The Newest New Life Ever

It's the first day of the new month, so the day I start (as I always do on the first of every month) a WHOLE ENTIRE NEW LIFE. But this one feels like the newest new life EVER.

In March I fell in love - desperately, hopelessly, till-death-do-us-part in love. By May he and I were fathoms deep in this, going happily back and forth between my home in South Boulder and his gorgeous apartment on West Pearl Street in Boulder, nestled at the foot of the mountains but in easy walking distance from the coffee shops and bookstores of our famed car-free downtown shopping area. The drive from one to the other was a mere 12 minutes. It was all absolutely perfect for new love to take root and grow toward the sun.

But in May he found out his lease wasn't being renewed... and he had to move... and we had to throw ourselves into house-hunting in a tight and tense real estate market... and ponder what our future together would look like now. He made a list of what he was searching for in a rental and came up with these criteria: not more than 20 minutes away from Claudia's house, fenced yard for his beloved German shepherd, and no stairs as a wise choice for the two of us as we age. 

Instead we both fell in love with a place with NONE of these features: far enough away from my house that the drive back and forth would be much less convenient, no yard at all, and stairs, stairs, and STAIRS!

He moved in at the start of August to this house in the near mountains, and now I'm pretty much here all the time, because it is SOOOO beautiful! It is the perfect place to be in love! AND the perfect place to write! And just.... perfect. The owner even gave it the name of Rainbow's End. What could be more perfect that that?

So here I am, trying to figure out how to be BOTH a woman who loves this man AND a woman who loves to write. My old routines are no longer working, so I'm groping toward new ones.

Old routine for the last few years:

Wake up at 3:30 a.m., decide that getting up at that hour is much too ridiculous, so stay in bed till 3:45 (which after all is the same as quarter to 4, a perfectly respectable time to get up), write for a blissful hour, piddle on my phone with Wordle and Duolingo for a while, leave at 5:50 to meet a friend for a walk by the lake, home by 7:30, with so much already accomplished that I am downright giddy with smugness and pity for others' slothfulness. 

Recent routine as a new lovebird:

Wake up at 5:30, cuddle in bed with my beloved till 6:30 or 7, sharing and analyzing our dreams and marveling that we could love anybody as much as we love each other, then long walk on a deserted lane tucked into a Ponderosa pine forest with Gaia-the-dog, back home by 8 or so, sit for an hour on the deck with coffee for him and hot chocolate for me, then stretching for him while I dally on my phone with games and our oatmeal slowly cooks, eat the oatmeal in a long leisurely breakfast on the other deck that ends at 11:00 - and OMG, the whole morning is gone and I have accomplished nothing!!! Nothing at all!!!

New routine for the new life:

Same as the lovebird routine, BUT with a dedicated hour-a-day of writing (timed with my hourglass) during part of the coffee-on-the-deck time and all the rest of the pre-breakfast time, with no time-wasting indulgences on my phone until after this is done, and then sweet reunion over the now well-earned oatmeal. I started this new regimen three days ago, on this past Monday; it's Thursday now, and I can report that I'm so much happier (despite having been extravagantly happy before). I'm a quarter or third of the way into a new middle-grade novel in progress that I adore - more on this to come. I finally have the momentum that comes from faithful, sustained commitment to a project.

Can I have love AND writing, too? On this first day of my newest new life ever, my answer is ... I think so?