Details are my way into an essay. Details that strike me or catch me off guard.
Details like these: the new dog’s snout is currently nestled on the ball of my foot. Is that what it’s called? The part just below the toes? It strikes me that there are several parts of a foot that could resemble a ball, and I can’t say I’ve ever been bothered enough to properly internalize the anatomy of a foot.
But I digress.
The new dog’s snout is nestled on what I think is the ball of my foot. Its weight is minimal, but palpable. Before this post or essay is over, I suspect it will not be there any longer.
But it strikes me as just an unusual enough place for a dog’s snout to be that I’ve noticed it. A detail.
And details are my way into an essay.
In 2025, I’ve noticed fewer details. As I’ve added more people that I love to a home that I love, I’ve drawn myself a little inward, delighted to be at home, on a couch, with an orbit of people that is both known and safe while the world outside becomes less known, and seemingly, less safe.
It’s not actually agoraphobia; it’s just contentedness. And while I am content in this sphere, there’s still something picking at my soul (because who can ever truly be just — content, right). I’ve spent a lot of time musing why this has been my least prolific year as a writer on record, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s the details that are missing.
There are still details, but there is admittedly less novelty.
I spoke with a real writer recently. As in, her work is compensated. I did a fair bit of navel gazing, and she was patient while I mused about where my words went while hers flow freely. We talked about where ideas come from—hers as simple as the people she watches on the street, and I admitted I’ve fallen into a trap—assuming that an idea must be grandiose in order to have merit. That inspiration surely comes in big romantic waves when visiting Italy, or that inspiration thrums up from the warm pavement in a big city and into your bones.
Surely there is no inspiration in the school drop-off line.
Except there is Hudson, age 7, blowing air kisses with both hands as many times as he can get away with before the principal shooes us along.
And there is the casual problem that everyone in the drop-off lane drives a white Telluride and so, too, do I, and that detail prompts, if not an IDEA, at least a healthy existential crisis worth following to the terminus.
And there is the subtle way that Juno has started to string sentences together with artistry, modifiers, adverbial phrases. Is that inspirational?
Surely there can be no inspiration from our entryway — except that all of our boots are lined up neatly in a row instead of their normal higgledy-piggledy. And all the boots are the same color—they are beige because it’s Colorado, and we wear beige Uggs proudly in Colorado, except there is one BLACK boot, not two. And if it’s not interesting, it’s a detail. And maybe that detail IS interesting to the missing black boot.
There are wilting leaves on plants I claim to love. That’s a detail. There’s an idea there.
And there’s a neighbor with a rotating cast of four French Bulldogs, one which he straps in a baby carrier on his chest, because she’s a puppy and I assume is still waiting for her vaccinations. Even in the suburbs, he wears a fedora, and he still decorates his yard with big, childish, seasonal signage (currently a polar bear with a penguin perched on its head—a detail Juno noticed before I did). And even though I always assumed the lawn decor was the doing of his wife, I sadly know that his wife passed away last year, and the bear/penguin duo looks brand new. He is a detail upon a detail upon a detail. He is not talkative. He has no idea how much I love him.
The snout upon the ball of my foot has predictably relocated, but it’s done its duty. It woke me from my bubble of impermeable inobservance and reminded me that details are seldom grandiose. They are just details.
Not every note is a symphony. Not every word is a novel. Most details are not profound.
But I’m still glad to have noticed them.