My wife and I just spent the longest period apart from each other in our 11 years of marriage. It was planned, difficult, and wonderful.

In that time, I've been hard at work on While Away.

The past 2–3 weeks gave me a chance to pour abnormal amounts of focus into getting my website and book project off the ground. You may have noticed quite a few posts hitting the website and several emails in your inbox. Carly took a 16-day solo trip to walk the Camino de Santiago, so I used the extra time that gave me to set the foundation here. (She documented each day of her long journey with her own writing. Many of you know I am a big fan of solo trips, as hard as it was for us to be away from each other for that long. I think Carly would agree with me saying it was a life-changing experience for her. I couldn't be more proud and thankful for that.)

I'm excited to ride this initial wave and keep the work going! So many of you have asked questions and sent encouraging messages. Thank you! It feels good to prioritize these projects, and to have you here with me for it feels even better.

More pieces of the book are coming into view. Two new poems have been added, each with five accompanying photos (ten new photos in total). I can sense the momentum slowly building, which I'll need, because the most challenging parts of the process still lie ahead.

Here's the backstory on the new poems:

Poem #2: Invocation

This poem follows "Still Green" in Part 1 of the book. Part 1 of While Away is titled "Retreat." All the poems and photos in this section of the book were written and captured while on various personal retreats, since 2020.

"Invocation" arrived early one morning in Winslow, Arkansas. I blinked my eyes open on the first full day of my stay as my dog, Wrinn, laid next to me in the cozy quilt-topped bed. It was raining, hard. The old log cabin I had scored on Airbnb cradled us perfectly. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do but rest — and give in to the process of transition, transformation, and transfiguration that inevitably takes place in moments like this.

Poem #10: Layover

"Layover" is the first poem in Part 3 of While Away. It came to me during a frustrating time in my life that I didn't feel I had a lot of control over. I had been more or less pushed out of a business I helped build from the ground up. Unknowingly, I had come to shape my identity around this "job," so this unexpected loss hit me hard. This poem was the start of me concurrently accepting my lack of control, naming the fear I felt, and recognizing my knack for turning these types of situations into positives, somehow.

In the days that followed, I spent nearly a week with a close friend, processing everything I had just been through and writing the rest of the poems that make up Part 3 of While Away. Though it's still being defined, Part 3 is titled "Receive." I look forward to unpacking this trip and this larger-than-life friendship in the prose that will open this section.

"Layover" kicks off my favorite part of this book and I'm excited to be sharing it with you today.

A quick editing note on While Away's poems

You'll notice the very first version of "Invocation" is typed out on the typewriter in the image at the beginning of this post. I've made a few small tweaks since that first version came to me and a couple more in the process of adding it to the website. Most of the poems for While Away are in a similar state right now, except for one or two that are not fully written yet. In fact, "Invocation" underwent few edits compared to the work I expect to do on others to get them into a first-draft state. Each piece exists as a raw output of emotion, which still needs to be whittled into a more legible form.

NEW: Tracking my progress

I added a new section to the beginning of While Away's page on my website. Under "Working title/subtitle," you'll now find a few numbers that I'll keep updated as my work on the book continues.

Here's where the numbers stand now:

This is a helpful little tool for myself, and hopefully an interesting way for you to follow along. I had the idea for this after stumbling upon Dan Hollick's in-progress book, Making Software.

Now, for the hard part

I have been avoiding ALL the long form writing for While Away. There are six sections of prose I need to write, and none of them have been started. If I felt I had a choice, I would simply make this a book of poems and photography and I would fly through the rest of this process. But from the moment I felt that subtle "you-need-to-write-a-book" tug, I knew it must include my written reflections on how these poems and experiences came about.

So, the next step for me is to go and outline what all this prose will roughly cover. It will not be easy for me. My insides are contorting as I write this to you. Wish me well! *sweating-emoji*

🌿

Benny