Seeing Slices Everywhere

Writing for thirty-one consecutive days (and reading, commenting, and responding to other writers) is both wonderful and daunting. The Slice of Life writing community is incredible, and I really feel like I know my fellow slicers from both my cohort and afar so much better after these days together. 

This practice of daily writing undeniably opens up my creativity as well as my eyes to the details, connections, and small moments (aka, the Slices of Life) that are all around me, making up my days and my world. 

As our month draws closer to its end, choosing what to write (or “Slice”) about for these last few days feels important to me. Obviously, no one says I have to stop writing (although, I cannot keep up this daily pace forever), but the end signals the finish of this particular creative gauntlet. I can tell my creative muscles have been honed, and my story-noticing brain has been primed. Somewhere over this past month, I’ve shifted from “what could I possibly write about?” to “there’s too much from today to write about!”.

Today alone, I saw slices everywhere I looked. 

I wanted to write about the joy of seeing a ton of neighborhood kids playing outside together in our yard with my boys, and how this is the kind of childhood I dreamed of giving my sons. 

I wanted to write about the uplifting feeling of being in the car with my family on a sunny spring day. I even wrote the beginning lines to a potential poem: “Open road, clear blue skies/Love-of-my-life, at my side/My dreams come true behind me sit/Real happiness, this is it”.

I wanted to write about just how much fun it was to watch my sons and nephew racing around the yard on an Easter egg hunt. We are in such a sweet place in their growing up in which these activities light them up with pure excitement and joy. 

I wanted to write about the childhood writing assignment my father-in-law found in the attic, with the note from his teacher that came true: she wrote about what potential he had, what a bright future he had ahead of him, and how she couldn’t wait to see the good he would do. 

I wanted to write about how lucky I am to have my friends show up in my life in so many ways, from one of my dearest friends who lives in my neighborhood and I having a spontaneous driveway conversation, to messaging another dear friend about her birthday weekend celebrations, to exchanging video messaging with the friends closest to my heart that live the furthest away, to my work friends who texted to check in, to my sister-in-law who has become a true sister and friend to me that I saw today, and my other sister-in-law turned true sister and friend that I’ll see tomorrow. 

I’ve long had the privilege of looking at life through the eyes of a musician, and then as a mother, and now, too, as a writer. My artist’s eye has loved this lesson on looking at life slice by slice, and my life is richer for it.

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This piece is part of the #SOL24 March Slice of Life Story Challenge hosted by the Two Writing Teachers.