Up to.

Dear Friend, I've been trying to figure out how to articulate what exactly I've been up to, but I can't quite figure out how. I am both up to many, many things, and simultaneously nothing at all.

Time passes by at a slippery and nearly intangible clip.
I am drifting from weekend to weekend.

My thoughts regarding The Great American Novel intensify but I am unsure how exactly to proceed at this point. I am waiting for my thoughts to coalesce, I suppose, which feels somehow unhelpful.

I have been (as always) climbing all the things. Havasupai, Boulder Canyon (to Indian Paint Mines), and Hutch's Pool, being just a few of my more recent weekend trips. My hiking buddy is currently...indisposed...definitely for this weekend, with brief windows of availability for the next month. I am hoping to get to summit Picketpost next weekend, or the one after, I would like to do a South to South R2R before November hits and I am forced to buy crampons and confront my fear of snow...specifically snow at the Grand Canyon, which is in fact, the root of my snow-fear. But the government continues to be shut down, and despite constant chatter about it, the state of the NP's remains a hot mess.

I have been super social, or rather, super social on a LittleFoot scale (which is really not terribly social at all) as of late. It has been fun, but also exhausting. I am continually running on a spoon deficit and I know this will backfire on me before long. My goal is to spend the rest of my weekend in silence - total and complete silence - and to hope that it rejuvenates me enough to get me through the next week. I NEED some time alone. Totally alone. Alone with my own thoughts in my own house before I go crazy. :) Silence and solitude are practically currency at this point.

What else? I can't access your blog anymore because you've changed the privacy settings. I need an invite and a password, apparently. I can see that you are posting, but am unable to read the actual posts. I did receive your quotes text message for approval, but it came as a string of 49 text messages, shuffled, naturally, and have not yet had the time to sit down to try to piece all of them back together correctly. What are you thinking for this piece? Will you be distinguishing different fragments typographically? (Because clearly that would be awesome!)

For now, these are all the things I know.

As always, I miss you more than I have words for, and I wish you were here. I hope things there are looking up, that your back is getting better, and that you got to enjoy at least SOME of your week off. Sending all my love, as always.