Published March 20, 2024

Don’t overthink it, I’ve been telling myself. Write until you have to stop to think of the right words. When they stop coming, you’re done.

These are not mission statements, these riffs about the editing song of the day. They are not tomes. Get in, get out, I tell myself.

I’ve probably done a Shazam and a screenshot of Christoffer Franzen’s “Amber” half a dozen times. “Oh, right, that song!” And here it is, part of my extra effort to account for it. I added it to the rotation weeks ago, but it got my attention again today, so here it is.

It feels light, feels like a hot-air balloon rising, and even reminds me a bit of a piece of music I discovered because of the hot-air balloon festival in Albuquerque. There is also a hint of a kinship with the vibe near the end of a movie that made me stop and think about so many things.

It feels … hopeful, and so it belongs here as spring unfolds.

There. I didn’t overthink it. I like the song. It feels right.

I did no editing today, unless you count a tweak or two to yesterday’s post. It was a good day, at least the third in a row, and if I am being honest, possibly the sixth or seventh. Or was it the 10th? When you lose count of the streak of good days, that’s a good thing, right?

Unheard of for me in the past few years. I hadn’t believed I’d ever have a stretch of good days one after another, but they’ve been unfolding. I don’t really know how to act, but I will roll with them and resist the urge to overthink any of it.

Things we have ruled out lately that could kill me: Heart failure. Heart attack. Breast cancer. One of the other scary cancers. Things we haven’t ruled out yet that could kill me: The list is too long for me to think about right now. I would only overthink it. So, one thing at a time.

I have fistfuls of referrals to specialists and a resolve to take it all on one by one.

(I hadn’t planned on using that again anytime soon, but it seemed to fit.)

A year ago I was on the cusp of being told I had heart failure and had had a heart attack. Several tests, a procedure and two cardiologists later, I now take it as true that I do not have heart failure, that I have not had a heart attack, that my heart is showing normal numbers and is good and strong and has “decades of life left.”

“So, why do I (have x symptom and y symptom and z symptom and have to sleep so much?),” I asked the surgeon.

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I can’t point to your heart as the reason.”

So we are going down the list one thing at a time.

“Amber” by Christoffer Franzen feels like whatever it is inside me that is ready and willing to keep going, and with the gratitude that comes with knowing my heart is good and strong and fighting.

The person in the featured image atop this post reminded me just now, for the first time I’m conscious of, of a photo I took almost 14 years ago. In yesterday’s post, I told you that in those days, I’d find songs for my editing playlists by listing to music channels on a cable TV or satellite system. If a song immediately got inside me and seemed to want to stay, I would write down the name of the song and the artist.

This photo, taken the day before my birthday in 2010, my first birthday in the Pacific Northwest, joined my collection during such a period. I have no idea what song went with it, but I didn’t save it because of the song.

I saved it because the person in the photo, whose shape, posture and body language struck me at the time as that of a young woman, struck chords that I didn’t understand but that I knew were important to check in with from time to time. It wasn’t until years later that I came to understand that to my psyche, she represented the person I wouldn’t show the world until I faced my fears and finally came out as a transgender woman.

Looking at it now, you can imagine me overthinking all of it, can’t you? (And for all I know, that person was thinking about coming out as a transgender man, or a nonbinary person. Or was about to become a pilot and fly, or to learn to fly in other ways. Or maybe they were just … being.)

It’s delightful that the person in the other photo, the one that goes with the YouTube video of the song “Amber” by Christoffer Franzen, is a callback to the equivalent of a screenshot I took in 2010. It was six weeks after I’d become a resident of Oregon, having left Louisiana for a new life. I wasn’t quite ready to address the big picture of all the nudges head-on, but I was bookmarking them. I knew they were speaking to me.

Now it seems I might be dangerously close to overthinking it all, but I don’t think so. To overthink it would be to wonder whether the person in the 2010 image was named Amber.

OK, now I’ll wrap this up. My head and heart are too full, and there’s a lot of spring left.

I am grateful that this song found me. I am grateful for the patience people are showing me and the space and help they are giving me, and grateful for the soundtrack that is forming in the background as I try again.