Today is cold and snow spirals from the colorless sky. The boys are rowdy outside with their politically incorrect toy guns. Boots appears to be annoyed with the boys’ loud play. She’s been watching the bird feeder all afternoon, hiding in the neighbor’s tall ornamental grass. The birds are gone and so she gives chase to a leaf wind blown across the yard.

My boys, Boots and the birds have all moved beyond the scope of my window now. I feel privileged to have observed that moment of wild play and kitty consternation (a little anthropomorphizing on behalf of Boots). I feel like a witness to a story in those little moments of ordinary magnitude.

Recently, I stumbled my way across the internet and found a series of fifty-two journaling questions. I forgot to bookmark the site but I had decided to put my own spin on the idea. My friend Camie also read the same post and she wrote about it on her blog. I plan to journal through some of the questions and other writing prompts that I have collected. Some of my other projects for this year are to write a poem every week, knit a temperature blanket, and participate in a thematic photo challenge.

My main goal is to capture at least fifty-two moments of ordinary magnitude. Moments like the first two paragraphs of this post. I hope the cell photography and poems will be woven into the collecting of these moments but that is future’s knowledge. I want to move from the weekly diary style freewrites (those will still continue) to more purposeful writing. I opted to forego a word of the year for twenty and seventeen. Choosing instead to pursue, witness, and capture those little moments in life as my theme.

Below is my first poem of the year. I wrote it in my bujo earlier this week with a high fever.

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