First, you must realize you’re homesick for all the lives you’re not living. Then, you must commit to the road and the rising loneliness. To the sincere thrill of coming apart. Divorce yourself from routine and control. Instead, find a desert and fall in. Take the trail that promises a view. Get lost. Break your toes. Bruise your knees. Keep going. Watch a purple meadow quiver. Get still. Pet trail dogs. Buy the hat. Run out of gas. Befriend strangers. Knight yourself every morning for your newborn courage. Give grief her own lullaby. Drink whiskey beside a hundred-year-old cactus. Honor everything. Pray to something unnameable. Fall for someone impractical. Reacquaint yourself with desire and all her slender hands. Bear beauty for as long as you are able, and if you spot a sunning warbler glowing like a prism, remind yourself – joy is not a trick.

- J. Sullivan 

I didn’t write for nearly 8 years. Well, to be fair, I did write email campaigns and landing pages and flashy paragraphs called brand narratives which read like bad poems but occasionally still made my clients cry. I worked hard and got promotions and always felt a little impressive when I ordered Manhattans on the company card.  

But the truth is I began to develop chronic pain in my hands from 60+ hour work weeks. I got so accustomed to stress that I couldn’t turn off the hum of  it— even in sleep. I wrote so much for other people, I forgot my own language. My soft edges began to curl in like conch shells, even though I hadn’t seen the ocean in years. 

Somewhere in the middle of the pandemic, I started driving west. The instinct was as startling as it was insatiable. I lapped up skylines like honey after famine. Then came six weeks of climbing mountains, avoiding clients and swallowing as much sunshine as I could.

One morning in the middle of Arizona, I sat down with my laptop. A desert hummingbird—its whole body, the shape of a shining comma, hovered out the kitchen window. I told myself to write, really write —for myself. No clients. No strategic messaging. No keywords or SEO.

Just the truth of my life trembling on the page. 

That morning, I wrote myself a poem called Instructions for Traveling West. I wrote it as imperative, as incantation. 

I wrote my life so I could find the courage to live it. [...]

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You can read the full back story of this poem in Joy Sullivan's post here.