Where We Go From Here

I’ve delayed writing any sort of post dealing with the roller coaster that has been 2020 or explaining my silence here. The honest answer is that I was lost for words – I had no way to describer what I was experiencing in the middle of a pandemic, starting a job working from home, dropping out of grad school, watching an uprising for racial justice and against police brutality take place blocks from my home. I watched the world watch Minneapolis and I acted when I could, but mostly I stayed quiet and watched and learned.

I’ve learned a lot about the way of things this year. 2020 has broken my heart and made it grow in more ways than I thought possible. I am still growing and I know it’s a process with no end in sight. To be alive is to grow. All this can be is a collective sampling of these growths, pruning and harvesting to produce something new.

As you might have gleaned in from the above, I am no longe pursuing a masters degree in library science. Library science will always have a special place in my heart and all that I do connects to it in some way. But the pandemic stopped those plans and I stopped them for myself, realizing it wasn’t the right path for me. My path has been and always will be writing. Fortunately, I’ve found the perfect day job in higher education in the meantime. But this year has been greatly focused on giving my writing its due.

I aim to turn this into a blog about and for writing. I want to give notice to the work writers do in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of global change. I want to work to be a better person, to question what I think I know, and learn to receive feedback with an open mind, not defensively. I want to forgive myself for the mistakes I have made and forgive others. Most of all, I want to celebrate the things I love, dunk on some things I think need work, and celebrate all the weird, wonderfulness of human beings. As I’ve strove to do before, racial justice, queer rights, queer theory, mental health, and trauma recovery will be reoccurring themes. If 2020 has given me anything (and it’s given me a great deal, surprisingly) it’s helped me reconcile all the different facets of myself – the psych/cultural studies major, the bisexual and the demisexual, the shy and the outgoing, the critic and the fangirl. Overall, I’ve broken down the boundaries and binaries that exist within myself and feel like for the first time in my life, I know who I am.

And now that I’m here, I’m ready to move forward. Maybe this will lead to a podcast. Maybe it’ll lead to a book. Maybe it’ll lead to a blog nobody reads but I love writing because I really, really love writing. No matter what, I’m here. Let’s go.

But first, one of the many things 2020 has given me, a new favorite song from a new favorite band.