Some mornings arrive soft and unhurried, like they know you’ve earned a little breathing room. Today is one of those mornings. I’ve got a small window before my wife and I head downtown—our ritual escape from the grind, those rare days off where we get to walk slow, talk long, and remember we’re human beings before we’re employees. Those hours with her mean everything. They’re the anchor in the churn, the quiet proof that life is bigger than deadlines, drafts, and the endless “shoulds” that trail behind ambition.
But before we step out into the city, I’m here at my desk doing the kind of work no one ever glamorizes—the sorting, the stacking, the little audit of where the hell this book stands right now. Notes scattered like breadcrumbs across the week. Paragraphs half-finished. Ideas scribbled in the margins of receipts because inspiration never waits for proper stationery. It’s not glamorous, but it’s honest. This is the slow, behind-the-scenes muscle of Word Grit: checking my bearings, reminding myself what I’m building, and making sure the story in my head matches the one making its way onto the page.
It’s that small discipline that keeps the dream from drifting too far into the clouds. So I’m tightening the screws, brushing the dust off the sentences, and organizing the chaos just enough to feel like I’m steering the ship, not clinging to the mast. And once that’s done—I’m gone. Out the door with the woman I love, into a day that doesn’t ask for anything except our presence. The book will wait. The grind will wait. But the moments that matter? Those don’t wait for anyone.
