August has arrived, quietly, with little fanfare. It rather snuck up on me, honestly. It seemed so far off, and then…here it is.

This week has been pretty quiet on the writing front. I have been taking care of other business, mostly my Board of Education duties as a new school year approaches.

I have also completed the first (and hardest) part of a photo project I am working on. The rest will be both tedious and meticulous, but not really difficult.

I am digging into my Irish genealogy again, trying to put some pieces together. My current frustration is that people that have my supposed family in their tree are not DNA matches to my mother, while people who are DNA matches do not have that family in their tree.

I have tried a tool called Auto Clustering for my mom, and I will see if it yields any clues.

I am hoping to use this week as prep time, so I can spend the week my daughter is at camp focused on writing. Sort of a mini-writing retreat, only I have to drive her a half-hour each way every day.

The class before my daughter’s at swimming is the infants. They are infinitely adorable as they learn to navigate this new medium. They of course don’t swim yet (they can’t even walk), but they are learning not to be afraid and to have fun.

I see a metaphor for writing there. Most writers dove in because it was fun. As we slowly mastered the new medium, it became more technical, harder to float. The deeper we got, the more often we felt close to drowning.

Sometimes we need to stop flailing and take a deep breath. Fly through the water and trust all that we have learned will hold us up. Find the fun.

Happy August, everyone!