So far my trip has been AMAZING! (Note to self: All that anxiety was a waste of time.)

I did not find a hotel, at least not one with a reasonable price attached, so while in Boston I  stayed with the daughter of a good friend of mine–and felt as though I had met up with family. I spent Saturday walking all over Boston, both the Freedom Trail, and Harvard. On Sunday I took a commuter train to Salem so I could see Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace and The House of Seven Gables. (Little did I know I would be walking into Halloween Town.) I’ll tell you more when I finally reach the retreat center and get the pictures from my camera uploaded.

Thank you, thank you to all those people who told me, “Just go — it will be fine!”

I have been gifted this quarter with students who argue with me. Try writing every day, I suggest. “I can’t do that,” they say. Try using a little dialogue, let us hear this character’s voice, I suggest. “I never remember what people say.” I felt confused by this sentence, I tell them in workshop. “I meant for it to be confusing,” they patiently explain. I don’t think that’s a word, I point out. “It is now,” they say.

Rather than spending any additional energy today trying to get these students to let down their defenses, I wonder if maybe they’re here to remind me to let down my defenses? What am I resisting? What am I afraid to learn?

I want to remember today not merely to think outside the box, but to remember that there is no box.