So far today, I’ve talked with a lawyer whose opposing counsel thinks jurisdiction doesn’t matter (spoiler: it does) and learned that I might need to quarantine after the friend with whom I had dinner last night tested positive on her home test for covid this morning. On the upside, she tested negative on the rapid test at the walk-in. Since she had a false positive a few weeks ago, and false positives are extremely rare, it’s been suggested that she might have gotten a corrupted batch of tests. So she got a PCR test as a tie-breaker. We’re awaiting the results with crossed fingers.

Not that I would object to a few days of quarantine. It would mean that for at least five days, I’d have to stay home. Since I have work to do, a writing challenge to finish, and a new batch of library books, this sounds fine to me. Better than fine: superb. Obviously, I don’t want my friend to be sick, but I’d love a foolproof excuse for staying home, relaxing on the porch and pulling weeds on what promises to be a glorious weekend.

Alas, life makes demands. There’s going-out to be done: taking dinner to Mom, cleaning out some of Dad’s clothes, running errands, going to church. I see posts all over social media about people who went to the beach for the weekend or to Ireland on vacation or Hawai’i for a conference, and my mind echoes the words of Abigail Adams in the musical 1776. When her husband John tells her that he arranged for Thomas Jefferson’s wife to travel to Philadelphia to be with her husband, Abigail says, “As long as you were sending for wives, why didn’t you send for your own?” John responds by inviting her to come to Philadelphia, but she declines, citing a list of the reasons she can’t and ending with a wistful, “How do you suppose she did it?” In the same way, I look at the photos of sandy beaches and happy smiles, and I think, “How did you do it?”

Mind you, I expect some of them might think the same about writing a book. It’s no short task, nor is an easy one. I imagine the answer lies somewhere past “this is my dream,” farther down the road to “I want this enough to rearrange my life for it.” This is why challenges like #1000wordsofsummer are so important for me: it spurs me on to achieve the major goal of writing this book by breaking the task into bite-sized pieces. I may not be able to rearrange my life right now for some of my other dreams, like traveling to Iceland or Austria, which will require larger blocks of time and substantial funds, but I can arrange the time needed to write 1,000 words in a day.

Regardless of the dream, if it’s something we truly want, we can’t risk waiting until “someday” is in the rearview mirror. Life can change in an instant, and sometimes that means it’s too late. Nobody’s been promised tomorrow. If we want to do whatever—write, travel, you name it—steps need to be taken.