Seven Degrees Left of Center

Where was I...

I wake up most mornings and have to reconstruct yesterday. Not in a poetic way. I mean literally piece together what I was working on, where I left off, what I was thinking when I stopped writing.

My desk is covered in yellow sticky notes. Little breadcrumbs I leave for myself. "Chapter 7, she realizes the truth" or "Fix the timeline in Part 2" or sometimes just "THIS MATTERS" with an arrow pointing to a paragraph I've underlined three times. I find notes in my own handwriting that I don't remember writing. They're instructions from a previous version of me to whoever I am today.

It's frustrating. I'll sit down to write and spend the first hour just trying to remember what the story was supposed to be about. Reading my own notes like they're someone else's manuscript, trying to find my way back into the thing I was so certain about yesterday.

But here's what I've learned: you can still write this way. You just have to be kinder to yourself. Leave better notes. Trust that yesterday-you knew what they were doing, even if today-you can't quite remember why.

The story is still there. I just have to keep finding my way back to it.