How to put this? I am newly free! I am in the happy position of living in South India with a partner in life who has completely supported my decision to quit my job and pursue writing, studying, artsy pastimes, and playing with food. This is all very new to me and I feel both ecstatic in my freedom and boggled by how I ever squeezed an 8-4:30 job into this very full life!

It's exciting, yes. But I must say: it's also very scary. And hard. I've been trying to put words to the page and screen for a few hours each day for about 2 weeks now and it turns out that I have neither discipline nor willpower. I have lots of good intentions, but you know what they say about those suckers...

A friend who came for dinner last night, a writer, told me that the challenges we face with writing are very much like those that come up when developing a meditation practice. Makes sense. His advice was to sit for the time you set out to write for, and that even if nothing at all comes in the way of creativity you should just continue to sit there. Force your bottom to stay in that chair until your time is up. Sound like punishment? Yeah.

Here's a spoonful of sugar to help that last one go down: another writer friend advised me to read from writers I'd like to emulate before starting. That's less painful for sure. And it definitely seemed to help me out today as I spent time tapping out memories of our glacier catastrophe last summer.

This morning after my walk with Will I had some mango crumble (The mangos are here! The mangos are here!) and sat down to read a bit of 'Expat: Women's True Tales of Life Abroad'. Good fodder. Interesting stories. Tomorrow: more of Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma'.

Now I'm off to explore my inner omnivore with some Moosewood classics: polenta pie, cucumber yogurt dill mint salad, beets, and of course: more mango crumble.