I have begun writing a life update every month since January and manage to get 200 words into each one of them only to find another month has passed me by. If I keep waiting around for the next hallmark time, my current pattern would project that I won’t write a new post until January 1st of 2027. So instead, please find below some life ramblings and updates.

I spent over a decade in Albuquerque. I got to know the city intimately and I was embedded into its rhythms. There were parts of it that I loved and parts of it that had started to grate on every last nerve. I miss the heat and the size and the food and my friends. But I’m so glad I moved to Seattle.

Over the last few years, I have been in need of something new to do. I wanted to explore new restaurants, see new art galleries, pop in to new bookstores and walk new parks and take in new sunsets. Seattle has been all that and more. This city has a different rhythm and demands different ways of being. I have also been able to establish new patterns here now that I was free of everything that had become so normal in Albuquerque. Sometimes, when we stay in a particular situation for a long time, we stop seeing the things that have become so habitual that we can’t break out of them. Moving allowed me the freedom to ask who I could be if I didn’t have to follow all those old rules anymore.

I’ve started writing again. It’s been rough, let me tell you. I remember when I was younger, words were always just flowing out of me. I had so many stories to tell and such definite opinions about how I wanted to tell them. But somewhere early into the transition of “having a job” and “being an adult” and “making a living” I put that aside. It stayed a quiet yearning in the background for over a decade. In Albuquerque, there was always an intention to get back to it but the intention never quite made its way into action.

The first week I was in Seattle, I joined a writing group. At least once a week, I get together with these people and I hammer out words (I’m literally writing these at one such group right now). At first, it was mostly just casting about, getting messy, splashing things around and trying to chip off the rust. The writing group is about the accountability of showing up to writing, and thankfully I didn’t need to share any of my out-of-practice experiments before I felt ready. But over the last few months, I’ve zeroed in on a short story and I’m actually trying to make it into something worthwhile. I’m really pleased with the work so far and look forward to sharing it with that group soon.

There have been other positive changes as well. I’m going to the gym with a regularity I haven’t had since before the pandemic. Landing squarely in my mid-thirties at this point, I knew that I needed to get back into the habit now before it got any harder than it already was. I’ve been working on my relationship with my spending; the cost of living in Seattle has really made me reassess some of the luxuries I was previously affording myself. The current economic climate has also helped to force my hand on making some more rigorous changes to my budget. I’ve even gone on a few dates, which has been a particularly exciting difference from Albuquerque.

Being in Seattle has been an experience of wanting two mutually exclusive existences. On the one hand, I miss being in New Mexico. I miss things like the desert heat and drinks at the Copper Lounge and craft days with my coven. I miss that I could have dinner with a different friend every day of the week and that so many people were only a phone call away. I miss how easy it was to exist there. But I can’t have the experiences there that I can here in Seattle. I want to be in both places, live both lives, but I am limited by a body that can only exist in one place at one time. And for now, that place is still Seattle.

Culture and Media

Read in Winter:

• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix [4/5 stars] : I will read whatever Hendrix puts out and generally love it. Had super high expectations for this one, but they didn’t quite get there. I wanted a bit more witching than what I got. Still a great read.
• Graveyard Shift, M.L. Rio [2/5] : I feel like this should have been stretched out to a proper novel length. There were interesting ideas in here, but it was glazed over so quickly that I don’t think it had a chance to set in properly. Perhaps it would have been better with fewer than FIVE protagonists for a 100-ish page novel.
• Bunny, Mona Awad [5/5] : This was recommended to me as Heathers meets The Craft and it did not disappoint! About a third of the way through I had to put the book down and just sit there for a minute as I asked myself “what the fuck?” This repeated every 10-15 pages for the rest of the book and it was amazing. Cannot wait for the sequel this fall.
• How to Sell a Haunted House, Grady Hendrix [5/5]: This is what I expect of Grady Hendrix books, something that is equal parts terrifying and puts me through the emotional ringer. The monster in this book is possibly one of the most horrifying I’ve ever read and there was one particularly memorable moment while listening to the audiobook where I was so stunned I stopped dead in my tracks during a walk.
• The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar [3/5]: I should have known better than to hold this up against This Is How You Lose the Time War (a 5 star book for me), but I still did and it didn’t quite measure up for me, unfortunately. There was some beautiful prose and I love the way the author used grammar and the ways we talk about ourselves and others as a literal magic, but the overall plot didn’t grab me.

Played in Winter:

• Eternity’s Hostage (Good Society): Every January, I get together with my friends in the Kingsport Drama Society to play a series of Russian literature-flavored Good Society. This year, we tackled a plot in the style of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. This marks the final entry in our Russian Lit cycle, and next year, we tackle French classics. Watch the series on YouTube!
• For The Queen: I convinced my writing group to try out a tabletop RPG. As it turns out, writers make very creative collaborative storytelling partners, and we had a blast creating the world of a holy and unknowable queen who inspires such blind faith and deep pain that she tore everyone around her to pieces.
• Link’s Awakening (Nintendo Switch): I’ve been very nostalgic for simpler years of my life lately and found myself gravitating toward this Nintendo remaster. I had never played the original game and finally rolled credits during a rainy weekend. It scratched that childhood itch perfectly.

Watched in Winter:

• Interview with the Vampire (Seasons 1 & 2): An absolutely amazing story and masterful television. I have never seen the 1994 film or read the book, so I had no standard for comparison. It quickly became one of my favorite pieces of media ever.
• Severance (Season 2): After waiting THREE YEARS for this to come back, the season really didn’t disappoint. A blistering first few episodes with stakes raised in new and interesting ways only slightly marred by a slower third act and a truly bonkers season finale!
• Kill La Kill (Anime): Rewatched this after having not seen it since college and it still holds up surprisingly well (aside an abuse subplot that I had understandably completely blotted for memory). I also had never seen the special post-season episode, so that was a nice wrap-up.
• Hazbin Hotel (Season 1): I had put off watching this for a while because everyone was raving about it, but I did indeed also love it. Predictably, my favorite number was Poison, which was both pop perfection and a shocking depiction of sexual abuse in the adult film industry.

Favorite Thing

I have been exercising a lot lately! A friend and I are doing a twelve week workout plan and it’s required an hour in the gym four days a week. The surge of endorphins has been incredibly helpful to navigate the gray winter here and I actually feel stronger than I did two months ago, which is also a wonderful experience. I’ve always been someone who responds well to social obligation, and having someone to work out with has been incredibly motivating. Only four more weeks to go, and then it’s up to me to maintain the habit!

Spring

I haven’t really put much thought into what I want to accomplish in this new season. It’s been hard to think about the long term when I wake up almost every day to economic volatility and political cruelty. I cast around a lot lately for stability, for making the next few hours a little more calm. I want to make sure I am still growing, still flowing. I have a short story I would like to get somewhere close to done and I want to read more. I have a few trips coming up. I would like to make sure I’m not waiting another two years before I write another post here. I’ll just have to see where the rhythm takes me.