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February 2, 2026

Day 10: Gifts Along the Road

March 13

“With no companion, I walk this road — the wind is my friend.” —Matsuo Bashō

Today, the path hugged the coast, curling gently through sleepy villages that seemed folded into the rhythm of the sea. The pace of life slowed to match the tide, boats bobbing in quiet harbors, laundry flapping lazily on lines, a dog barking from behind a garden wall, then falling silent again. There was no rush here. Even the crows seemed unhurried, their calls softer than I remembered from the cities.

I set out walking along the coast as the sun began to rise. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the air warmed with a hint of salt. By midmorning, I ducked into the shade of a shuttered shop, where another vending machine offered cold green tea. The aluminum can was chilled against my palm. As I stood sipping, a fellow henro approached from the opposite direction. His face was lined, his eyes kind. We bowed in greeting, each of us carrying the wear and wisdom of miles. No words were exchanged, none needed. That silent bow, shared under the quiet shelter of an overhang, held everything: respect, solidarity, understanding.

Around noon, I came upon a small, unnamed shrine nestled beneath an ancient camphor tree. It wasn’t listed in my guidebook. There was no plaque, no pilgrims gathered, no monk to greet me. Just a weathered offertory box, a tarnished bell, and a stone lantern tilting slightly beneath a shawl of moss. It felt like a secret place the world had left untouched. I lingered longer than I’d expected, letting the hush settle around me. I rang the bell softly and stood in silence, breathing in the scent of old incense and damp earth.

Midafternoon, I passed a fisherman seated cross-legged by the roadside, repairing his nets with movements so fluid they seemed choreographed. His fingers worked with a grace born of repetition, patience, and necessity, looping, tying, pulling. I stopped a respectful distance away and watched, unnoticed or at least unacknowledged, allowing the rhythm of his work to steady my own breath. It felt almost sacred, as if each knot was an offering to the sea.

My legs felt strong again today. Maybe it was the rest at the beach, or the salt air loosening the tightness in my calves. Maybe it was just the mental shift, knowing I didn’t have to climb a mountain or tick off a temple. I wasn’t chasing anything. Just moving forward. There’s a strange kind of freedom in that: to walk not toward, but simply with, the day.

Not long after, I came upon the Kabuka Meoto Iwa, two towering rocks rising from the sea, bound by a thick shimenawa (sacred Shinto rope). These “husband and wife rocks” were among the largest of their kind in Japan, and striking in their presence. According to local legend, if you pray to the rising sun as it passes between them, sometime between the autumn and spring equinox, you may be blessed with the meeting of your soulmate. The scene was deeply still, the surf brushing the shore in slow, steady breaths. The rocks stood as symbols of union, devotion, and something timeless. Even without the legend, their quiet majesty carried a blessing all its own.

My meal that evening was modest: sashimi, fresh and delicate, served without flourish. I ate slowly, gratefully. The road always seemed to provide just what was needed.

January 28, 2026

The recent death of a childhood friend has brought impermanence close again—not as an idea, but as something felt.

I had not seen Mark since high school. And then, years later, there he was at the retirement party of another friend from those childhood years, Al—someone else I had long since lost touch with. In my mind, we were still the same reckless teenagers: roaming the neighborhood, riding the bus downtown on Saturdays to the Y, where our minibike club—the Y-Riders—met, and getting into whatever mischief the day offered. Time, it seemed, had preserved us there.

When I entered high school, I chose a different school than the rest of the group. Gradually, those friendships thinned and then faded. By graduation, they had slipped quietly into memory—not with conflict, but with the soft inevitability of lives moving on.

Years later, one thin thread reappeared. I reconnected with Jaci, one of the girls from our circle, when we found ourselves working at the same high school. Through her, I learned what had become of the others—the marriages, moves, losses, and small triumphs that accumulate while time does what it always does.

At Al’s retirement party, I was reacquainted with Mark and Ray, another Y-Rider. We laughed about those early days on minibikes and traded brief summaries of the paths our lives had taken. It felt complete in the way brief encounters sometimes do—nothing unresolved, nothing assumed to be final. I didn’t know then it would be the last time I saw Mark.

When I saw his obituary in the newspaper this week, the shock came not only from grief, but from recognition. It carried me back to a morning on my Shikoku pilgrimage years earlier, waking before dawn in a small tent, the world held in fog. The air was cold and damp. Nothing moved. Time itself seemed to hesitate. I remember sitting against a cement wall, twisting open a bottle of cold coffee, the soft pop of the seal breaking the silence like a bell. In that moment, everything I was carrying—joy and sorrow, hope and loss—fit inside a single breath.

That morning taught me something I didn’t yet have words for: beginnings and endings do not arrive separately. They share the same hour, the same stillness. Mark’s death feels like that now. Our last meeting—so casual, so ordinary—was already complete, though I couldn’t see it at the time.

Impermanence rarely announces itself. It moves quietly through our lives, disguised as routine: a conversation at a party, a shared laugh, a goodbye we don’t recognize as final. We assume continuity. We assume there will be time to return. Only later do we realize we have already crossed a threshold.

The pilgrimage gave me not an answer, but a way of seeing. It taught me to notice the moment as it is, not as I wish it to be held. Mark is gone. The past is not intact. And still, the memory of that morning—fog, silence, a simple cup of coffee—reminds me that even loss can be held gently, if only for a breath.

January 27, 2026

Day 9: Songs for the Wind and the Waves

March 12

“Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.” —Kahlil Gibran

There would be no temples today.

After eight days of chanting sutras, ringing temple bells, and climbing stone steps slick with moss and memory, I had entered a stretch of the pilgrimage with no sacred buildings, no incense-scented courtyards. But the absence of temples didn’t feel like a gap, it felt like a shift. A new tempo. A quiet breath. Today, I was crossing from the Stage of Awakening into the second of the four pilgrimage stages: Austerity and Discipline. The timing felt apt. I had left behind the hilly forests of Tokushima and crossed into Kōchi Prefecture, where the island tilts south and the landscape grows rugged. The physical path lengthened here, the distances between temples stretched. And the inner path? That, too, was expanding.

The day dawned cool and clear. The air smelled of salt and spaciousness.

Route 55, my sometime companion, still followed the coast, but it had softened. The trucks still came, but in waves, and always with room to breathe between them. The roar of engines was no longer an assault but an occasional punctuation, like a distant drumbeat, reminding me I hadn’t entirely left the world behind. I moved south along the Pacific, my pace steady and unhurried. The cedars had thinned. The air felt looser now, less perfumed, wilder. Salt and sun mingled with the faintest trace of pine and seaweed. The road rolled forward, unspooling beside the sea like a melody written just for my feet. And like music, the rhythm of walking soon invited harmony.

As I walked on, I closed my eyes for a few steps, letting the rhythm carry me. The sun was high now, warm against my back. To my left, the sea whispered its endless syllables. Overhead, the trees rustled gently in the breeze. And within me, a quiet harmony. Melody, memory, movement, braided together like prayer beads in motion.

This, too, was pilgrimage. Not just temples and maps and aching feet, but the long thread of remembrance unspooling as I moved forward. A journey not only across a landscape, but deeper into myself.

At midday I paused at a roadside overlook. Below me, the ocean stretched out in infinite blues, the surf curling again and again toward the rocky shore like breath. A single fishing boat bobbed in the distance. The clouds were high and slow-moving, offering just enough shade. I ate an onigiri and drank cool water. No temple stamp today, but still, a kind of offering. A quiet ritual.

The road bent, rose, fell. Traffic thinned. I fell into silence again. Thoughts drifted like sea foam, light, fleeting, oddly ungraspable. By late afternoon, I arrived at Shirahama Beach.

The sand was pale and fine beneath my shoes, and the surf met the shore in rhythmic applause. A soft wind tugged at the corners of my clothing as I stepped off the road and made my way toward the beach. I found a spot near the water far enough from the road that the only sounds were wind and waves. It felt secluded, but not lonely. Sacred in its own elemental way. The kind of place where time loosens its grip, and everything returns to breath and presence.

I sat for a while at the edge of the shore, watching the surf come and go. There was something familiar in the rhythm of the water, something deeply rooted in memory. This beach, though far from home, reminded me of Lake Michigan: the color of the sky as it bent toward the sea, the shape of the waves as they curled and broke, the wind moving through the grasses at the edge of the sand.

A small store across the street offered the usual henro fare: instant noodles, onigiri, beer. I bought one of each and sat on a driftwood log to watch the light change. The coolness of the beer in my hands was oddly reassuring. I took slow sips as the sky softened to lavender.

Then I took off my shoes.

I walked barefoot along the tideline, letting the waves lap at my ankles, salt stinging an old sore. The water was cold and bracing, the sand smooth. Shorebirds darted ahead of me, leaving fleeting marks behind. The wind picked up slightly, tugging at my shirt. I felt clean. Empty in the best way. I didn’t need to chase anything today; no temple before closing time, no specific mileage goal. Just this beach, this wind, this quiet.

I sat on the sand again at dusk, knees pulled up, arms wrapped loosely around them, and let the sky fall.

The wind picked up again, gentle but insistent. There were no temple candles to light tonight. No incense to burn. No prayer beads clicking between my fingers. Just sand, salt, sky. And song.

I lay back on the cool sand, stars blinking into place. I let the darkness fold over me, not as fear or finality, but as a blanket. A pause. An exhale. The waves sang their endless lullaby. The wind hummed along. And somewhere, far away, but also near, the world kept singing.

January 17, 2026

Day 8: Carrying the Weight of Two Worlds

March 11

“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” —Buddha (paraphrased)

The day opened slowly, with a kind of hush. The sun softened the chill, and I passed small rice fields and fruit orchards beginning to bud. A few local farmers waved as I passed. A high school girl on a bicycle called out, “Ganbatte !” a word I’d come to love on this journey. It means “Do your best,” but it carries a deeper note of shared effort, of hanging in there together. A woman tending her garden called out to me and handed me a handful of greens—mizuna, maybe, or shungiku. I bowed deeply, touched by her generosity. Each exchange felt like a nudge from the universe: keep going, keep noticing.

Eventually, I reached the coastal town of Yuki, a quiet place nestled between the mountains and the sea. From here, the pilgrimage path would follow the ocean for several days, and I felt a quiet sense of anticipation as the landscape shifted. The inland forests and winding mountain trails gave way to salt air, open sky, and the rhythmic sound of waves brushing against the shore.

The seascape was breathtaking, broad sweeps of blue stretching to the horizon, broken only by jagged rock formations rising from the surf. Some of the rocks had been carved by wind and water into strange, sculptural shapes, complete with natural arches you could see straight through. The tide moved around them in slow curls, leaving trails of foam like brushstrokes on a canvas.

Sea birds hovered above the water, riding the wind with effortless grace. Now and then, one would dive, slicing into the surface after a flash of silver beneath the waves. I walked slowly, taking it all in. After so many days inland, the presence of the sea felt expansive and restorative. It was as if the road had exhaled, and I could breathe a little more deeply too.

Here, beauty required no explanation. It simply was.

By early afternoon, I reached Yakuōji (Temple 23), perched on a hillside above Hiwasa. Known as the temple for warding off misfortune, it felt like the right place to pause. A place to breathe, to reflect.

The long stone staircase rose ahead of me, each step littered with coins left by previous pilgrims, offerings of hope or thanks. It was a visual prayer, a reminder that nothing of value comes without effort. I climbed slowly, deliberately, feeling each step like a heartbeat, each breath anchoring me to the present.

At the top, I stood for a moment before the main hall, breathing in the salt-kissed air drifting in from the nearby sea. The sky had opened, brilliant and blue. I lit two candles. One to honor a beginning, one to mourn an ending. Flame and wax, flickering quietly in the wind. I rang the temple bell with deliberate reverence and bowed my head, not from obligation, but from something deeper. Gratitude, maybe.

From the temple grounds, the shimmering sea stretched wide, silver and blue, endless. I watched the waves roll in, the world moving on without me, but still somehow including me. That was the strange grace of pilgrimage: It held you in the palm of the present while reminding you of everything beyond your reach.

January 14, 2026

Day 7: Cradled Between Worlds

March 10

“All conditioned things are impermanent; when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.” —Dhammapada, Verse 277 (Buddhist scripture)

I now faced a major climb to Tairyūji (Temple 21), a mountaintop sanctuary known not only for its seclusion but also for its demanding ascent. I had read about the ropeway, a cable car that glides swiftly above the forest, offering an effortless route to the temple gates. It was tempting, I admit. My legs were sore, my shoulders heavy beneath the weight of my pack, and the thought of floating up to the summit held a certain appeal. But I wasn’t here to be carried. I was here to walk. To meet the mountain on its own terms. And, perhaps more truthfully, to meet something in myself that could only be uncovered through effort. Not forced effort, but the kind that emerges from the slow surrender to the path ahead.

While each of the eighty-eight temples holds its own spiritual gravity, a few serve as milestones in the quiet evolution of inner transformation. Tairyūji was the first of these for me. Known as “The Temple of the Great Dragon,” it’s often referred to as the “Mount Kōya of Shikoku” for its elevated perch and the potent spiritual atmosphere that clings to its slopes. Even the name stirred something deep within, a whisper of awe, a call to rise, as if the wild and the sacred were waiting to meet in the same breath.

The trail began modestly enough, threading through quiet forest. But soon it twisted upward in steep, relentless switchbacks. Dense stands of bamboo and pine closed in around me like the walls of a green cathedral. My breath quickened. My thighs burned. Each step demanded full presence. There was no space for idle thought, only the cadence of breath and movement, the steady press of earth against foot. The climb became a kind of liturgy: step, breath, step, breath. A quiet dialogue between effort and grace. Somewhere in the ascent, I stopped wishing it were easier. I wasn’t pushing anymore, I was simply walking. The mountain wasn’t an obstacle. It was a teacher.

By midmorning, the mist had lifted, and my body found its rhythm again. The path was no longer just a series of kilometers to be counted off; it was measured in small, fleeting moments of connection, beauty, and stillness. I passed a small shrine, nestled at the roots of a tree, its paper fortunes fluttering like prayer flags in the wind. I bowed, not from deep religious conviction, but from instinct. An unassuming gesture of reverence, a bow that felt right in the moment. Maybe it didn’t matter whether it was belief or habit. Maybe it was just enough to bow and acknowledge the journey, the life, and the memories it was carrying.

By the time I reached the summit and stepped into the temple grounds, the forest had opened into a hush. The buildings, with their moss-covered eaves and weathered wood, seemed less constructed than grown from the mountain itself. Tairyūji felt timeless, untouched by the bustle of modernity, resting gently in the company of wind and trees. The silence here wasn’t empty. It was full. Alive. A presence. I lit a candle. Rang the bell. Recited the Heart Sutra. Then I just stood still and breathed.

January 11, 2026

Day 6: Gratitude in the Quiet

March 9

“Wear gratitude like a cloak, and it will feed every corner of your life.” —Rumi

Ahead, Kakurinji (Temple 20) waited on high ground. The climb to reach it was steep and relentless. It began as a paved road, then narrowed into a rocky, root-laced trail that wound up through towering cedar forest. The forest was quiet except for the sound of water dripping from branch to leaf, leaf to earth. My breath quickened. My calves burned. But the rhythm returned: breathe and step, step and breathe. I stopped looking up. I stopped looking at my watch. Just kept moving. Nothing else.

It was hard, but it was honest, each step a small offering, each breath a kind of surrender. Maybe it was penance. Or maybe prayer. Either way, it was real.

Kakurinji appeared out of the mist like something summoned by faith alone. Tucked into the mountain, quiet and weathered. The stone steps were slick, the wood dark with age and moisture. Moss covered the low stone walls like green velvet. A single crow called from the treetops. I moved slowly through the temple grounds, bowing at the main hall, reciting the Heart Sutra. I pressed my forehead to my fingertips, not to ask for anything, but to say thank you. For making it here. For being able to walk at all.

January 6, 2026

Living with an awareness of impermanence has changed how I hold loss. In Buddhism, impermanence is not something to fear or resist; it is simply the truth of how all things move, change, and pass. Death is not separate from life, but woven into it—another turning of the path.

On January 1, 2026, a former colleague, Kelly Janke, passed away. During my years teaching math at West High, we shared both an office and a classroom.

Kelly and I spent many shared prep periods walking the halls together, gently shooing students back to class—back when that quiet work still belonged to teachers, before it was handed over to school security. Walking beside her, I came to see who Kelly was: calm, kind, and deeply attentive to the students around her.

Her care showed up in simple, tangible gestures. Home-baked treats. Friday bagels for every class. Not as rewards or incentives, but as offerings—small acts of presence, repeated again and again.

Reading the comments shared after her passing, it’s clear how many lives she touched—not only students she taught, but many who were never officially hers. I’m reminded of a phrase I once heard in a teacher meeting: Years later, students may not remember what you taught them, but they will remember how you made them feel.

In Buddhism, what endures is not the self, but the ripples of our actions—the kindness we offer, the care we extend, the way we show up for others. Kelly made students feel seen. She made them feel valued. She made them feel loved. And in the quiet truth of impermanence, those ripples continue.

January 3, 2026

Day 5: The Road Unfolds in the Rain

March 8, 2018

“To walk is to pray.” —St. Benedict

The day grew colder, wetter, heavier. My fingers began to sting from exposure. My thighs smarted with each incline. The rain, no longer a soft mist, had become a steady curtain that blurred the world into soft grays and mossy greens. I passed roadside shrines, each one a small oasis of care, of memory, of prayer. Sometimes I paused to bow. Sometimes I kept walking. The rain became my focus.

I was struggling. The books I had read before this pilgrimage had warned that doubt and despair would come. And now they had. Five days in, and already I could feel the weight of the road pressing against my spirit. I had walked about sixty miles. I had nearly seven hundred more to go. I had climbed over seventy-five hundred feet, and there would be countless more ahead. My pack seemed heavier. My feet stung. And still, the rain came. Relentless. Cold. What had I been thinking?

But I kept going.

The road offered no answer, only more steps. I walked through towns whose names I didn’t know, along rivers whose currents I didn’t question. I moved because to stop was to succumb.

January 1, 2026

Day 4, March 7, 2018

In the late morning, I reached the village of Ano, a place suspended somewhere between dream and documentary. It was both haunting and oddly comforting. Human life had left, or perhaps paused, and in its place were life-sized dolls in fields, on benches, in doorways. They weren’t ghoulish or kitschy. They felt like reverent placeholders. Each one hand-stitched, clothed, and positioned to represent someone who once lived there.

It would have been easy to find it eerie, but instead I felt a strange tenderness. The dolls weren’t replacements. They were memory given form. Ghosts stitched with intention. A quiet, loving resistance to forgetting. Each figure told a story, or hinted at one. A police officer directing traffic. A child and grandmother holding a sign with directions for henros. Several people tending their garden. The village wasn’t empty; it was saturated with love, longing, and the kind of silence that pulses instead of recedes.

December 31, 2025

“Let go or be dragged.” — Zen proverb

Since writing Impermanence, I’ve found it easier to live with uncertainty. So many of us spend our lives worrying about what we can’t see yet—what’s coming next, what might go wrong, or what we’re afraid of losing.

Walking a long pilgrimage changed that for me. Day after day, the road only revealed itself one step at a time. You learn pretty quickly that certainty is an illusion—and that you don’t actually need it to keep going. You just need the next step, the next breath, the next small act of trust.

On the eve of the new year, many people start making plans to change. But you don’t have to wait for a crisis—or even for the calendar to turn—to begin living differently. Change doesn’t always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes it begins quietly, right where you are, with a willingness to stay present and keep walking, even when the way ahead isn’t clear.

I’m curious—how are you learning to live with uncertainty, or what’s one small step you’re taking right now? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to send me a message if you feel so inclined.

December 27, 2025

This journey toward publishing a book reminds me deeply of my earlier path into sports photography.

Near the end of my teaching career, I felt a growing need for a creative outlet. I returned to photography—something I had loved since I was five years old, but which I had never fully pursued in the digital age. I spent months researching cameras and lenses before settling on a semi-professional setup. Then I devoted an entire summer to learning Photoshop through online tutorials, experimenting without any clear goal beyond learning the craft.

When the new school year began, I started photographing athletic events, mostly guessing my way through it. I read everything I could find, followed professional sports photographers on Facebook, and began submitting images to the local newspaper. At first, there was no response. Then one day, they ran a photo. That single image led to a few freelance assignments. I bought another lens. Then a professional-grade camera and a longer lens. I built a website. Slowly, I began to think: maybe I could really do this.

As retirement from teaching approached, I applied to several wire services. I was accepted by Icon Sportswire as a freelance photographer, covering Wisconsin Badgers sports, the Milwaukee Brewers, and other events across the Midwest. I also began covering local endurance events, including Ironman Wisconsin.

What mattered most was learning that this was a business. Editors don’t have time to soften their opinions. If I wanted to improve, I had to absorb criticism without defensiveness and learn from it. I see so many “photographers” online posting average work while resisting even constructive feedback. Growth requires listening.

I tried to bring that same mindset to my writing. When I began Impermanence, I wasn’t sure I was a real writer. What if the work was boring? What if no one cared about my story? The self-doubt was constant. Still, I shared my drafts with authors I knew and listened carefully to their critiques. Yet they were also people who knew me.

Eventually, I hired a professional copy editor. He helped me polish the manuscript—and when we finished, he said simply, “You are a tremendous writer.”

That moment felt a lot like seeing my first photo in print.

Embed from Getty Images

December 23, 2025

Much of Impermanence is shaped by the steady presence of birth and death. Lately, I’ve been thinking often about my former brother-in-law, Jim Barnard, who passed away on December 11 after a long fight with cancer.

When I met Jim nearly thirty years ago, he was running Playscapes, designing and building high-end children’s play structures for hospitals, airports, and other places where children gather. But Jim was never defined by a single role. He was a husband, father, brother, and friend. He was a musician and a photographer—always engaged in the work of making.

Jim wrote and performed his own music, playing guitar and singing songs he composed, sometimes solo, sometimes in collaboration with others. His photography evolved through many phases—landscapes, architecture, portraits, fine art—each reflecting a restless curiosity rather than a settled style. He worked out of several studios and exhibited his work in a variety of venues.

A month before Jim died, I helped him clear out his studio. Much of the equipment was packed away to sell, but he kept a few tools—projects still unfinished. His final photographic works, surreal and layered, remain some of my favorites. They feel like images made by someone still exploring, still listening.

Impermanence is often understood as loss. Jim’s life reminds me it is also about continuing to create while we are here—making, offering, and letting go.

Jim’s photography can be seen at jimbarnardphotography.com and on Instagram @jimbarnardphoto. His music is available on Youtube @jimbarnardmusic

December 21, 2025

During my years in the classroom, we began practicing mindfulness with our students. One of the simplest shifts we invited was the movement from “I can’t do it” to “I can’t do it yet.” That small word—yet—opened a door. It loosened what felt fixed and allowed learning to breathe. In its own quiet way, it was a lesson in impermanence: the understanding that confusion, struggle, and limitation are not destinations, only passing landscapes.

On the pilgrimage road in Japan, I heard a word again and again, offered by strangers as I passed—sometimes called from a doorway, sometimes spoken softly as I labored uphill: gambatte. Do your best. Keep going. Endure with heart. It was never said as pressure, only as companionship, a reminder that effort unfolds in time. Now, as I sit with this manuscript and imagine it stepping into the world as a finished book, I find myself receiving that same encouragement. I do not always know how the path will unfold or exactly how I will arrive at the end. But I have learned to trust that not knowing is part of the walking. Nothing here is fixed—not the work, not the doubts, not even the self doing the writing. The pilgrim moves forward without seeing the whole road, discovering the way only by continuing to walk.

December 17, 2025

As I work on the finishing touches of my memoir, I’ve been going back through the photographs I took along the way.

These are not the temples or the dramatic vistas.
These are the places I slept.

A temple bell tower.
A spare room offered by a stranger.
A roadside minshuku.
A quiet corner of shelter at the end of a long day.

Here are a few—but not all—of the places that held me while I rested.

Each night I laid my pack down, folded myself into stillness, and trusted that the road would continue in the morning.

Impermanence teaches itself softly, one night at a time.

December 11, 2025

This book has been living in my head since I first started walking in Japan more than seven years ago. I just couldn’t find a way to get it out. Then last May, I went to a lecture by Dr. John Francis about his book Planet Walker, and something in me shifted. I went home almost possessed, determined to finally tell this story.

Every spare moment I had, I poured into writing Impermanence. After several days and roughly 50,000 words, I thought I was done. I shared those pages with a few friends—who all said the same thing: keep going. So I did. I sat back down and wrote another 50,000 words. Now I really thought I was done.

But as summer settled in, more friends offered suggestions, questions, encouragement. I asked a former colleague to read a few chapters, and their feedback pushed me into several rounds of revision. When I thought I was finally finished, I hired a copy editor. Two months later, here I am.

Now the work has shifted from writing to everything that comes after. I’ve built this website. I’m setting up social media. I’m writing query letters and exploring the world of self-publishing.

The pilgrimage continues—just on a different kind of path.