Jury Duty

A journal entry from April 28th, 2026

Photo by Leslie Cross on Unsplash

Before you read this journal entry, I wanted to say hello, as Sydney, because I’ve been feeling lost behind the words recently. “ Lost" doesn’t quite describe how I feel because I am where I am on purpose. And I don’t mean lost in a bad way, either. My words are taking me somewhere further away. I’m still there, and here, but my words feel like they’re chasing a rushing horizon. Maybe because that’s what spring does, and it’s hard to keep up when plants suddenly seem so fast.

But anywho, I’m here, and I hope you’re finding blooming flowers and verdant green.

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I haven’t written much this spring, partly because I haven’t had the time and partly because I haven’t wanted to. It feels like things are rushing past me. Every time I look outside, something has changed.

I’m feeling different, too. I expected to be writing more than I am. I expected to be taking more photographs than I have. There’s been no space for my computer in the garden. My eyes and my hands are always busy with something. It’s hard to type when my fingers are covered in soil.

Three-day-old chicks arrived at my home last week. It’s funny watching them grow up and watch them figure things out. One is smaller than the others, but she’s figuring things out.

I served on a jury for two weeks for a first-degree murder trial. I didn’t think I’d be writing about this, but it is a strange part of my life when something unexpected suddenly became important, and I’m still shaking it off of me with every wipe of dirt on my overalls.

The stark contrast between my garden and the courtroom was deafening. That courtroom was not a place of peace. It is a place where blood-stained t-shirts are laid out on tables, and gardens feel severely distant. It is a place where minutes are dissected, cut open, and recreated in the most fragmented way possible. It is a place where people who hurt go.

Plants and birds and sunshine have been pulling me away from places I never tried to be. I don’t have to imagine a garden anymore because they are there, and they still surprise me every time they grow.

Even now, sitting at my computer, it’s not where I want to be. I don’t want you, the reader, to be disappointed by my boredom. Maybe it reads in the writing, and maybe it doesn’t. But there are things that can pull me far away from words, and spring is one of those things. I have implicated myself in spring in such a way that my spring this year has felt demanding. Spring wants something from me, as do the plants I put into my soil and the chicks that I can hear chirping through the wall.