This year’s been a fucking freakshow. I mean, forget about ALL of the stuff, it’s simply how time is moving. I look at the calendar widget on my desktop and it’s nearly October. Nearly a year ago, I was pushing ¡Pa’Que Tu Lo Sepas!, I was actively hunting for an agent, and I was plotting my 2020.

Obviously, all of our plans changed.

Still, even though things changed, it sort of stayed the same?

I’m plotting another anthology (more soon), hunting for a publisher with an awesome agent at my side, and I’m sort of plotting my 2021?

It’s difficult to believe there’s been any real traction this year. I haven’t written as much as I’d like. I went out on sub during a fucking pandemic. But there are bright sides too. I learned how to bake (for those of you following me on IG, I seem to be pretty good at it too), I’ve found a rhythm with working out again that isn’t all running focused, and I feel like becoming 40 brought it’s own little breakthroughs. I guess the opportunity was a chance for actual self exploration, not just bullshit ego stroking (which, hey, as a writer, I am AWESOME at).

There’s this feeling that I’m on the precipice of something – an unknowable something, but something nonetheless – that I can’t shake. And again, this is not a post about the burning world, I know it’s burning and that’s a whole other part of my brain dealing with that trauma, but the part of my brain that’s seemingly healing scars I didn’t know I had is working. And it’s working well? Maybe. Still not 100% on that just yet.

Trauma’s been on my mind. The broad ones and the tiny ones. How we heal and how we cope. How we find the will to stand up every day to face down our dragons. And the more I think about those things I find that I’m not as invested in answers anymore. I care, but that weird craving for epiphanies is dead. I’m finally understanding that life isn’t about realization for finality or closure. It’s simply about growth until that growth is simply no longer happening.

So I choose to grow. Like a weed. Like ivy on lattice. Where I end up is where I end up. Something in my way? Fuck it, let’s move past it or we’ll simply force our way forward.