2020 Tapestries: Saint Francis University's literary and visual arts magazine

I Just Need to Write for Myself Again by Elizabeth Catalano Excerpts from 31 days of creative Instagram captions, a modern exploration of personal writing on social media. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Today was the day I woke up and realized that my cilantro was suffocating the tomatoes, so something had to be done. It turned into a full-on pruning, featuring my overenthusiastic use of kitchen scissors, and now my countertop is covered in herbs.

However, what I was thinking about today was not my clear lack of gardening prowess but rather the qualities of the things I am growing. I dare not show the wide world the cilantro plant in question because there is not a doubt in my mind it is a weed that would stop at nothing to achieve total world domination. And yet I have allowed this weed, this force of nature, into the most sacred part of my backyard (alongside another power player, spearmint, if you can believe it).

After hacking through the undergrowth, I meandered over to the edge of our property, where the trim lawn is sharply transformed into a few cubic meters of wild. And I was looking at these plants and weeds and nothing made sense anymore. There were weeds that looked like flowers and flowers that looked like weeds. It was order and chaos happening at the same time and I started to sneeze.

This is the story of how I slowly lost a habit. I’m not proud of this story, but I would rather be honest than enviable.

For many moons, I woke myself up at 5:30 in the AM and did great things like yoga and meditation and reading and waking up to my alarm like a responsible adult. It was both terrific and annoying, and I realize both only in hindsight. Terrific because I genuinely love early mornings and would have no problem becoming a hermit with strange and mysterious habits. Annoying because I missed out on fun nighttime things and I never sleep enough. ⠀⠀ As I have taken on more jobs and pushed myself to keep everything turning, however, my prized 5 AM habit has taken the back seat. If you ever look at what time I post these caption essays, it is usually close to midnight or one o’clock. For most people that isn’t a big deal, but it is for me.

I know why I’m doing what I’m doing, and staying up late is something I’ll have to do a lot of in the coming months. It’s okay. I’m learning to make it okay, to not beat myself up over it. I want to see the things that I used to sleep through. I want to explore what I’m 46