I am floating on a small cloud of good fortune . . . nothing major, no big prizes or grants or anything like that. But little things have been falling into place. A question about Frost Place staffing has been settled. I had a lovely coffee visit with my new teaching-artist colleague. I learned that my 10-week essay workshop is filling up, which makes me so happy. I received a class list for my 12-week high school poetry residency and am already charmed by the students, just from their classroom teacher's description of them. My mother-in-law called and sweetly begged me not to drive in the snow. Four people have come to see me at my new house within the past week. The lamplight in the bedroom looks beautiful against the polished floor. Like I said, little things.

Soon I'll be teaching twice a week: high schoolers and adults, poetry and essays. I'll be editing a book of short stories for a university press. I'll be prepping for the Frost Place. All of this makes me feel like an actual working writer. Of course I've spent my adult life as a working writer, but so much of my work was solitary. Being in Portland requires taking off the mask.

In the interstices of this work I'll be cooking meals, and beginning to imagine my garden, and learning to be alive in this new space. My friend, yesterday, walked through the house and mused about a sweetness that seems to rise from it. She's right: there is a sweetness. This is a good place, and I feel an odd sense of mutual gratitude, as if the house is as relieved as I am.

Tomorrow morning, when I climb into my car hours before dawn in order to drive to my early-morning gig, I'll try to hang on to this sense of optimism.