I won’t Google that phrase because someone else has surely said it but it just dawned on me, literally, in the cool summer sunrise. After a whirlwind summer of chronicling travels, neuroses and separations it is time to add more intricate structure and depth to living and writing. Inspired by the musings, creativity and work ethic of others – Cristian Mihal, Maggie at Life in a Skillet, Shrimani Senay, Karen Weintraub and Nick Hornby, among them – as well as the flight of my girl off to college, I see that it is time now for the next act.

I’ve been blogging since 2009 about food, life and autism and my hits number merely in the thousands, which is perfectly fine – the whole idea was to write every day, and I am there now.  So now it’s time to commit myself, with all that word implies, to devoting my annual September burst of energy to taking years worth of writing and making something of it. Binders, notebooks, post-its and reams of graph paper will all give up their contents to The Cloud and return to Earth as…something that is both fact and fiction. It will take much longer than September to get it down, figure it out and put it in order, so I signed up for a writing group to establish some momentum and deadlines.

But summer isn’t over yet. School will start tomorrow and Labor Day will be here this weekend. I don’t have the luxury of the stretches of quiet time necessary for my project. And so I blog about the small moments so that, come September, I can write about the big ones (and I am pretty sure I have said that before).