IN THE TWO YEARS, nine months, and twenty-one days since new pixels last appeared here, the Phillies lost a World Series, a League Championship Series, and a League Division Series, the Eagles lost two wild-card games and a Super Bowl, and the Flyers and 76ers just … lost. 

One of my daughters spent a semester in Ireland and returned to earn her bachelor’s degree; the other visited Paris for a couple of summer weeks and started her senior year of high school. 

The country readied itself, once again, for an election between an eminently qualified, mentally balanced, service-oriented candidate and a monstrously cruel, laughably uninterested, demonstrably fascist one.

I started a new job and began writing a new novel. 

And on and on and on.

Through all of it, a couple of constants: First, I’m at my best when I’m creating – whether here or in the notebook in which I’m writing longhand fiction or in the gorgeously papered journal where I process my shit. Second, I’ve neglected this most important part of myself of late – and I need to get it back.

So let’s get it back. | DL

WHEN I’M in the zone, the way I am now, hunger is not something to endure, to bitch about, or even to assuage. It’s something to enjoy and take pride in.

For most of the last three-plus weeks, I’ve gone to bed hungry. The hollow feeling in my stomach returns sooner after meals. These are good things.

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