I've been writing since I was a kid - poetry, short stories, daydreams that never made it to the page, night dreams, or what I like to call Nightflix, with threads woven out of both the mundane and the fantastic - images I can never seem to capture once I've woken. A good chunk of my whole life is lived inside my head where, much to their chagrin, I create pedestals for the people I love. (Luckily I'm not too attached to those concepts. No one has to be who they are not. I merely take the best that I see in them and elevate it in my mind.) I have long lived on what-ifs and maybes and supposition, and I find that, at the tender age of nearly 36, it's time to put those brain games on paper.

So, I'm working on writing a novel and it's happening sloooooowwwwly. But I'm pretty sure that's just going to be the nature of this character-centered, complex, dystopian story of struggle with its diverse, intersectional cast of characters. I've got a framework down, I daydream about it daily, and now I'm working on getting to know my characters (and forming a plot as I go along). We'll see if this venture leads anywhere. It's definitely more material than any of my other attempts.

I'm also looking for a fucking job. It turns out that a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in gender and sexualities don't translate well into the job-finding real world. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please!

And in other news, the kids just returned from a 3 week sojourn with their grandparents and father. Somehow, over just the last two days, the bathroom is again full of toys, there are crumbs and sticky drops of who-knows-what on the kitchen floor, and silence has fled. We're so glad to have them home!