Here

Sunday from the Porch

A few days before I left for Porto, I did what I usually do before spending time somewhere new. I redownloaded Tinder, changed my location, and started introducing myself to a city I hadn’t yet arrived in.

For me, it has never been exclusively about dating. Some of my favorite travel experiences have begun with a coffee, a museum recommendation, or an afternoon spent wandering a neighborhood with someone who already calls that place home. It’s become part of my ritual of arrival.

One of the first people I matched with was a local photographer. Around my age, deeply curious, unmistakably creative. Handsome, sure. We exchanged the usual early messages before our conversation drifted toward the work each of us spends our time making.

Then he said something that caught me completely off guard: “if you have a blog or something like that you can share with me, i would love to read it.”

I hesitated.

Not because I didn’t have anything to send him, but because of what the question actually meant.

It’s one thing to tell someone you’re a writer. It’s another to hand them something you’ve written. To say, “This is how I think. This is how I see the world. Here.” There’s a particular kind of vulnerability in that.

Still, quicker than I probably would have a few months ago, I sent him the link to my Substack.

A few moments later, he sent me his work in return.

His writing revolved around photography and place, thoughtful photojournalistic essays from cemeteries across Europe. I love cemataries, personally, and make a point to visit a city’s biggest everywhere I go. I found myself lingering over every photograph, reading each essay slowly before wandering over to his Instagram, noticing more details I might have otherwise missed.

Meanwhile, he was doing the same with mine. Notifications blinked at the top of my iPhone, with him quoting passages back to me from essays I’d almost forgotten writing.

We weren’t simply making conversation anymore. We were meeting through the things we’d each been quietly building. And somewhere in that exchange, I realized something that had escaped me until then.

For a long time, I thought this newsletter existed to prove something. That was the initial intention anyway. To prove that I could establish and maintain a writing practice. To prove that I was disciplined enough to eventually join a writing group. To prove that I was serious.

In my mind, it had always been preparation for becoming a writer. I don’t think I ever stopped to consider that it had quietly become the thing itself.

Every Sunday, for nearly a year now, I’ve sat down somewhere—sometimes at my kitchen table in Austin, sometimes in a café in Ireland, sometimes from an apartment in Austria or Portugal—and tried to make sense of whatever was haunting my mind or shaping my life that week.

Some essays came easily; others fought me until Sunday afternoon; a few felt unfinished even after I pressed Publish. But together they became something I never intentionally set out to create: a body of work.

I don’t say that to elevate it beyond what it is, just to acknowledge what consistency does over time.

Week after week, ordinary reflections begin accumulating into something larger than any individual essay. They become evidence. Not of perfection or expertise, but of attention. A record of what one person has been paying close enough attention to that they felt it was worth putting into words.

I think that’s why his question stayed with me. He wasn’t asking to see my best piece. He was asking to see what I’d been making. There’s a difference.

When we’re younger, we often imagine creativity as something tangible. We picture paintings leaning against studio walls. Pottery drying on shelves. Sketchbooks filled with drawings. Handmade furniture. Film reels. Quilts. Songs.

I still find myself wishing, every now and then, that my medium lived in the physical world. Something I could point to. Something that occupied space. But maybe writing has been doing that all along. Not on shelves, but in people. Not in a studio, but in a place I return to every week.

Especially because, at this particular moment in my life, I own very little and everything I need fits into a suitcase. My apartment changes by the month. The cafés change by the day. The language outside my window changes by the minute. The people around me change with every step.

Almost everything feels temporary. Except this.

Every Sunday, I know exactly where I’ll be.

Back on the porch.

I hadn’t realized until that conversation that this newsletter has quietly become one of the most stable places in my life. A place I return to regardless of which country I’m sleeping in or what season I’m moving through.

In some ways, it has become a home. Not because it’s fixed, but because I keep returning to it.

I wonder if that’s true of all meaningful creative work. Maybe the goal isn’t simply to make something beautiful. Maybe it’s to build somewhere others can visit. A place that introduces you long before you arrive. A place where someone you’ve never met can spend an hour wandering around and leave feeling like they know you just a little better.

Looking back, I don’t think the most meaningful part of that exchange was that another creative person appreciated my writing.

It was realizing that, when someone asked to see what I’d been making, I finally had an answer. Not an idea. Not a plan. Not something I hoped to create someday. But something real. Something I could lean across the virtual table with and simply say, “Here.”