In my ideal life, I wake up at 8 and go for a run. I have a breakfast of fresh fruit and smoked fish and then I write for three hours. I go into the garden, do a little weeding, check on my vermicomposter, and have a bite of lunch before writing for another few hours. I make a delicious dinner from scratch and watch a movie with my husband, and then we go outside and look at the stars and talk about how small we are but how full we feel.

In my ideal life, I spend three months of the year camping, and hiking, and being scared/notscared of bears. I ride my bike into the forest, because where I live in my ideal life, there’s a forest I can ride my bike into. I have a pain-free, limber body because I move around, get sunshine in my eyeballs, and eat fresh food I have grown two-and-a-half steps from my back porch.

When it rains, I press my hands into the mud and feel the aliveness of the earth, and sometimes I find a worm in that mud, and I adopt her for my vermicomposter. Sometimes I write outside, sitting in the grass, not being worried about bugs walking on me. A snail sits on my knee, and my cat is watching a bird in the distance.

My real life is good. It’s full of love, and learning, and compromise. I get up at 5:30 instead of 8, and I eat things that spin around in the microwave, and I ride my bike on the streets where I am scared/notscared of cars. Some days I make a delicious dinner from scratch with herbs from my garden, and my husband and I watch a movie, and then we go outside to walk the dog. Then I come home and check on my vermicomposter.

I put pieces of my ideal life into my real life where I can, and I hope that I will keep adding pieces, adding, adding, adding.