The pattern I follow on my days off has varied little in the past seven years. It altered temporarily for a year and a half, when I was in a relationship, and then semi-permanently when I got Gilmore. But in between dog park visits or long walks in sunny outdoor shopping centers, I never stopped finding places to plop down for hours at a time to write.

My first consistent writing project was my book, Crashing, Burning, & Other Pursuits, which I have accepted will never see the light of day (it’s not a great book) but will always be a pure blast of warm nostalgia for me. After that, my writing took a handful of different spins. A bit of high fantasy, a bit of chic-litty contemporary, some inconsistent journaling. But while aimless it may have been, writing remained a ceaselessly satisfying way to spend any day that I had to myself.

January 2017 I was inspired for the first time since UEA to embark on a screenplay and that has been the driving-force creative project in my life ever since. I spent the greater part of 2017 pushing out about ninety pages, slow but steady, researching my way along with a large Moleskine notebook the well-worn index of the entire project. My life became very simple, and I always knew where three things were: my work keys, my phone, and that notebook.

Then I did a thing – last September I casually (not casually) decided it was time to move back to England for real. From that moment until almost this one right now, that took up all of my focus. It was good timing because I had hit a bit of a block with the screenplay’s plot, and its character development, and the project in general.

It wasn’t until around mid-February, having replaced my Peet’s writing sessions with Peet’s moving-job-hunting-expat-everything research sessions, that I suddenly realized I had not seen my precious Leyendecker notebook in an unknown amount of time. I didn’t panic for two reasons: one, I knew I wouldn’t be diving back in for a few more months, so there was no rush in finding it; and two, I was about to pack up everything I owned in order to move countries. It was going to have to turn up some time.

Spoiler: it never did. I never found that notebook, and all of the research within its pages (and several drivel-y bits of journal that will hopefully amuse whoever finds it) has been lost. And as a result, every attempt I’ve made at trying to work on that screenplay since I moved has felt fruitless, lacking the anchor that was having that notebook splayed open companionably next to me. Sure, all those notes had led me to a decidedly uncompanionable phase of writer’s block, but it had gotten me that far, at least, hadn’t it?

Turns out, losing that notebook was the best thing that could’ve happened to me. Only knee-deep in a new direction of research, I can’t even recall how it was I got to those dead ends six months ago. Imagining where hours more will take this project and these characters is so exciting, I don’t have the words. It doesn’t hurt that the venue for this epiphany is an amazing café in Soho, recommended by an excellent writing friend and adjacent to an independent theater.

(Hey, I’ve never said I wasn’t a cliché.)

So it’s here, writing on my day off for the thousandth time, feeling a new anchor developing neatly beside me somewhere between a slice of chocolate cake and a pot of tea, that I’ve truly begun to feel like I’m settling in.