I vividly remember eating everything off the Taco Bell dollar menu in the car with my best friend, standing through the sunroof, screaming Edwin McCain’s “I’ll Be” into the sky, wind whipping my hair as I used a burrito as a microphone. A KFC drumstick worked well, too.

And you should, too…

While some may view that as privilege (I do, too, for what it’s worth), I hope you’ll stick with me long enough to hear why I still say this.

For better or worse, I’m an all-in kind of person. Always have been… Here’s the myth I didn’t realize I was carrying, though, until my physical health demanded I set it down: that being a real writer meant being relentless.

As I’ve limped and rested and brain-fogged my way toward some new version of normal again, I keep coming back to a single image. One that’s followed me through more than one collapse in my life.

The Tower.

There’s a common message they all seemed to communicate in on way or another, and it’s summed up nicely by Alysa Liu. I have a feeling many of her fellow Olympians share this perspective.

I’ve always written as a way to understand and express humanity, whereas now it feels more like I write as a way to connect with and celebrate it. That shift feels important.

We’re only a few days into the new year, and we’ve awoken this week to yet more news of chaos in the world. So, I’m scrapping my planned post in favor of sharing a short missive on the central theme of my life at the moment. I am becoming water.

I can’t get online these days without someone discussing AI and its many harms within the writing and publishing world. The reality is, it’s growing, so what can we do as creatives?

What stories have you told yourself about who you are? What stories have others believed? What’s the truest story you can tell about yourself today? I’ve got lots of thoughts.

I was listening to the Writing Excuses podcast this week, where they had an episode discussing narrative tradition. It got me thinking about what and who has shaped my writing and storytelling, and it took me to places I wasn’t quite expecting.

She’s in every single person she touched, and with 94 years on this planet, she touched many. I’m so thankful for the time we had, even if it never would have been enough. And I’m so thankful she can rest now.

We might have taken a detour, but if we look around with curiosity instead of frustration, we may find all kinds of beauty. We may even find ourselves grateful one day.

Literature has always been deeply connected to politics, fully intertwined, as both a mirror of society and a tool shaping societal values moving forward.

When are some times you’ve been the most self-connected? What were you doing? Where were you? How did it feel ?

Even when it’s inevitable, death hurts. Initial thoughts about putting my grandma on hospice.

Ever since Chat GPT became so widely available and widely used, it seems the writing/bookish community has been actively considering and debating the implications such a tool might have on the future of the entire publishing industry.

The healthy, therapized version of myself is reminding me to stay present even as uncomfortable memories surface from a long-forgotten time in my life, and the creative avoidant version of myself is writing things down to use as content in future projects.