volume one hundred and fifty-four

oh what a beautiful morning

📍Written from the third floor with panoramic views of a foggy day, with a muddy border collie exhaustedly napping beside me, in my new temporary home in Mulubinba (otherwise known as Newcastle). 

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Q: What book is on your bedside table?

An option for questions to answer while filling out an online dating profile. Most of them far too hard to answer, or far too long of an answer. This one feels maybe far too easy. Like a hack. Like an easy conversation starter. Because I have done the dating apps before and it has been awful. I have done them a handful of times and at most, I have lasted a week. Most of the time I have lasted a whole twenty-four hours.

But this one comes recommended and isn’t a place for men. This one feels like that timid comment I made to friends years ago about it just being easier, not at all scary, and exciting to date women and terrifying and awkward to date men. They responded, the two of them straight, cis, and full of love for me: “Well, why don't you just date women only then?”. They said it in a way that said “Seems pretty clear to us!” and I still wasn’t ready.

But I fill everything out and I talk about myself the best that I can and I answer this pre-selected question with:

A: My journal for my Morning Pages, thanks to Julia Cameron.

And I wait.

And my heart leaps as the notifications start to come in. But not the hands ripping open my chest kind of dreaded leap, not the wet tennis ball in the pit of the stomach, not the what will he say and will it matter or have I already decided no? But with a “Who is she? I can’t wait to find out.”

Morning Pages were introduced to me years ago. Comedians have sworn by them, my more-suited-to-me mental health workers have mentioned them and my writing community talks of them often. But it was only this year I did The Artist’s Way for the first time and haven’t missed them since. Even after almost a lifetime of being a nighttime journaler, I have changed my ways. Even with a life of regular early starts to catch a plane or be on a workshop on the other side of the planet, I find the time. Even if it’s way above the clouds giving opportunity to a stranger next to me to learn more about me than I care to reveal to anyone with just a sideways glance at my tray table, or on a train with regular breaks to avoid motion sickness, or in an airport gate as half asleep people seem to stare and I wonder if the journaling is why or is it that I wear all my heaviest clothes to the airport so they’re trying to figure out what exactly I am going for, or as soon as the workshop is done and I turn off my ring light and turn my smile off because doing them first thing wasn’t possible, I still do them. I make time for them as soon as possible after waking, and most days that is right after making coffee, washing my face and patting the pets in my care.

I always romanticised the idea of coffee in bed — seeing it as the ultimate life of luxury — but swore to being an up-an-about-early person who wanted to get a head start on everyone else for the day and to be awake with or before the sun. Morning Pages have allowed me to do both and I didn't know that was possible.

By taking the coffee back to bed, I romance myself the way I have always dreamed of and also get a start on the day.

I place the warm mug (or if I’m lucky enough at the current housesit, an empty mug and full French press) on the bedside table. By this point, I have already switched on the lamp when getting up and I position it to illuminate the Morning Pages but not too much on my morning eyes.

I grab the pillows from the floor, because I sleep without pillows, and prop them up vertically between my back and the bedhead. I am propped up the exact way my Mum would prop herself up with her pillows to sit up and drink her cup of tea in the mornings when I delivered it to her in bed. I didn’t offer, it was my job. And all those years of annoyance have turned into gratitude because I might not know this pillow support if not for all those school days spent sneaking in with a tea and whispering her name before she sat up and adjusted the pillows, taking the tea from my hands once she was stable.

I didn’t have to do that on weekends, though. On weekends, Little Loz used to wake before everyone and read an entire Goosebumps or Babysitters Club book before they even stirred. This Loz wakes before everyone and writes.

Now that it is cooler I pull the blankets up high around my chest. When I introduced this step to my morning ritual, I was kicking sheets to the side.

As the open blinds or curtains let the sun stream in as it rises, the words fill the three blank A4 pages with brain dump after brain dump until I am ready for my day. A cat might be curled up like a pretzel where the pillow would be beside me if I didn’t have it along with mine behind my back. A dog might be snuggled beneath the blankets at my toes.

If I free-wrote all the way through this time I would be done with the pages fast. But I am a daydreamer, and before the caffeine completely has an effect on me, I lean into this daydreaming so very much.

I have always been a daydreamer. I remember Sunil, the concierge at the hotel when I worked the front desk, clapping his hands to bring me out of daydreaming in quiet moments together on shift before laughing and telling me I went somewhere else again. I remember Mum doing the same thing at dinner when I was a kid. Staring into the distance, sometimes out the window or glazed over at a wall, unblinking, eyes wide, in another world so deeply that a clap or a call of our name needs to bring us a very long way back.

These days I am mostly daydreaming of how different my day would be if I had just one more hour of sleep. This most sacred part of my day leads into the next most sacred part and then the next. It is an avalanche of being the love of my life. So this month I will adjust, as always, when things need to change, in order to keep living a life of luxury.

And I wonder, how would another person fit into all of this?

Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me a part of your morning ritual you can never skip.

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here are three things i struggled with this week:

✨ Saying goodbye (for now) to my beautiful sister and her family who welcomed me wholeheartedly into their home once again.

📷 Almost Famous still makes me cry and I have seen it an unknown amount of times. It is a perfect film. No notes. I will now obsessively listen to the soundtrack for the foreseeable future, as per routine.

🍿 Look, there is not a large pot in this house. Which is fine. And the house is amazing and perfect and wonderful. But I make stovetop popcorn for dinner on a regular basis because I am an adult-child, so this will be a long month.

here are three blessings from this week:

🦴 Dogs that rest their chin on your lap when you sit.

🐢 A brief interlude with a dear friend as I travelled between cities. It was perfect.

💗 Resetting my priorities and feeling grateful for the reminder from a wonderful human who always did it right.

here are three goals for the coming week:

🏳️ Less, less, less.

🪟 Not worry about how much time I lose looking out the window while I sit at this desk and just enjoy the view.

🐾 Teach the dogs not to pull on the leash. I have a whole month and a lot of patience.

pics or it didn’t happen:

more of this, please.

I love you. Now I am off to find out if the ice cream place near me has Happy Hour (as advised by a friend who loves ice cream as much as me) because it is delicious and also very close to the house and also very expensive and I would like to avoid danger.

🧡, LD (lauren deborah | she/they)