Sunday Coffee Share
A Cup of Coffee and a Conversation
If we were having coffee I would tell you…Welcome to February! For some reason this year as the calendar turned from January to February I thought about changing over my classroom decorations in my public teaching life. I would also decorate my office when I was a coach. I used to have bins and bins of decorations and themed books for each month labeled carefully and stacked in order in my cabinets. Now I notice the library changing their displays and the aisles of Valentine decorations in the few stores I venture into. Do you decorate for the month or the holidays?
If we were having coffee, I would tell you… breakfast day was today and I was glad to be back to our routine. The restaurant was more crowded today. The morning is gray and there are tiny wintry mix snowflakes that greeted us on the drive home.
It’s Soup Sunday! The soup du jour is chicken rice and Chris is making Sheep Hearder’s bread to go with it! He is doing backwards bread math because he wants it to come out of the oven right at dinner time!
If we were having coffee, I would tell you… one of the first things I did when I was home for a full day after my writing retreat adventure was to visit the library. I always have holds at the library but luckily did not miss any books while I was traveling. Here are the books I picked up on Wednesday:
What was in your library haul?
If we were having coffee I would tell you…here are pictures from this past week!
Yes, that is a gecko (Gertrude) and a scorpion (Stanley) that both visited my room when I was in Tulum! Charlie the giant house spider stayed with me all week to protect me.
If we were having coffee I would recommend:
This post: Heidi’s substack is new to me but I LOVE IT! Check out her Feb Fragments post here. She does a great job of referencing her own posts and you can go down a rabbit hole of fun reading just by clicking the links. This is a new must read for me.
I adore the with Ease substack - the prompts she provides are amazing.
BOOK: Stand In My Window
If we were having coffee, I would ask you… Do you keep a process journal?
The idea of process journals came onto my radar years ago. I have read numerous explanations and techniques about them but have yet to have a structure stick.
The other day in my reading I came across 3 questions to simplify the process and I am experimenting with them. You might want to experiment with them too so I am sharing them here.
I love Emily’s Substack. The questions came from this brilliant post!
At the beginning of your writing session freewrite into the question:
What am I working on today?
At the end of the session answer these two questions:
What did I learn from today?
Where am I going tomorrow?
I will keep you posted on how this is working for me. Do you have a process for your reflection? I would love to hear about it.
If we were having coffee I am excited to tell you… a new round of the Bradbury Trio Course will begin February 16, 2025. (SOON!) There are still a few spots left and we begin in a few weeks! I am super excited for this group to gather.
The course will run 4 weeks on the platform WetInk. There will be two themed reading weeks and two writing weeks. Participants will write and share two pieces and give feedback to two other writers.
You are welcome to write whatever form and genre speak to you! The prompts are open enough to accommodate everyone.
I invite you to read more about it here:
You're Invited to a Gathering at the Table
The Bradbury Trio Course begins February 16th, 2025 and I would love for you to join us!
I wish you a Happy Sunday full of delights!
A little more about me: Tammy L. Evans is a writer, teacher, runner, and coach living in a tiny house on a peninsula with her husband and adventure cat. Her location device is her loud laugh. She is a reader for Reckon Review. She is the creator and host of the THE BRADBURY TRIO COURSE. Her poetry has been published in The Storyteller, FoxGlove Journal, Story Hall, Blue Insights, The Partnered Pen, and others. Her fiction has been published in Gone Lawn, South Florida Poetry Journal, Cabinets of Heed, Spelk, Five on the Fifth, Clover and White, Fiction Berlin Kitchen, and others.
Welcome home, Tammy. I'm crawling through the week, just trying not to sink into a river of despair, but books are my constant companions and I can't wait to crawl into bed each night with pages that turn. Last night, I made homemade chicken stock and I can still smell the aroma wafting through the house. I think I need your white chicken chili soup recipe (and soon!)
I used to have my students keep a process journal around their writing, some found it tedious and others extremely helpful. Currently I'm just jotting down mini reflections, 2-3 sentences, in my bullet journal, and it's a nice ritual, but your 3 questions are broad enough to work in a variety of contexts. And like Sue Ann, I'm doing a lot of metaphorical crawling, the air feels heavy and makes me sluggish. Still getting a lot of mileage from Oliver Burkeman's Meditations for Mortals. Reframing is the concept that most vividly jumps out at me from what I'm reading.