I’m not sure if I had an ideas day today or not. I think I was just thinking about the same old ideas that I have been thinking about for the past six months. It was like being in a whirlpool – I was going somewhere, but that somewhere was round and round and round. I then ended up back where I started.

I had not come up with any new ideas, nor had I advanced any of my previous ideas.

It was like lying in bed and running the same video, repeatedly, the one in which I am in a whirlpool, going somewhere and going nowhere. When this happens, I can’t do much besides wait until the tide changes and the water reverses direction. Then I can jump out and swim back to shore. I like being on shore because then my feet are firmly back on the ground.

Alys kayaking in SE Alaska

This sense of malaise could be because I am waiting, waiting, waiting, to hear about our nonprofit status. Every day now, Pete and I go drive down to the post office box, which is five miles distant from our place, and I get out of the truck, open our box with the key he keeps on his keychain, check for mail, get back in the truck and say, “no, not today.”

We are also waiting on hearing as to whether we’ll be able to put a shelter, built by local high schoolers, on Alaska Pacific University land. As with the mail, I check the phone for messages, then tell Pete when he asks, “no, no word today.”

Meanwhile, the books keep piling up. There are plenty in the Meeting House and in the U-Haul storage unit. I’m nervous about there being so many books in the Meeting House – it isn’t being used by the church goers right now because the local plumbers don’t see fixing the frozen pipes and boiler as a priority. There are in our area, many who are still contending with plumbing-related problems that are the result of the windstorm. And so, my footprint right now resembles that of Bigfoot.

Nan paid for a second month of U-Haul storage. I am almost at the point in where if I had to get the remaining books out of there, I could. Almost. I’ll get a better sense of this tomorrow when I resume sorting.

Today, Pete and I took his freshly painted bookcase and approximately eight boxes of books to Family Promise, a church based organization that houses and gives an assist to those who are homeless and/or destitute. We got a tour of their new facility – an old church that in terms of size (large) is much like Kids Kupboard. They have meeting rooms and family rooms and kitchen rooms and playrooms – a person could get lost walking around. It was very homey and warm inside.

Ginger Bear, who is the Executive Director, gave us this tour. And as she did so, my vision of what the Bright Lights Book Project might be, grew in size until it filled that space. Yes, we could hold classes and webinars, and host writing groups and readings. Yes, we could do this. We cannot do this if we simply have a shelter, one that we’d only use to distribute books.

So I now have to do some visualizing, making sure not to keep going around and around in the whirlpool. A tough call. But this is something that I must do.

Next: 29. 1/29/22: A Conversation with the Chickens