Almost another year has passed since writing, and I just ordered Journal of a Solitude ... how interesting, inevitable, and agonizing to reread from a year ago and see that my questions and struggles are pretty much as I left them.

What is shifting - by forceful intention - is my attitude toward my instinct for solitude and meaning-making. It isn't a weakness or flaw or source of self-consciousness unless I do that to myself.  It is what grounds me and gives me a voice.

"Brain Pickings" has become an antidote to despair, or a vital inspiration to reshape despair into drive.