling on the page. That morning, I wrote myself a poem called Instructions for Traveling West. I wrote it as imperative, as incantation." Read Joy Sullivan's powerful poem, and learn more about the story behind it here.
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