I went on a walk and I wrote in a cookbook

*these are my direct words from the cookbook I graffitied my musings into.

This is my first note in this reclamation of a journal. I didn’t have a notebook in my car, but I had this and a pen and plenty of thoughts.

Do you ever go on a walk or hike just to smell the woods? To move your body among the planted ones who’ve been there for years longer than you?

I was thinking about how I walk across and up over fallen leaves who’ve been tread upon and mushed into something teeming with birth and decay. Petrichor’s not quite the right word.

I didn’t have a journal on hand, but this vintage cookbook came in handy. I’m learning, or unlearning I should say, perfectionism. My first instinct when I decided to go on a journal hike was that I needed to go buy a journal for my adventure. But I don’t need everything I do to be perfect.

This cookbook is full of gross looking recipes (from the 70s, an era truly remarkable it’s for unhinged meal ideas), so I figured no one would care if I used it for a new purpose. And yet again, here I am asking no one and nothing in particular for permission to take up space.

I’m writing this with free promo pen I got from work and in a cookbook on a page for a pâté recipe. Perhaps it’s poetic to some degree, but it feels more like unlearning the weight perfectionism has caused me.

I can finally breathe out here.