Here I Am, For Real

On selfies, tarot spreads, and showing more of the face behind the words

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about faces lately. Not just the ones we show to the world, but also the ones we hide, as well as the ones that slip out in quiet moments when we think no one’s really looking.

Yesterday was Seth's birthday, and we had a little Lord of the Rings fire pit party planned. I wanted to clean up a little bit out back, get things ready, and maybe cut some flowers for a table centerpiece before it got too late in the day. 

I also spontaneously decided it was a good opportunity to brush out my hair, put on some simple makeup, and maybe snap a quick selfie or two. (It had been a while.) 

So I did that and shared one of the selfies across my social media platforms, just for a little something different. Nothing super staged, just me as I was on a sunny Saturday afternoon, pro "pineapple on pizza" t-shirt, sigil rings, and all. People loved it, as it had been a while since I'd really shared anything raw, behind the scenes, or completely unfiltered.

That, combined with how far back a Facebook friend recently had to dig into my timeline to find real pictures of me, made me realize I need to share more of this. Not because mysticism, myth-making, art, and creativity somehow aren’t real (because they absolutely are), but because even the best creative content can start to feel disembodied if I never anchor them back to the ordinary human face that’s living them into existence.

So this is me floating some of the same energy into my long-form writing spaces, tea in hand, freckles and shadows intact.

Faces Matter

Something I've noticed over my many years as a ghostwriter, copywriter, and essay writer of all stripes (and have been reminded of). People don’t truly fall in love with content. They fall in love with the people and stories behind it.

The articles, the images, the mystical fragments — those things might absolutely draw someone in who's never been to your world before, but what keeps them watching is ultimately the human heartbeat underneath it all. When I share my writing or my artwork without ever showing the person creating it, I imagine it can start to feel like it came from nowhere, like my voice is floating at people from out of a void instead of from another human.

The truth is, most of us want to know who’s behind the words. We want to see the face that laughs at its own bad jokes, the hands that shuffle the cards, the eyes that have cried through the lessons someone is now writing about. That’s what makes it real and keeps it relatable.

So showing my own face here for the first time in a while, freckles and all, is my way of saying, "Yes, the things I write about are real, but so am I." I'll do my best to make it a regular thing moving forward.

The Art of Doing Nothing (With a Little Help from Slacker)

Slacker - Richard Linklater (1990) Courtesy of Orion Classics

It's really no secret that most of us are taught to fear doing nothing. Idleness is suspicious. Productivity is the religion of the day. So, if you’re not grinding, optimizing, or “getting ahead” every second of every day, then what are you even doing with your life?

Me? I’ve always been on the other side of that equation. If ambition meant taking a straight shot across the field with a touchdown in mind, I would have been the person wandering around the edges, looking at dandelions and clouds instead. And for most of my life, I was told that made me a failure. A slacker.

Which is probably why finally getting a chance to sit down and check out Richard Linklater’s Slacker a couple of weeks ago – decades after it came out – felt like such a strange kind of homecoming.

Doing Nothing, Cinematically

If you’ve never seen it, here’s the gist. Slacker doesn’t really have a plot or any big, hairy point it's trying to make. There's no main character, no grand growth arc, no traditional payoff. It just drifts through a day in Austin, Texas, following one character until another wanders into frame a few minutes later, then shifting focus.

Most of the characters (if you can call them that) are, by conventional standards, “doing nothing.” They’re rambling about conspiracies, fiddling with art projects, spontaneously philosophizing, waiting for God only knows what, hanging out, talking about whatever. None of them are rushing to work or thinking about how they're going to reach that next rung on the corporate ladder.

And yet... it’s alive. Very much so. The whole film hums with this strange electricity, like the air between two people at 2 AM when you’ve both wandered way too far off the map of ordinary conversation.

It’s a movie that says, maybe nothing is something... if you look closely enough.

Escaping the Sea of Tears (and Other Lessons in Making Stuff)

This morning is the kind I would bottle if I could. Before Sunrise playing softly in the background, a grocery delivery on its way, a stick of chamomile incense making my office space smell amazing. I’m in that gentle in-between state where the world hasn’t yet demanded anything of me. 

And I’ve been thinking about part of last night’s conversation with Seth, the kind that runs past dinner and into the hours after the sun goes down. The air cooling around us and filling with drizzle as we sit at our little bistro table, comparing notes on the internet, creativity, and why we’re still here doing this whole “posting things online” dance after all these years.

The short version?

We’re obviously both still doing it, but it’s different now. Very different.

Back in My LiveJournal Days...

When Seth and I first met (over 20 years ago now) we were both living in the wild frontier days of LiveJournal. Back then, blogging didn't have much to do with clout or follower counts yet. You posted because you wanted to make a connection with other people. You wrote something heartfelt, and maybe a stranger in another time zone commented back with something equally heartfelt. 

You built friendships on words alone.

Fast forward to now, and it’s like everyone’s been replaced by a marketing department in human form. So many people seem to be here purely to acquire – followers, customers, attention, anything that can be converted into currency. 

I actually can't believe I know other writers, bloggers, and creators who are “successful” in the modern sense, but have also openly (shamelessly!) admitted they don’t actually enjoy writing. That blows my mind every time. Imagine hating something as magical as personal writing from the heart can be, but still doing it daily because the machine demands it.

I already had a job I hated when I first got online and started writing. The last thing I needed was another one.

Where Are the Stories for the Rest of Us?

Why culture forgets us once we’re past our “prime," and why we’re not done yet

Earlier, I was scrolling through our extensive list of beloved movies to find something to put on in the background while I wrote today. A very specific thought popped into my head (and not for the first time). Maybe it's popped into yours before, as well, especially if you're old enough to have ever felt old a time or two before.

Have you ever noticed how almost every big, beautiful, culture-defining story seems to revolve around someone under the age of 30?

Books, movies, myths, quests, revolutions, coming-of-age dramas, mind-bending sci-fi, even the weird cult classics we pass around like secret candy – all starring people in their teens or twenties. Sometimes very early twenties. Occasionally, you might stumble across a “grizzled” 35-year-old, which is code for "already spiritually retired."

And I get it. Youth makes for juicy storytelling. It’s a time of life that's alive with epic firsts. First love. First heartbreak. First existential crisis. First realization that your parents don’t actually know what they’re doing. First world-class fuck-up. There's intensity, discovery, and mistakes with consequences. It's all very cinematic.

But as someone who's solidly not in her twenties anymore, I’ve found myself wondering more and more often:

What happens to the rest of us?

Do we just... fade into the background? Is it truly our job now to become quirky supporting characters or stoic mentors? Are we no longer allowed to burn things down and start over? Make epically bad decisions? Discover something about ourselves so transformative that it sends us into a new chapter of life?

Or do amazing things like that only happen when your skin still has collagen and your student loan grace period hasn’t ended yet?

Things I'm Not Saying Anywhere Else: A Brain Dump

These days, I share a lot of myself in writing across different spaces – particularly Quora, Substack, and Medium. But some thoughts don’t really fit anywhere official. They’re too quiet, too in-progress, too unresolved, but they're not necessarily private journal thoughts, either. 

So this time around, I’m giving myself permission to play emo writer and putting them here – my little, old Blogger blog that almost no one reads. Not because I have a point to make, but because I needed a space to breathe.

........

Lately, I’ve been craving spaces where I don’t have to be useful but still feel like I can share if I want to. Where I’m not writing to explain something, solve something, or potentially earn anything. Just spaces where I can be a person. Quietly. 

That feels more radical than it should. I suppose that's something for me to think about further when I've got a minute to navel-gaze freely.

........

I’ve been noticing how often I brace myself for disappointment, even when no one’s let me down yet. There’s a scar in me that expects abandonment and another one that whispers I deserve it, so if it does happen, I'm not even surprised. 

I don’t believe what those scars tell me about myself anymore. But some days, they still echo. Loudly, on occasion.

On that note, I've decided to put a pin in therapy for now after my therapist pulled a no-show last week, as well as didn't bother to communicate afterward. 

One of the bigger, more pervasive issues in my life is people who don't treat me like a priority and show up for me the way that they should. For that reason, I really, really need my therapist to be reliable and communicative if I'm going to actually have one. 

........

Sometimes I think the quietest parts of me are the ones that hold the most truth. The parts that don’t want to perform, don’t want to teach, don’t want to be good. These aspects of who I am just want to exist, without apology or polish. I'm getting better at letting them.

There’s something sacred about writing things that aren’t meant for anyone but me. No optimization. No growth strategy. Just a timestamp on a mood, so I can remember who I was for a moment.

I should consider doing this again sometime. 

The Myth of Wasted Time (and Why I'm Not Playing That Game Anymore)

So, this week seems to be shaping up to be more about recalibrating and recentering than anything else. I saw that coming, though. The universe has had my hands full lately with several months of tasks and little emergencies – broken appliances that needed fixing, jury duty I couldn't get out of, and issues with problem clients, among other things. 

I finally seem to be back to a place where I have the time, room, and extra energy to start getting back on track with a few things (e.g., yardwork and daily exercise). I'm also trying my best not to fall into old familiar patterns that always find me beating myself up for needing to play catch-up in the first place. 

That said, we’ve all heard it – or worse, felt it. That insidious little voice whispering, “You should be further along by now.” You scroll past yet another life update on social media from a peer or an old classmate – a new job, a book deal, that dream vacation they've been daydreaming about for years. Suddenly, your own timeline, with its utter lack of vacations and awesome opportunities, feels… warped and crooked. 

I admit to still struggling with this myself, but that may be all the more reason to tell you. That voice is a liar. Or at the very least, wildly uninformed.

The Guilt Trip You Never Asked For

Negative self-talk and an insatiable need to measure up start super early, maybe with a parent, a teacher, or even just a system designed to rank you by productivity and potential. You internalize the idea that your value comes from not only doing, but doing quickly, all while blowing the rest of your competition completely out of the water.

Graduate by this age. Settle down by that one. Have a career, buy a house, never pause, never question. Keep producing. Keep climbing. And if you veer off track... or have to stay off track for a while? Well, clearly you’ve messed up and wasted your life. Once you do internalize that programming, it's very hard to move past. I'm honestly still working on it (and failing miserably at times).

When the System Hands You Humans Instead

When it comes to jury duty, there seem to be two types of people out there — the type that loves the idea of serving on a jury and the type who will do just about anything to avoid it.

I’m a million percent the second type and have been my whole life, despite never having had to report in person before yesterday. I don’t drive, and the courthouse is relatively far from my home. Plus, I’m neurodivergent with terrible anxiety and agoraphobic tendencies, so jury duty is packed with potential triggers I’ve learned to avoid through hard personal experience.

So, when I got my summons in the mail a while back, I tried everything I could to avoid it. I asked my therapist to write me an excusal letter (which unfortunately didn’t come through in time.) I overthought and tried to plan for every little possibility. I rage-snacked. You name it.

But this time the summons stuck, so yesterday morning, I found myself seated in a government building full of strangers and unfamiliar smells, bracing for the worst.

What I didn’t expect was how human the day would feel at the end of it all. Not in a “yay bureaucracy” kind of way, because fuck that, but in a we’re all just doing our best in here sort of way. And that, more than anything else, is what I want to share today, because I think we all need reminders like this from time to time.

Entering the Machine With Dread

Courthouses and legal protocol are designed to make you feel small and insignificant. Cold lighting. Metal detectors. People barking instructions about bags, and belts, and phones. So, as a neurodivergent person with anxiety, I arrived already feeling like prey. I anticipated robotic procedures and poor treatment from cold, cruel people who serve the machine (and like it). I expected to feel like just another cog in a system that doesn't care.

But what I found instead were… people:

• An older woman who sat next to me, pulled out a pendulum, and started divining with it like it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing in a courthouse
• A bailiff with a kind voice and a sense of humor who seemed more concerned with whether we spilled juice or coffee on the carpets than ruining anyone’s day
• A judge and a state prosecutor who genuinely thanked us for being there, acknowledged our inconvenience, and took real time to listen to each person who spoke

Offerings to the World, Big and Small

As you may have gathered, I've kind of been having a rough go of things lately. A lot's been going on –– at home, at work, with my entire sense of self (for all sorts of reasons). I felt like I needed a reset today, and I thankfully had some time for one after dinner.

I recently scored a cute little set of oracle decks based on the Wheel of the Year, one for each of the seasonal sabbats, so I took a moment after dinner to go through them all. And since we just had Litha and are now officially moving toward Lammas, I spent a little extra time with the Lammas deck.

I also decided to pull a card (Community Service) and free-blog a bit about whatever it brought to mind. That's how I found myself thinking about some of the ways I've been trying to give back, put more out there, and be more generous lately. 

On the Offerings I've Already Made

I’ve always believed offerings come in many forms. A quietly written blog post. A pinch of salt in a glass of water. A meaningful moment of presence with someone you love. Even saying, “I’m still here,” when the world goes quiet and doesn't necessarily seem like it's listening. That’s an offering, too.

If you know me at all or are even somewhat familiar with my content, then you know what a private person I can be. Yes, I share, but only on my own terms and only in the quiet ways that make sense to me. But I've realized that not all service is loud. Not all community is wide or super-public. That doesn't make it count any less.

Some of the offerings on my mind right now:

• I've been working hard to write for myself more often and actually share what I produce. I've been especially focused on helping people figure things out and reminding them that they're not alone in anything they might be going through.
• I post a lot of my AI-assisted and digital images on social media these days. I'm never going to be the type of artist who likes to spell things out, but I put energy and meaning into everything I make regardless.
• I've been holding space for others when I can, especially for the people who mean the most. People like Seth. And people like me.
• I don't talk a ton about spirituality here, but I've been exploring all sorts of ways to connect with the universe more. I've also been communing with and adding to my spirit team, one set of feathery (or leathery) wings at a time.

Some of my offerings have been very public. Others, not so much. Quite a few have occupied some liminal space between the two. That will probably continue for quite some time to come.

Shifting My Attention Toward Lammas

Lammas (August 1st) is the first harvest, and with it comes a question. What do you have to give? Not in the way the world usually asks, and not measured in productivity or performance, either. It can be something as simple as the truth of what’s currently ripening in you, and whether you’re willing to share a slice or two.

Right now, I'm revisiting and revising some of the things I believe about myself. I'm asking myself why that label or this mindset. I'm taking long, hard looks at difficult truths that have been right in front of me my whole life and sitting with what I find. 

I'm already sharing little slices of some of these truths –– trying them out to see how they feel and how well they fit. I've also decided to start therapy after Friday's panic attack, so I have my first appointment with the first therapist I'll be vetting tomorrow afternoon. I'm nervous but excited, too.

Continuing to Explore the Concept of Community

I've been introverted my entire life. I'm a loner, and that's the way I like it. I am extremely selective as far as who I allow to get close to me, and it takes me a long time to get there with anyone in particular. And I've been away from my public writing life for a while, so there aren't exactly crowds waiting outside the gates for their next chance to connect with me right now.

But maybe that's perfect. It gives me a chance to keep growing some of these projects into creative trees that may actually bear fruit one day, without people paying too much attention when I fumble the ball. 

So, this season, I want to keep offering what I can. A story here. A card pull there. A moment of softness when I’m tempted to retreat. Some of it will be public. Some of it will be secret. All of it will be sacred.

When You Thought You Could Handle It (But Couldn't)

There are moments in life when you really think you’ve finally got it. You’re managing your obligations, you’ve built coping mechanisms that work for you, and you’ve certainly been through worse, so surely, you can handle this, too. 

Until something makes you realize you've just hit a point where you truly can't handle one more thing. 

It’s a deeply uncomfortable realization, especially for people who pride themselves on being resilient. But it's important to realize these moments don’t mean you’ve failed. They mean you’ve hit a hard limit that you should think twice about pushing past.

And I'm realizing limits aren't necessarily weaknesses, the way I was raised to think. They're information you can use to help yourself... if you choose to treat them that way.

The Moment Something Cracks

Sometimes the breaking point sneaks up on you. It’s not always the “big” crisis you expect. Sometimes it's something as mundane as an extra-tight deadline, a phone call, or some bad news you didn't expect.

For me, it was a jury summons. Something that would be a minor annoyance to most people.

I don't talk about it much, but I've suffered from anxiety and occasional panic attacks my entire life. I'm aware of some of my worst triggers and do my best to avoid or temper them. Others, I'm not as aware of, and they wind up sneaking up on me. Today, I found out the idea of having to show up and report for jury duty in person is apparently one of them.

I've received summonses before, but I've always been excused on check-in and never had to report in person. But this time was different. Instead of seeing that I was excused like usual, I saw that I'd be expected to report in person for the first time ever in my life by 9:30 Monday morning. 

I'd have to figure out how I'd get someplace half an hour away without private transportation. I'd have to spend my weekend front-loading my work week to prepare for the possibility of being seated on a jury. I'd have to basically not go to sleep Sunday night, because 9 AM for me is basically like 4 AM for someone else. And I'd have to do all this on the heels of a solid two months of non-stop stressful events and work overload instead of enjoying a badly needed rest.

And that's when it started happening. 

I'm Building a Life, Not an Audience

As weird as I feel sometimes, I'm not that much different from any other content creator out there. 

I wouldn't say I'm doing all this to get famous or anything. I don't care about being an influencer, and at nearly 50 years old, I'm hardly still hung up on the idea of making my parents proud.

But my inner critic still occasionally likes to pop up uninvited and go, "Shouldn't you have more to show for this by now?" More followers. More reach. More evidence that what I make is actually seen, understood, and wanted. 

It’s just so easy to internalize the idea that visibility equals value. That if your work isn’t constantly going viral or leaving you rolling in dough every month, it must not matter.

I know that isn’t true. I also know I don’t post every day. I don’t play the game the way you're supposed to. And sometimes, the algorithm makes me feel like a ghost inside my own house, present but unseen.

But lately, I've been embracing a quieter truth. A truth I’ve known for a long time but haven’t always been lucid (or ballsy) enough to step up and claim. I don't actually think I'm building an audience anymore. I’m building a life.

A Life Worth Living From the Inside

I want a life I actually feel good about living on every level. Not a product. Not a personal brand in hyper-focus, trimmed and polished until there’s nothing strange, unpolished, or surprising left.

I want late mornings with the windows open and my favorite old music playing from the garden. I want homemade meals that slow-cook all day and make the neighbors jealous when they smell them cooking. I want firelight in the evenings and soft clothes and the sense that Seth and I are building something substantial together.

I want to write things that feel real, honest, and alive. Not pristinely optimized and scientifically calibrated for reach or restructured for engagement. (I do that more than often enough for my clients.) I want to make art that confuses people a little and makes them think a little harder. I want to pull tarot cards, light incense, stare at the moon, talk to spirits, and keep just a few little things just for me.

And I absolutely want to share with people, but not to gather likes or followers. I want to share for the same reasons birds sing. Because it's a completely natural thing for a living being to want to do.

Letting Go of the Growth Machine

When I write, I’m not imagining a room full of strangers applauding. I’m imagining one person — maybe someone like me — reading it alone, steaming cup of herbal tea in hand, and feeling a little less invisible. Maybe they smile or laugh. And then maybe they close the tab and go make something of their own.

I'm honestly not interested in growing a huge platform if it means sacrificing my peace. I don’t want to lose the beauty of my life chasing someone else’s idea of success. And I definitely don’t want to perform my trauma or turn my joy into a marketing funnel.

That doesn’t mean I don’t care about my work. It means I care about it too much to let it be twisted into something that doesn’t feel sacred anymore. I don’t want to be “relatable.” I want to be real. I don’t want to go viral. I want to go deep.

If This Resonated, Try This

If you’ve been feeling the pressure to “show up” online in ways that drain the life out of you, here are a few tips that might help:

• Make something just for you. Write a piece you don’t plan to publish. Take a photo to remember something instead of just to keep your Instagram feed full. Make art you might not even show anyone else. Reclaim the joy of creating without witnesses.
• Curate your space, not just your feed. Tend to the life around you and all your essentials. Your desk, your garden, your favorite cup. Let your physical world reflect the internal one you’re building. As with everything in life, the little things are the big things.
• Figure out why you're even doing this. And write it down so it's easier to sort out and refer back to. Keep it somewhere close. Read it when the noise gets loud. Don't focus on what drives traffic or gets likes.

A Garden, Not a Stage

I think of my online presence like a garden, and you should think of yours the same way. Some parts are wild, while others are carefully tended. Some things bloom right away. Others take their sweet time, and not everything is necessarily meant to be seen by everyone.

But it all belongs.

And if someone wanders in and finds a flower that speaks to them, that's fantastic. But in my case, I didn’t plant it for them. I plant for the bees, the wind, and the sun. I plant for myself. My creative life feels like the best fit when its foundation is living soil, not someone else's borrowed notion of a stage.

Because at the end of the day, I’d rather grow roots than chase applause.

What I Share, What I Don't, and Why

Today is one of those days I'm getting to my daily reflection later rather than sooner, but that's OK. Dinner’s done. The last of the light faded away behind the trees for the night some time ago. 

I’m back indoors after a hot mushroom coffee, thinking about what a challenge it can be to balance being open, real, and whole, while also remaining a deeply private person. As always, I'm two different things at once.

The Pressure to Be Transparent

As a writer, especially one who fell in love with words through diary-keeping as a kid, I’m used to using my life as raw material for the things I create. If something hits me hard, I'll probably look for a way to write about it. If I notice a pattern, I use writing to break it down and see what else I can turn it into. 

I write to figure things out and find meaning in things that otherwise wouldn’t make much sense. But there’s a difference between writing from life, because that's what works for me, and handing something vital over on a silver platter for public consumption.

I'm not about completely spilling my guts, but I care about being authentic and helping others around me become more comfortable with their own authenticity. And the older I get, the more I realize it really doesn't have to be one or the other –– either holding it all in or way oversharing. There's definitely a middle ground there, and I'm getting better at staying there.

Not Everything Needs to Be Shared

Since starting my Substack newsletter, The Writer in the Wild, I’ve been thinking more about what it means to write publicly with intention. Especially as I try to shape that new space into something useful, something that helps people reconnect with their creativity and feel at home in their own writing lives.

That being the case, I'm grappling with the usual questions. How personal is too personal? How much do people even want to know about my non-writing life, and how much do I want to tell them in the first place? I know I'll eventually strike a solid balance, because I always do, but there's always a lot of back and forth I go through before I get there.

Writing from the Inside Out

All things considered, being honest doesn't necessarily mean putting every detail of what you want to talk about down on the page. You just have to tell the truth about what you do put there. That’s something I've been working hard at lately — not just as a writer, but as someone trying to show up in public spaces more authentically and intentionally. 

One of the ways I check in with myself is to ask, "Am I sharing this to be understood? Or am I sharing because I want to feel edgy, daring, or just plain validated?" 

I don’t want to use writing as a mirror, or at least not anymore. I'd much rather use it as a window — something I can look through and through which others can look back without losing their own reflection in the process. The work already knows what to say. I just have to trust it.

So, if you’re in the process of writing your own truth — whether it’s on a blog, in a notebook, or maybe even just in your imagination while doing the dishes after dinner — I hope you know you don’t owe anyone the whole story. Just focus on the part that feels ready and wants to be known. And if all you write today is one honest sentence to yourself, that’s more than enough.

* Another brick in the wall for the Feast of the Wandering Pen, a movable celebration all about showing up no matter what.

The Sacred Perimeter: 7 Lessons I've Learned from Salt

I keep a little wooden container of blessed sea salt next to my computer. Some mornings, I add a pinch to my first bottle of water of the day. It's just a quick personal ritual, but it still helps shift the energy and start the productive part of my day on the right foot. 

Other times, salt crosses my mind while cooking dinner. I think about how it's the one spice nearly every dish needs at least a little of to taste right. Yet you rarely think about it being there. When someone loves what you cooked and goes, "Yum, what's in this?" you usually don't even think to mention salt.

Salt isn't flashy or exotic. But it's always necessary. You don't always think about it, especially if it's present in a stabilizing, balanced way. But you certainly notice when it's missing.

It even showed up in my daily divination session this morning when I pulled the Salt card from one of my oracle decks. A perfect match. Because lately, salt has felt like more than an ingredient or a tool. It’s felt like a symbol of everything I’m learning about setting and maintaining boundaries, especially the kind that don’t necessarily need to shout to be heard.

So here are a few of those truths. Lessons from salt about boundaries worth preserving.

1. Salt draws a circle, not a line

It's taken me a long time to realize boundaries aren’t truly walls so much as they’re circles of protection. You draw a line to keep people out. But a circle invites what is sacred and beneficial to step inside, while keeping the rest in its own lane where it belongs. Salt taught me that a boundary can be generous and protective at the same time.

2. Salt preserves what matters

Before refrigeration, people used salt to preserve food. It held our nourishment in a state of stillness and safety until the right time to eat it finally came. I think some parts of us need temporary preservation, too, especially parts like unspoken dreams and painful griefs we're not sure anyone else would understand. Salt knows how to keep it all safe until you're ready to unpack it and find a use for it.

What I Found at the Edge of the Map

One of the biggest myths we're sold when we're all still young and stupid is that life is a straight-shot journey from Point A to Point B. All you have to do is follow the totally real life map we're presented with, and everything will turn out just peachy.

Do this, then that. Be this, then become that. Follow the signs. Never stray. And if you do everything exactly right, you’ll reach your destination right on time. Oh, and there will be a trophy and a pizza party waiting for you when you arrive, of course.

But what no one tells you is this. The destination point keeps moving, which hardly matters, because no one ever clarifies where you're supposed to be going in the first place. The map spontaneously redraws itself the moment you think you understand it. 

And the edges? You eventually find out that they don’t mark the end of anything. They mark another big, fat, blank beginning you didn’t know to expect, and it's even more ambiguous and vague than the last.

I spent an embarrassingly large chunk of my one life chasing the idea of “arriving.” At what, I don't exactly know, although I assume it had something to do with success, love, healing, wholeness –– the four horsemen of the well-adjusted. I thought that if I just kept going, I’d eventually reach a place where things made sense. But that never happened. 

What did happen were curveballs. Detours. Periods of standing still so long that I forgot I was even on a journey in the first place. Eventually, I thought I'd reached the end of the map. But it didn't look or feel anything like fulfillment, and there sure as shit wasn't a pizza party waiting for me. It looked like a blank, white page with nothing else on it. 

I sat with that blankness for a very long time, because I didn't know what else to do. And I think that's when I realized the map wasn't ever meant to be the whole plan. It was a set of training wheels made of inherited ideas, social constructs that really never fit me, and a hefty pinch of generational trauma thrown in for good measure. If you're dealing with something similar right now, this is what I want you to know.

1. The end is rarely the literal end

Certain life events –– divorces, job losses, etc. –– can feel like the end of the world, because they're just that devastating. But they're also the endings of chapters in your life story, not the whole damn book, regardless of how they may feel at the time. In some cases, they might also mark the end of how you pictured your life playing out. 

Realizing that absolutely sucks, so it's understandable if you need to mourn for a while. Let yourself be angry or sad. But know that life also has a way of sneaking in new possibilities when we’re not looking. Releasing the idea of what should have happened (but couldn't for whatever reason) makes space for what can happen now.

On Wandering Back (and Wandering Pens)

I've been thinking a lot about this particular blog space lately. I'm in the process of my latest evolutionary stage as a writer (and when am I not evolving along with everything else on the Internet). 

I have a dedicated space for pretty much everything else now – my professional insights, my copywriting samples, my artwork, my monetized essays, and so forth. But I still find myself without a place to write publicly that's just... personal. A place where I write about myself and share all my random meta thoughts about creativity that don't quite go anywhere else. 

Do people even do that online anymore? I'm not sure I even know anymore. 

As a professional copywriter and content creator, I do know what people do when they want to create helpful, business-facing content. But where do they go when they just want to scream into the void in a way that's a little more polished and planned than they would do if they were just writing in their personal journal? Who knows. But I kind of like the idea of finding out. 

At any rate, it felt like it was time to check in here and lay the first brick of a foundation I think will be good for me moving forward, both as a writer and an individual. Eventually, those who like the way I think can come here and follow along if they feel moved to. In the meantime...

On the End of NaNoWriMo

I read recently that National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is officially no more, at least as a yearly event. It's been a while since I was hardcore into participating every year, but NaNo has still played a huge role in my development as a writer over the years. For starters, it taught me how to set and stick to personal deadlines. 

NaNo made me realize just how much you really can accomplish when you set your mind to it, as well, even if you're crazy busy. Even when you're sick to death of your project and really don't know where to go with it next. It's been part of my life for something like 20 years now. I haven't participated every year the way some people have, but it's been nice to know that it was there for me to go back to if I ever needed it. 

On Life and What I've Been Up to Creatively Lately

Original Image by Shannon Hilson via Midjourney

I swear I don't know where the damn time goes when it comes to these blogs I still like to tell myself I maintain. I'll realize it's been a while since my last update, but when I finally make it over to the platform to type something up, I'll see it's actually been... like... months. So long in some cases that the entire posting interface is totally different, as is apparently the case with Blogger today.

I know I keep saying this, and I'll say it again (to whatever audience I still have left or might have at any point in the future). Don't take breaks when it comes to your personal writing. I don't care how many awesome clients want to pay you good money for your time, expertise, and labor. A week off so easily turns into a month, and that so easily turns into several months. Before you know it, you're back to wondering whether you even know how to write a decent blog post anymore and unsure of where to start figuring it out.

Instead, treat whatever type of writing you want to make sure you keep doing -- blogging, newsletters, journaling, fiction, poetry, fortune cookie sayings, what have you -- with the same seriousness you would your paying freelance work. Try not to worry too much about whether it makes you money because God knows that's my problem. I have a tendency to spend my time and writing energy wherever the money is at any given time, but self-expression is crucial, too, which you'll realize if you neglect it long enough.

On Clients and Freelance Work

My original reason for taking a bit of a break from blogging and other types of writing (with the exception of the private journaling I do for the sake of my sanity and the creative writing I pump out every year during NaNoWriMo) was an abundance of well-paying freelance work that fell in my lap. It was mostly thanks to one client for whom I loved writing and still enjoy writing. But they've been revamping some things on their end lately.

Some of the revamps had to do with their reimagining their SEO strategy, which meant the blog project they had me working on became less of a priority. They're also going through some staffing changes. The editor I'd gotten to know and had been working with this entire time left last Friday, and I was honestly pretty bummed about that, as I genuinely liked the guy and enjoyed working with him. 

I don't yet know the new editor or her vision for that blog moving forward, and they're likely still figuring it out themselves. But for the immediate moment, I don't have a ton to do as far as assignments from that company go. That leaves me with a little free time on my hands after I'm done seeing to my other regulars. It feels weird to have time again, but I'm going to see if I can't use it to reestablish some sort of regular writing habit here.

On Feeling Like the Ghost of a Blogger and a Life Update

Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson in Howards End (1992)

So a word to the wise aspiring writer. Don't take breaks from any of the things you're out there doing to build your brand and get your name around. A little break can so easily turn into a long one, and before you know it, you've lost a lot of the progress you made over all those months you worked so hard. I feel a little thin right now -- like the ghost of a blogger -- and I'm not sure I like it.

Today was the first day in a long while when I haven't needed to spend my entire productive day working on freelance assignments, so I've been attempting to catch up on things like Medium posts, items on my personal to-do list, and social media tasks. Coming back and posting something new to Medium especially felt really weird, and it's clear that I've got my work cut out for me as far as getting my traffic back up where it used to be. The single-digit views on that poor article from earlier were depressing, to say the least.

It felt really good to actually write something for myself again besides entries to my private journal that no one has access to but me, though. It was also nice to spend some time on video lectures, umpteenth watchings of old beloved movies like Howards End, and a little bit of pleasure reading, to boot. (I'm currently reading Their Eyes Were Watching God.) I need more little pockets of time like the ones I enjoyed today, and today was a valuable reminder of that. 

I wasn't going to take a long weekend for President's Day, as I was worried about falling behind at work. But most of my clients are taking it, so I don't have much on my plate right now and may as well take an extra day off, too. When I mentioned that to Seth, he said I need to take better advantage of working for myself and enjoy the same holidays everyone else gets. When he's right, he's right.

The World Has Officially Become Strange in My Absence

I went out the other day. And I don't just mean outside for some fresh air, either. I literally masked up, got in an Uber, and ran an errand before Ubering back home. I've voluntarily done almost everything I need to from home for years at this point, so up until now, I've been able to stay the hell away from the outside world without changing much about my routine. And honestly, I would have been happy to continue that way indefinitely, but I needed to get a new ID and couldn't avoid visiting a DMV field office in person.

The DMV errand went just fine, but holy shit, has the world ever gotten weird in my absence. I'm, of course, well aware of how things have changed since the last time I was out frolicking around, never even having heard of COVID before. I knew what to expect in every way. But this was my first time seeing it all with my actual eyes and experiencing it in person. Seth came with me and also hasn't been out since the pandemic began, so I at least wasn't alone when it came to the perceived weirdness of it all.

It's one thing to know everyone masks up and social distances now, pretty much as a rule. It's another thing to actually visit places I've been to plenty of times before and see people doing it. It was a strangely similar experience to nightmares I've had in the past. In these nightmares, I'd visit places I either knew very well or had found very comforting in the past, but something vital would be wrong with them, suggesting it only looked like I was where I was supposed to be. 

My sense of direction has always been terrible, so getting lost was one of my most persistent childhood fears. When I'm anxious, I still dream about it in various contexts, especially those that suggest I might just have to stay lost forever. So seeing definitive proof that COVID really has touched my town -- the place where I grew up and have lived off and on for most of my life -- was a little strange. I can actually kind of see why so many people have so much trouble accepting this reality and choose to deny it altogether because they don't know what else to do.

Yes, My Communication Skills Need Work

Isolation Communication - Charles Luna

So, one thing I've been desperately trying to work on lately is being less of a trash-hole human as far as communication goes, particularly online. I am notoriously horrible at it and have been my entire life. Part of that is probably a spectrum thing, as I just kind of shut down socially and isolate more when I've been letting comments on Medium or on social media back up too far without responses. The rest of it is often either a time thing or a genuine lack of knowledge about what to say in response.

So, I guess what I'm getting at is that if you're a reader who's ever reached out to me over email, on Medium, or via any of my social media channels and didn't get a response, it doesn't mean I didn't see it or deliberately chose to ignore it. I likely read it right away through my notification emails, meant to get back to you some other time, and then spaced it entirely. Or I could just be taking my sweet time, which I sometimes do. I often have a lot on my plate -- so much that I occasionally have to pull back temporarily from blogging and social media altogether -- and it can take me a while to circle back to things like answering comments. 

Seriously, the only time I deliberately ghost communications from a reader altogether is if they were rude or trollish. So, if you're not an asshole who went out of your way to try to ruin my day because you don't like my stupid face or something, know that I appreciate you and your response. Even if I never wound up getting back to you because I took so long about it that responding started to seem "weird". Don't let my overblown sense of self-confidence fool you. I'm a master overthinker, and that gets me into trouble sometimes.

On Summer Weather I Can Actually Enjoy for a Change

I almost don't dare speak of it "out loud", even online, because I don't want to jinx anything. But it's been unseasonably cool out here these days. Typically, we'd be frying to death out here, especially considering how awful the climate's gotten over the past few years. That's certainly what's been happening to my friends in Southern Cal and upstate, as well as up in Washington and Oregon -- long-lasting heat waves and ridiculous temperatures well above 100 degrees. 

To be honest, I'm shocked that we're not getting the same, but I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, either. I'm sorry for everyone else, but I'm exceedingly grateful not to be dealing with the same. We've been happily making the most of fantastic weather that's been pretty much perfect -- cool and even cloudy for the most part. It even rained a couple of times, which is always welcome this time of year. I'm not interested in a repeat of last year's god-awful wildfire situation.

We've still been enjoying all of our wonderful al fresco meals just about every night, as well. However, we've also (somehow) developed a new interest in playing old-school games at the table for a little while after we've finished eating. So far, we've mostly been playing Uno, but we've been having so much fun, we want to learn more games soon. Interestingly, that's just hilarious to me, as I've always thought card games, board games, and that sort of thing sounded like the lamest thing to want to do with your time. You'd think by now I'd have internalized "don't knock it 'til you try it" a little better. 

I've Realized I'm a Happy Person at Heart

That's not something I would have been able to say about myself for most of my life. I spent years of my life thinking about what was wrong with the world, judging people who didn't live the way I thought they should and obsessing over the ways I didn't think my own life measured up to the status quo. But I've noticed things have been different for me lately.

It's not that my life changed. I still have the vast majority of the problems I had before and could well be stuck with some of them for the foreseeable future. I just have a better attitude than I used to. Some of that seemed to come with age, but the rest really was about a simple perspective change. It's a change I'm grateful for, as life is just better this way. After all, I only get one of those... a life. I don't really want to waste mine griping, complaining, and judging. 

Life's never going to be fucking perfect.

I used to think that I couldn't be happy until I got specific details of my life in line. When I was an awkward teenager, I thought being prettier would do it. Later on, I thought meeting someone would be the answer. Or finding a way to run a business out of my home so I wouldn't have to spend so much of my time at an office or behind a cash register somewhere. Then I met someone, got married, and still wasn't happy with my love life, so I got a divorce and started daydreaming about the day I'd meet someone better. Once I had a business, I wanted a better one doing more exciting work. 

There's always going to be something else -- some other part of your life that downright sucks or something monumental you finally achieve only to realize your life still isn't the way you want it. And the vast majority of those solutions you thought were going to solve all your problems come with brand new issues of their own. If you wait to allow yourself any measure of happiness or contentment until everything's perfect, you're going to be waiting until you drop dead.