The week is marching by…not with any frantic urgency, just a firm, rhythmic cadence. It is officially the first full day of autumn, and the Wisconsin air outside absolutely agrees. It’s my favorite time of year here, a season that finally demands we settle down. I am back in the basement, anchoring the morning with the 132 movements: push-ups, pull-downs, goblet squats, and bridges to clear the sleep.
The studio schedule is heavy today, starting with a three-hour reset session and finishing out tonight with a ninety-minute block.
I didn’t sit down this morning with a grand thesis, but I’m struck by the simple physical act of writing. If you break it down to the absolute studs, it’s just electromagnetic pulses firing through a meat suit, traveling down an arm to drag ink across paper and pull a thought into physical existence. It is an absolute marvel, and yet, we are so collectively distracted by the manufactured mess of our own society that we ignore the quiet miracles happening right in our own hands.
Watching the pen move pulled me back to my freshman year of high school. I was fourteen, sitting at a desk, tasked with writing in a daily journal for class. I didn’t take it seriously then, though part of me wishes I had. Even then, I was just a kid trying to decipher a system that was already visibly cracking. I didn’t fully understand it then, and I certainly don’t claim to have it entirely figured out at forty-five, but the perspective has definitely widened. If I had built this discipline back then, maybe I would have navigated those years differently. However, I have to remind myself that there is no point in wallowing in alternate timelines; it’s just a quiet observation of a choice taken.
So, I keep writing. I keep documenting the timeline while the outside world slowly grinds to a halt. The people running our cities keep throwing money at massive, hollow “revitalization” projects, entirely missing the point. We don’t need new facades; we need community. We need connection. We need to get back to the basics.
No one lives inside this mind but me, so of course, I can’t throw stones without checking my own glass house and I know exactly how often I still reach for a mask or turn a blind eye just to survive a room. I’m just refusing to do it as much these days.
The autumn equinox always brings a necessary reprieve. Showing us that the universe eventually forces a return to balance. It’s basic science and the absolute laws of nature. But that return to equilibrium doesn’t mean returning to the nostalgic “good old days” everyone is crying out for.
Instead, it means a return to balance…changed, transformed, and holding even more abundance for everyone. I was born only two miles from where I am sitting right now, yet I barely recognize the landscape. So I remind myself that my job now is to sit in my own truth, stay open to the perspectives around me, and keep disrupting this broken system wherever I can.
The baseline soundtrack started ethereal from Enya into ISON number 3, then Loreen’s Feels Like Heaven – before taking a sharp turn into Alanis Morissette’s Uninvited. And this time, right as that heavy bass dropped at the end of the track, I actually let go. I gave in to the classic Alanis onstage headbang and let my nervous system spin. I had to watch my clearance in this basement so I didn’t take out a wall, but God, I forgot how incredibly good it feels to just lose control for a second and spin!
A final sequence flashed before I closed the journal: 808. Remain focused on my truth. It is a position of strength.
Thanks for listening.
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