Greetings, my lovelies.

Today’s October journal prompt asks a deceptively simple question: What do you want more of?

Adventure? Creativity? Quiet? Books? Travel? Laughter? Friendship? Time outside? Material stuff? Clothes? Love? Sex? Money? Work? Pets? Housework? Responsibilities? Food? Drinks? Shoes? Makeup?

Ooooh, I know! MORE STRESS!

No. Absolutely fucking not. 😂

More sorrow? Anger? Rage? Mourning? Yeah, no. We’ve had enough of that shit too.

My first instinct was to circle adventure, creativity, books and quiet and call it a day. Easy enough. Journal prompt completed. Gold star for Rae. ⭐

Except apparently my brain had other plans.

Be Careful What You Ask the Universe For

There is a tiny part of me that hesitates when I’m asked to say exactly what I want. Because once I put the words out there, I start wondering whether the Universe is listening.

Are the Gods and Goddesses listening?

Am I putting something into motion simply by acknowledging it?

And if they are listening, should I be very, very specific?

Because we’ve all heard enough stories about asking the Universe for patience and then getting seventeen opportunities to practice it. 😂 No, thank you.

Still, there are things I want more of. Actually, there are quite a few.

Today probably isn’t the ideal day for deep philosophical thinking about any of them because I feel like crap. My head is fuzzy, my energy packed a suitcase and left sometime before breakfast, and the magic bean potion is seriously underperforming. ☕ The longer the day goes on, the bitchier and more frustrated I become.

Part of that frustration comes from realizing just how limited my time feels. I’m up at 4:00 in the morning. I do my usual morning things around the house while the world is still dark and quiet, eventually make my way into my office, and start work at 6:30. I’m there until 3:00 in the afternoon, answering calls, solving problems, staring at screens and occasionally wondering whether coffee can legally be administered through an IV.

Then Ronnie comes home, and I want that time with him. Especially right now because October is Spooky Month, and we made ourselves a promise: one spooky movie every night. So far, we’ve actually kept it.

Some evenings it’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Another night it’s The Haunted Mansion. Then Corpse Bride. The lights are low, we’re home together, and for a couple of hours the rest of the world can go bother somebody else.

I love that. I don’t want less of it.

But that’s exactly what made today’s question stop me. Because when I really thought about what I wanted more of, I realized I couldn’t choose one thing.

I want more room in my life for the things I love.

What Do I Want More Of?

More Room for the Things I Love.

I Want More Adventure

California woke something up in me.

There was something about sitting beside an airplane window and watching the landscape stretch beneath me—the endless browns, rusts and dusty reds of the desert, mountains folding into the horizon, Hoover Dam appearing below like something from a postcard.

Then came Hollywood Boulevard, the hills, palm trees against that ridiculously blue California sky, winding roads past houses tucked into mountainsides, and eventually the Pacific.

That ocean. The cold water rushing around my feet, the wind tangling my hair, the salty smell hanging in the air and waves crashing hard enough to drown out everything else for a while. I came home wanting more of that feeling.

But I don’t think adventure always needs an airplane ticket, a suitcase or hundreds of miles between home and wherever I’m going. Sometimes adventure can be getting into Fiona with Ronnie and saying, “Let’s go see what’s over there.”

Maybe it’s a little Arizona town we’ve never explored, a museum we’ve driven past twenty times or a strange roadside attraction. Maybe it’s a tucked-away shop with a creaky wooden floor and shelves full of things I absolutely do not need but will probably buy anyway. 😂 Maybe it’s breakfast somewhere new, a dirt road we’ve never followed or an afternoon drive without much of an itinerary.

I want more days when I don’t already know exactly what they’re going to look like.

I want to be curious again.

I Want More Time to Create

And I mean really create. Not just writing. Not just diamond art.

I have an entire cabinet filled with evidence of every time I’ve wandered through a craft aisle and thought, Oooohhhh, I want to make THAT.

There are paints and brushes, ceramics waiting for color, wooden pieces waiting to become something, canvases, diamond paintings still tucked neatly inside their packages, miniatures and craft supplies. Somewhere among all of that is an entire tiny magical study waiting for me to build it one ridiculously miniature piece at a time.

Here’s the thing: I still want to do all of it.

I haven’t lost interest or outgrown it. I didn’t buy those things because I liked the idea of being creative. I bought them because creating makes me happy.

The problem is that creativity too often gets whatever scraps of time are left after everything else has eaten. Work, responsibilities, appointments, chores and errands all get their share. Every little thing that supposedly needs to be done walks up holding its hand out, and somehow I keep paying it.

Then creativity gets, Well…maybe this weekend.

I don’t want my creativity living on leftovers anymore.

I want afternoons with paint on my fingers and a cup of coffee going cold beside me because I forgot it was there. I want to sit at my diamond-art table with old music playing and suddenly look at the clock to discover two hours disappeared.

I want to paint pumpkins and moons and flowers and ravens and whatever other random thing catches my attention. I want to build miniature furniture and inevitably swear at some microscopic little piece that refuses to cooperate with my normal-sized fingers. 😂

And creativity isn’t only about what I can make with paint, wood, glue or tiny little pieces that inevitably end up stuck to my fingers. I miss being creative in my games, too.

There was a time when I could lose hours in Animal Crossing building little neighborhoods, decorating spaces and moving things around until they felt exactly right. The same thing happened in Dreamlight Valley. I wasn’t just playing a game—I was creating a world.

Right now? Both of them are a hot damn mess. 😂

Things are plopped wherever they fit. Areas I meant to redesign are still waiting for me. Ideas are floating around in my head, but I haven’t given myself the time to actually sit down, play with them and see what happens. Somewhere along the way, even gaming became something I squeezed into the cracks instead of something I let myself sink into and enjoy.

I miss that version of gaming. I miss sitting down without watching the clock, moving a house six times because nope, still wrong, planting trees, laying paths, decorating some completely unnecessary little corner and feeling ridiculously pleased with myself when it finally comes together.

That counts as creating, too.

I don’t need everything I create to hang on a wall, sit on a shelf or have some practical purpose. Sometimes the thing I’m creating can exist on a tiny digital island populated by talking animals. Sometimes it can be an entire magical valley where I spend forty-five minutes deciding where one damn house should go.

If my imagination is working and I’m having fun, it counts.

Most of all, I want to make things simply because making them makes me happy. I don’t want to feel guilty because somewhere, theoretically, there is something more “productive” I could be doing.

Creating something because I enjoy creating it is productive enough.

I Want More Books

I want books that make the rest of the room disappear.

Not books I’m supposed to read because they’re educational, productive, life-changing or included on somebody’s list of 100 Books Everyone Must Read Before They Die.

Give me the weird shit. Give me magical shops and witches, haunted hotels, mysteries and impossible creatures. Give me strange little worlds, winged cats, bizarre characters and people I become far too emotionally invested in considering they don’t actually exist.

I want a comfortable chair, a soft blanket, something warm to drink and a book open in my lap. I want to start reading and suddenly realize two hours have passed—and, even better, that I haven’t looked at my phone once.

That sounds pretty damn wonderful to me.

I Want More Outside

There is one small condition attached to this request: Tucson needs to stop trying to cook me alive first. 😂

Once the desert finally releases us from Satan’s Easy-Bake Oven, I want cool mornings outside with coffee warming my hands. I want cloudy afternoons when the sky turns soft gray and the air smells like rain.

I want actual rain—the kind that darkens the pavement, beads against windows and brings that unmistakable earthy desert smell rising from the ground. I want evenings outside with Ronnie when there isn’t anywhere we need to go and nothing particularly exciting is happening.

Just being there. Watching the sky fade from blue into peach, pink, violet and finally darkness. Listening to birds settling down, dogs barking somewhere in the distance, wind moving through the trees and the ordinary sounds of our little corner of the world.

No agenda required.

I Want More Laughter

Especially the stupid kind. Actually, mostly the stupid kind.

The kind where whatever started the laughing stopped being funny five minutes ago, but now somebody else can’t stop laughing, which makes you laugh harder, which makes them laugh harder, and suddenly nobody even remembers what the hell started it.

I want inside jokes and ridiculous text messages. I want to send my sisters something completely unhinged because I already know exactly how they’re going to respond. I want to laugh with Ronnie over something nobody else on Earth would find remotely amusing.

I want more moments when my stomach hurts, tears are running down my face and I’m making absolutely no sound because I’ve reached that dangerous level of laughter where breathing has become optional.

Life needs more of that. I need more of that.

And I Want More Quiet

Not lonely quiet. Peaceful quiet. There is a difference.

I want the kind of quiet where nobody needs anything from me. Nothing is ringing or flashing. Nobody needs me to troubleshoot anything. There isn’t somewhere I’m supposed to be in twenty minutes, and there isn’t a clock quietly reminding me that I need to hurry up and finish enjoying myself because the next obligation is waiting.

It’s just home. My little family. Coffee. Maybe a book, maybe a craft spread across the table, maybe old music playing softly somewhere in the background—or maybe absolutely nothing at all.

I want more days when there is nowhere else I would rather be.

Maybe I Don’t Want a Bigger Life

That’s what I realized while writing this.

I don’t necessarily want a bigger life.

I want a fuller one.

And there is a huge difference.

I don’t need every day packed with activities or every weekend to become an adventure. I don’t need a calendar filled with evidence that I am successfully LIVING MY BEST LIFE™. And I definitely don’t want to become so obsessed with “living life to the fullest” that living becomes another damn item on my to-do list.

That sounds exhausting.

Some days should be adventures, and some should be creative. Some should disappear inside a book. Some should involve wandering somewhere I’ve never been before, while others should be spent making something with my hands.

Some should be loud and ridiculous and filled with laughter. And some should involve pajamas, coffee, old music, absolutely nowhere to go and zero guilt about any of it.

What I don’t want is to keep saving the things I love for whatever time happens to be left over, because somehow there is never enough leftover time.

Maybe that’s the real answer to today’s prompt. When I ask myself what deserves more room in my life, the answer isn’t travel, books, crafting, quiet or adventure.

The things I love deserve more room in my life.

I want more curiosity, creativity, ridiculousness and connection. More experiences worth remembering and more ordinary moments that actually feel like mine. More moments when I’m not documenting life, planning life, organizing life, fixing life or preparing for the next part of life.

I want to spend more time simply living it.

I want more days when I stop somewhere in the middle of everything, look around and think, Damn. This is a pretty good life.

I don’t want to keep fitting the things I love around everything else.

I want to start building a life that leaves room for them.

And today? Today that may simply mean pouring myself another cup of magic bean potion, closing the work computer when the workday is finally over, curling up beside Ronnie for our spooky movie and giving myself permission to do absolutely nothing useful afterward.

No project, no productivity and no guilt.

Because apparently doing absolutely nothing deserves a little room in my life, too. ☕💚

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Today’s Journal Prompt: What Do You Want More Of?

Now it’s your turn.

Don’t worry about what you think you should want. Forget what would sound impressive, what you’re supposed to say or what everyone else seems to be chasing.

What do you genuinely want more of?

What do you miss? What makes you lose track of time? What makes you feel curious, excited, peaceful or completely yourself? What have you been saying you’ll get back to “when things settle down”?

Maybe it’s adventure, creativity, books, friendships, nature, music, travel, cooking, gardening, quiet mornings, spontaneous afternoons, great sex, ridiculous laughter, Sunday drives, getting your hands dirty in the garden—or something entirely different.

Write it down.

Don’t worry about whether it’s productive, whether anybody else understands it or whether it sounds profound. This isn’t about finding the right answer. It’s about noticing what keeps getting pushed aside while everything else gets your time.

Then ask yourself one more question:

What would it look like to stop giving the things I love only the time that’s left over?