After a week away, the notebook looks faintly unfamiliar.
The last page belongs to a person who seemed to know what came next. Today the thread is harder to find. There is a temptation to make a new system, buy a different notebook, declare a more serious beginning.
Instead, I write the date. Then a sentence about the weather. The page accepts this without asking where I have been.
Returning is often smaller than the story we tell about it. We sit down, pick up the tool, take the usual turn at the end of the street. Familiarity arrives a few minutes later.
The practice continues through this unremarkable opening. It has room for the days we missed.