I get it!

Yesterday was trending downward in spite of all the natural beauty around me. I’m a creature of comfort and I wasn’t comfortable. I am embarrassed to admit that I literally stomped out of a restaurant last night, hangry.

This morning didn’t start well either. I was sleepy this morning after being awake last night—a combo of someone snoring (ahem), water so hard in the shower that you had to chip it out of the faucet, crappy coffee and no coffee cups. Seriously, who services a room with thin plastic glasses and no cups for the coffeemaker?

I found good coffee in big mugs at the Madeline Island School of the Arts and settled into a place around the big table where today’s workshop unfolded. No, wrong word—(and my instructor, Allison K Williams, emphasized the importance of choosing the right word or phrase.) The workshop was an assault of information fed by firehose. I couldn’t take notes fast enough. She opened me up to so many new concepts, ideas, possibilities, resources. I was exhausted by our first break.

There are the usual personalities in class: the Know-It-All, the person who isn’t aware of social cues and never stops talking about a personal tangent and the person who thinks while she talks. But there were so many great resources among the group, asking just the right question, pulling me aside with useful suggestions and encouragement. I had my one-on-one consultation with the instructor this afternoon and rattled on like a physic woodpecker primed by the avalanche of ideas from her instruction. I didn’t even make sense to myself, but sounded like I was 40 again and confident that I’d work it out.

While I was in class today my husband did some exploring and located a tiny grocery that helped us make lemonade out of lemons. I did a grocery run after class and returned with smoked whitefish, Boursin cheese, crackers and chilled wine for dinner in our room. We had cookies for dessert. It wasn’t gourmet or close to nutritional, but it was better than swatting flies and breathing grease fumes like last night’s fiasco. I also borrowed two mugs from the school for this week’s coffee and will return them on Friday morning. He scored some extra coffee, soap and shampoo from the motel to get us to Friday. I talked non-stop about the workshop tonight as we grazed and he cheered me on.

I not only can do this, but I now have a list of ideas for writing projects and the enthusiasm to pursue them. Who said an old dog can’t learn new tricks?