I love being a memoir writer. Telling meaningful true stories about the past can often provide clues and trends about life in the future.

But there’s a mental trap in all of it. As I hone my craft, I can get lost in a time warp. If I’m not careful, I miss what’s happening around me today. I need to be better at noticing the people, the moments, the images, and the sounds of life in the present. What it feels like to live life in March 2019 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Maybe you’re like me. In a given twenty-four-hour period, my emotions can move from frightful to beautiful and back again, depending on the news cycle. And, though I am a critical thinker and active member of American society, I often resolve that I can make the greatest difference by focusing on the small things I can do to help my family, my friends, my neighbors, my community.

For instance, encouraging my husband to tell his story and find his niche in the Phoenix film community … serving as a sounding board and coach for my sons as they pursue their careers … cheering on a friend from afar as she begins a new life in a warmer place … picking up an elderly neighbor who’s fallen and needs help hanging his hummingbird feeder … and singing on stage with sixty other gay men to remind the world that love is love and we are one.

Today–on March 18, 2019–I decided to turn off the news for a while and turn up the volume on the real life around me. I took a long walk and worked out at the gym to keep my heart strong. I enjoyed lunch with my husband at home. I dusted off my digital camera and snapped a few photos of the cacti and pink blooms of the ice plant on our patio. And, as I write this sentence, a desert wren is chirping its heart out at the top of a palm tree on a breezy-eighty-two-degree-blue-sky day in the Valley of the Sun.

Perhaps the bird is sending me a message. That life is short. That I’d better embrace now. That beauty is right outside my backdoor.