We milled around a small table. Suitcase, backpacks, bulky handbags on the floor around us. I was leaving and trying to hug everyone in my group. I left feeling dazed, not quite sure what I was feeling.

The suitcase rattled behind me, its wheels doing overtime as I walked on the cobbled walkways of Stiles college. For a moment, I wanted to stop, to turn back and embrace all of it in a giant hug goodbye. Instead, I soldiered on taking an Uber and getting to my train track a good fifteen minutes before my train arrived.

All morning we exchanged emails, friended each other on Facebook, noted phone numbers and took copious notes on how to make it as a writer. Everybody was generous sharing what worked for them and what did not.

On the train, I am tempted to pull out my folder, to look up the websites, to start the rewrite of the piece I workshopped. Instead, I blog.

Twelve days of constant intellectual stimulation has given way to a lull, a vacuum in my head that I am loathe to fill with anything else. In some sense I feel like I have to ease back into my life, to gently transition into being mommy and wife.

Until then, the pictures and banter on Facebook will have to suffice.

Journal Musings Yale Yale Writers Workshop Journal The End Yale Yale Writers Workshop YWW