I recently began spending time with a new friend. How we ever came to be introduced has escaped me now (she's likely a friend of a friend of my husbands, or something like that), but that's beyond the point, anyways.

The first time we hung out together we went to dinner; two hours of filling ourselves with sushi and easy conversation. After the second time we went out, a week later, for coffee, I went home to my husband, excited.

"I feel like I'm back in the dating days, and I've just come home from a really great second date where you realize you could really see something with this person."

"I feel like she probably needs a good friend even more than you do."

"I feel really bad for her if that's true," I said, but the truth is that I hoped he was right. I hoped that she drove home from our mid-day coffee feeling like she had found a friend that she could really spend time with, really confide in, the way I did.

Over coffee she told me, among other things, that she was meeting a new friend for dinner that night. I felt instantly jealous, like I was already losing her friendship to someone else. She told me only that she seemed "quirky," leaving the rest to my imagination.

When her name popped up my iPhone screen later that night I practically leapt up to get it. She had just returned from dinner, reciting something a little funny and a little silly that had happened.  I immediately texted back.

Too funny. Otherwise, how was it? New best friend?

My heart was pounding. I'd been in this city for four years and while I had met some truly lovely people, I had yet to build a friendship even remotely close to the ones I had left behind when I moved. Laura was the only one who I felt could possibly fill this emptiness.

I stick to my original statement, she said, but the food was good.

In reality, even if she had a great time with this other person, it didn't mean that we couldn't develop a real friendship. Still, I felt only nervousness.

Not everyone can be as awesome as us, I texted back. What I was really saying was: please see something awesome in me. Please please please.

A truer statement may never have been uttered, she responded, and I thought: I'll take it.

It meant I wasn't being replaced before our friendship had really even gotten off the ground. It meant I wasn't being looked over the way I had so many times in my past. It meant I still had time.

It meant more coffee dates, and if there's one thing life needs, it's more time gabbing with girlfriends over hot beverages.

I'm meeting a girlfriend for coffee in one hour, but I've settled into my usual seat now, with a red eye nearby, hopeful to form some words into logical, if not poetic, sentences. I had thought it would be busy in here over lunch, but it's just me and the two baristas (I can't help but think of Suzy and her fear of introducing herself to the barista she sees every week).

I haven't written anything substantial in a few months now, and it's making me feel all kinds of squirmy and incomplete. Writing has always been how I work through and make sense of everything. So when nothing is coming out I feel: less than.

Right before I left for the coffee shop a friend sent me the name of a book of writing prompts that she thought might help me out of my dry spell. I promised to give them a go once I was settled in.

Instead, I'm writing here.

I'm beginning to think that the problem is not just that I'm not writing, but that I have far too many ideas; far too many memories begging to be documented, that I don't know where to begin. And so I don't. I simply don't start.

It kind of reminds me of how when someone asks how you are, we always respond with the socially acceptable "fine, thank you" when it fact we could be feeling the exact opposite. If we're being honest, there's much more to it then that; but we know they're not really asking the way we wish they were.

"How are you?"

"Good, thanks."

And now I've gone off on a tangent...

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that I'm sitting here in this coffee shop, hoping that the powers at be send me something, anything, to get me out of this slump of mine.

But if that fails, I may as well go order a second coffee and introduce myself to the barista.

Last week I went to the movies with a girlfriend and while the ads ran we talked about our lives. There was talk of our sons (her: two, me: one), our husbands, our busy days and then: our homes. She recently moved into the home of her dreams, and after talking about that for a while, she turned things around saying, "what about you? Are you still loving your place?"
This October will mark four years that we have been in this house, which is entirely too strange to think about as come January it will have been five years since I moved to Las Vegas.

I thought of my girlfriends' question again this morning as I was playing around on the family room floor with my son, and was suddenly overcome with this intense need to document how the room looked right then, in that very moment.

 
We do everything in this room. It is the play room, the movie theater, where we snack between meals, where I work or curl up on the couch with a good book. It is where we entertain friends and family most often. It is the room where DJ learned to crawl, and then walk. It is full of memories.

This is the space in which we spend the most time together as a family, and in three months it could look completely different. Life is fleeting, dear friends, you need to forever embrace the little things.

"So I’m saying enough. No more. Let’s start a little revolution, shall we? Lets take our bodies back and let’s start by changing the way we speak about them."

Go read, now.

"We suffer, often unknowingly, from wanting to be in two places at once, from wanting to experience more than one person can. This is a form of greed, of wanting everything. Feeling like we're missing something or that we're being left out, we want it all. But being human, we can't have it all. The tension of all this can lead to an insatiable search, where our passion for life is stirred, but never satisfied. When caught in this mindset, no amount of travel is enough, no amount of love is enough, no amount of success is enough... The truth is that one experience taken to heart will satisfy our hunger. "
- Mark Nepo (via megfee.com)

I'm super happy to announce FOUR new releases this month. All are available in the shop now! These are lovely and minimal, making them the perfect addition to your project life spreads. For those of you who are pregnant, or who are going back and documenting their pregnancy, I've got two great sets for you.

As always, I love seeing what you do with my collections. If you post on instagram, be sure to use the hashtag #bigcityquietdesigns so that I can see your lovely creations!