Wednesday reset

…and whimsy

(Spoons of all sizes…a metaphor for my energies in this moment. Look how cute the tiny spoons are.)

The Whimsical Wednesday prompts

🐌🍵🐢

Week 31

213. Sandwich Abyss

214. Succotash Wish

215. The Butter Bean Contrarian

216. Strawberry Cloud Cake

217. The Ostrich and the Orange

218. Canadian Lemonade

219. How to Make Bannock

If you want to read about the absolutely whimsical day I had yesterday and skip the sorting head down to the 🐌🍋🐢…under the sparkle hearts is me processing, and I’m not sure it’ll make sense to anyone but me.

💖💖💖

Since the beginning of this newsletter…Wednesdays have been a day for sharing the new prompts. I’ve been writing prompts weekly since Wednesday, January 3rd, 2024.

I’ve been doing my daily writing upon those prompts, and a process I call sorting since then.

There are some days where my daily writing is the tether I need to keep grounded.

In the beginning I used to say…oh…let me go back to one of those early Wednesdays and copy the preface to my newsletter.

This intro is from Wednesday, January 1st, 2025.

The daily sorting is after the 💖💖💖 and the prompts for the week…after the 🗓️🗓️🗓️

(Oh my goodness. As I was going back through the hundreds of posts…I found the very first entry for All The Happy Endings…the novelette I wrote, and podcasted, here. I began recording it aurally on January 16th, 2024! I finished writing it on August 25th, 2024. )

I promised myself I would publish it someday. Right now it is a podcast. A manuscript. And a doodle edit. A television script in the making. But I want it to be a physical thing that live in your purse, on your shelves, in your drawer, or tucked into a secret spot you put the books that make you feel loved. I want to move this up my list of things.

Ah yes…I’m still searching for an example of those early writings at the top of my newsletter.

This is from Wednesday, February 21st, 2024

This week’s set of prompts is all about the different ways we remember things. We don’t all have access to the same set of senses, or ways our brain work. Human kind is vast and diverse and memory is such a weird thing. I’d love to find out the ways in which you remember or don’t remember.

These prompts are gentle asks, and if you have better ways of phrasing or different things you’d like to explore, please feel free to suggest prompts or to re-imagine the prompts so that they make sense for your brain. I appreciate you. Nothing here is fixed or a “have-to”. Sometimes I even change the prompts because past me couldn’t imagine what future me might need to write on.

Oh past me. I love you. Thank you for this reminder. This newsletter. This journal. It is a way I keep my memories safe. A way to track the magical things that have happened.

Now I want to see how this all started.

Ah. It began with week 1’s prompts. Wow. How many weeks of prompts have I written? There have been 134 Wednesdays. Including today.

That’s 134 x 7 prompts. 938 prompts (I think I’ll put the prompts at the top of this for easy access)

I have been writing here, almost every day for 931 days.

That’s a lot of days.

Some folks have been with me…since the beginning. I started this newsletter to stay in touch. Primarily with my friend Abiagenesis Brown. I had been writing daily on Facebook since 2007. Before that I wrote daily on Livejournal (from 2001-2007)…and before that…daily in an analog journal since I was 6 years old.

That’s 40 years of daily writing.

My name is Wake Lloire, and I am a graphomaniac. I have a need for documentation. Writing is the way I bring myself into being every day.

Some people find it hard to know where to start writing. I find it hard to stop.

So I have carved out tiny places to write. Where there is never any requirement to read me. No demands. Only an offering. My body is a vessel, and I sometimes imagine that if I did not have a body…I would just be a tornado of words.

I did not start this newsletter to gather a following. Or to be known by many. I actually don’t love being perceived by people who might misunderstand me.

…but if you’re here, and you’ve stayed, or popped in to visit occasionally and have found the things I write…meaningful? Soothing? Something else entirely…I am grateful for your presence.

Mostly I imagine people going into their inbox and deleting this newsletter (if they haven’t unsubscribed) as a daily ritual. Swiping the whimsy to the left or the right depending on their email program. And that is also a valid choice.

If you’re new here. I welcome you. My friend, Renee, calls the spaces I build online…treehouses.

This is one of my treehouses. And you are always welcome to play with the prompts. Or respond to my writings. Via email. Or the comment section.

I can tell that I’m writing my anxiety away. But I’m writing around it. So perhaps I should address it head on, and then write about the utterly whimsical day I had yesterday.

Yes. That sounds helpful.

Yesterday I received a text. It said.

Hi Wake, when you are not busy, can we talk?

I got this text after the big beautiful unexpected day I had yesterday.

I should have just gone and talked with the person then.

There is very little scarier to my brain than the sentence can we talk. It is too open ended. My brain starts imagining every possibility. And of course goes immediately to what have I done wrong

But I am no longer a child and as the sticker on my car door, that my friend Audra Williams, graciously gave me says:

(I don’t know this to be actually true. But it is a soothing statement.)

I am a very social person. I love people. But I am also autistic. So social interaction can be a veritable minefield. I am grateful for all the friends I have who employ clarity with me. Who are happy to communicate their feelings; so I’m not left guessing.

So tomorrow (or rather today) I will be going in person to have that talk. Even though Wednesdays are the day I reserve for play, rest, and whimsy. They are my recharge day.

Tomorrow I will go for this “talk”, then I have plans to meet with some of the Jabberwockees (the local writing group I’m a part of) at 10am…and then I’ll play cribbage at 1pm.

…and at 5pm I have a virtual chat planned with my friend, Aisha, whom I adore, and who is one of the first friends I made during my stand up comedy era. She was instrumental in helping me build the Comedy Womb (now the SeattleComedyNest)…and we ran Odd Babes together which was one of my favourite comedy shows to run. Some friendships are the forever kind. And Aisha and I have been friends since 2012. Through some of the most heart wrenching ad difficult times in my life. She has seen me at my rock-bottom and at my most competent (often in the same day) and she still loves me. And I love her. Oof. I needed to be reminded of that.

So my Wednesday starts with an anxiety causing beginning, but I have written friendship and reassuring moments into the rest of the day.

Because everything is temporary. And it is possible that tomorrow’s first conversation will be wonderful. (But my OCD wants me to not say that…because it believes if I believe the best, that the worst will happen. I like to remind my OCD that we have no real power over anything but how we manage what actually happens)

If you’re still here…Can I tell you about my amazing whimsical and magical day that I accidentally had yesterday?

I’ll put it after the 🐌🍋🐢

🐌🍋🐢

Tuesdays are my gallery day. I look forward to them.

But yesterday I opened the door and went to say good morning to the gallery as I normally do. (I like to greet a space with enthusiasm, like a friend) and found a surprising sight.

A flooded floor. A tile fallen.

…and oddly, miraculously, not a single piece of art harmed.

I moved my robot vacuum friend, and hope he’ll survive this. Then I texted the one paid person at the gallery.

Another version of me would have stayed to monitor the clean up, to help.

But I have given the gallery so much, and sometimes…I have felt unappreciated. I’ve been trying to fix that…by focusing on the joyful parts of my time at the gallery. The painting things for the shows. The going on Tuesdays to help visitors understand the magic of the gallery. The meeting other artists. The training of joyful volunteers. The curating a small shelf of 3-D art. All these things bring me joy (and help fill the void that Curious & Kind bring over has left).

Focusing on the joyful parts and minimizing the stress was one of the tasks my neurologist set for me in our final meeting in my stroke after-care five years ago.

I take a baby aspirin, a statin and a 20 minute walk every day…and I try to keep my stress low, and my joy manageable.

So after I reported the fallen tile, and flood to the gallery manager…and moved Robbie (the robo-vacuum)…I closed up the gallery, and I texted my friend Beth.

…and Beth just happened to be up for a visit.

…and then the hours after would have spent at the gallery were filled with absolute magic. From 11:30am until nearly 4pm we talked, walked and…let the day play out instead of forcing it. We have vague plans to go get art supplies and visit the town next door and eat.

We never made it out of Lunenburg. The magical adventures we had within four blocks would seem impossible…except that I know this town…and it is never not magical.

(Sometimes I can’t go outside because of it)

Ostensibly we just went to a cafe, the post office, the bank, a couple shops and a restaurant for lunch.

But wandering with Beth? It’s like playing a beautiful game of improv with the universe. We said yes and at every turn and were rewarded with wondrous conversations, getting to support local artisans and businesses, finding clarity in something that had been weighing on me for months…and we found a tarot deck that suited the both of us. The Alice Tarot Deck. And as we ate we explored it. I read The Sun. The World, and The Star.

…and because I know Alice in Wonderland and o the Looking Glass so well…the tarot part finally resonated with me. (I’m usually an oracle only kind of person)

I love that my friendship with Beth is bringing new magic to my life. Our dreams/plans are gently developing and I am so excited about sharing them once they are coalesced and ready for sharing.

I have such an absurd amount of gratitude for the friends I have. For the people who somehow see me. Who love me the way I am. And who let me love them the way they are.

After the day of accidental magic…I went home to sit outside with my pup and contemplate what the person who wants to talk wants to talk. I worked on my tardigrade for next month’s gallery show. I ate a pound of carrots.

I calmed my operating system.

Because I had more plans to go to a craft night with my wondrous spouse. To build a lighthouse from tiny paper parts.

We arrived 6 minutes late (my partner doesn’t get finished work until 6:30pm, and they were still a bit stressed after their home office was invaded by a very ornery hornet) and we’d missed the initial steps. Thankfully the person running the workshop (my future co-worker and darling human) was happy to catch us up. The vibe was lovely. The cookie I bought…so delicious.

But as I was trying to follow the instructions and glue the tiny paper parts together…the anxiety of the can we talk message caught up to me, and something in the space was causing an allergic reaction. My tongue started swelling and burning, and it was getting harder not to cry…and I explained what I could to my partner, and they were happy to leave…I just told the facilitator that a migraine was coming on (trying to explain an impeding autistic meltdown and allergic reaction seemed like too much in the moment)…I said goodbye to my future boss, and once we were out of the space…my nervous system calmed.

There was a mom and her two sons sitting on a step near my car, and it seemed possible that they were also experiencing overwhelms she was suggesting to the two boys, in French, that they might want to sit in the car and listen to music.

I gently inserted myself into the conversation…asking in French what their favourite music was.

Bad Bunny, they said, a little surprised that I was speaking French to them…and whatever meltdown was about to happen…dissipated. Both mine, and theirs.

The mom looked at me with a gratitude I know well. Deescalation is one of the trainings I’m most grateful for. I wish it was taught it to everyone. But until that day, I’m so thankful I have that skill set.

Then my partner and I went home and we watched a strange television show….and I played a little Spiritfarer (my favourite video game of all time, I think) and then we went to bed, watched Scrubs (a comfort rewatch) played our night Word Blitz (we’ve been playing nightly since 2018)…and then they rubbed my back until I fell asleep.

At 2am I woke up. The anxiety was back.

I have now been writing for 2 hours and 47 minutes.

I think it’s time to go back to bed. A storm just started up outside. And I can hear the wind and the rain in the leaves. And I hope this downpour calms some of the ongoing fires in our province and brings relief to the communities who need it.

Heart,

Wake