Last Monday, we hinted at our bucket list being one item shorter. We were so cool and casual about it you may not have even noticed. We are only calm on the outside though, be assured.

Lowi and I need to come clean about something we’ve been keeping to ourselves for more than a year.

We’ve been working on a book!

For months and months, I didn’t even dare say it out loud. I stayed mum, partly because I was afraid to jinx it and the other half because I didn’t know if we’d stick with it. Sometimes our commitment wanes, like when starting a diet on a Monday. I didn’t want to shout it from the rooftops only to later be asked about it and have to say, “Oh yeah, that went by the wayside on Tuesday.”

I can’t speak for Lowi, but I kept this little nugget of knowledge to myself. I did let my husband in on the plan but he was sworn to secrecy, which was easy for him since at the beginning stages he didn’t really much care. Plus he may have thought it would be an adventure that I bailed on much like the Monday morning diet idea.

Through 2016 we kept plugging away at this laborious process and it was a struggle many times as that collection of 12 months was particularly challenging in our family. We experienced death, illness, transition, and all sorts of familial adversity. All the while in the background we moved forward, slowly.

After starts, re-starts, and false starts we began to find our way with the guidance of our book editor who I am sure was ready to break up with us weekly if not daily. I was ready to break up with myself often.

As of today, we can say we are in the homestretch with the million little details of checking to be sure that all our Ts are crossed and and our valium is at the ready when we are brought to the moment of pressing the publish button.

Lowi and I have said for years we wanted to write a book. I never really thought any further about the project than that. I don’t know if I ever envisioned writing a book with someone else. And I can promise you I never knew just how hard the process is, how many unbelievably small details there are to consider, and how many times I would’ve quit if there had only been myself to disappoint.

Now we are at those final steps to summit our own personal Everest and it’s gratifying, terrifying, fear-inducing and exciting. We will soon be able to cross this goal off our list and that feels amazing and surreal. But possibly the most difficult part of all of this is when we are no longer in control and this personal effort is in the world for everyone or anyone to read, judge or critique.

That, if you hadn’t already guessed, is where the valium fits in.

This year is blazing its own path and delivering moments that scare us immensely and yet turning away from them would simultaneously be a choice to keep life controlled and contained. Neither of us want that so we push forward hyperventilating and panicking with each step. That must be why those mountain climbers have oxygen, huh?

Sunshine & Sarcasm,

Lowi & G