And it Was

This is not my normal St. Patrick’s Day post. If you’d like to read something about the Saint, check out last year’s post. Today, I want to talk about this day last year.

Francine journaled obsessively. Every year, sometimes more than once, she would try out an entirely new journaling system. Like me, she never met a notebook she didn’t need. In addition to monthly and daily entries about the mundane things, she kept separate writing journals. 

She had a ritual she called “morning words”. This would involve her writing some minimum number of words every morning, often over breakfast. Sometimes this would be a diary, and sometimes it would be drafting out stories or chapters of a novel. Sometimes it was even just recipes. It didn’t matter what she wrote; the important thing was simply that she wrote.

The last day she filled out on the calendar portion of her journal was March 17, 2025. Not only was this Saint Patrick’s Day – and we are members of Saint Patrick Parish – this was also my first day at a new job. She was so excited! 

Writing and editing is a tricky career, particularly if you dislike working freelance. Even though I had sometimes long stretches of unemployment, we made it work.

This time, I had been unemployed for over a year and a half. Initially, this wasn’t as terrible as you might think. We know how this job market works, and we had money socked away to tide us over. But by the beginning of 2025, the situation had started to become dire. My unemployment insurance had run out, and our savings account was down to about a five-month cushion.

The card I gave her for our 17th anniversary last January said, in part, “Better days are coming. But good days or bad, it’s enough to spend them with you.”

And it absolutely was.