It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me

Panic at the art factory

Two years ago, when I started this Substack I thought I’d use it as a way to hold myself accountable but then I didn’t. What is it they say about the best-laid plans?  

I owe myself an apology (I’m not big-headed enough to think that anyone else actually missed me posting--or even noticed that I didn’t). 

After I wrote an entry about the search for my biological mother’s sister, I received such wonderful feedback that I panicked: Now what?

I didn’t intend for this site to focus solely on memoir entries and as people subscribed or left kind comments to say they wanted more of the same, I worried that this is what it would become—that its initial focus would narrow onto a particular sliver of my life.

I want this site to be more than just memoir. I want it to be weird lists and obsessive pop culture detours. I want it to be nostalgic asides, link roundups, and the odd cultural critique. And, of course, I still want to tell you about the time Matt Damon made me an espresso.

I plan to finish the story about my aunt, but I’m trying to save much (not all!) of the rest for the actual memoir I'm writing.

Speaking of memoir, however, since I last posted, I started a low residency MFA creative nonfiction program at Goucher College. I’ve been working on the book since the summer of 2019—a few months after my adoptive mother died—and I’m proud of the groundwork I laid with those drafts. 

I thought about applying for a MFA program during the darkest days of the pandemic when I felt depressed, confined to the house and craving community. 

The irony of then applying for a low residency program that is largely conducted over Zoom is not lost on me, but the people I’ve met and worked with have been a bright, creative light in my life—even when I’m feeling down on myself, convinced that I can’t write for shit and will never complete this stupid book. And maybe I won’t ever finish it, but in the last year-and-a-half, this program has helped me crystallize themes and structure in a way that I am starting to see the skeleton of it emerge, its limbs locking together even as I sometimes still struggle to lay out its connective tissues.

Anyway, it’s the end of November and although the fall colors are particularly beautiful here this year, the days are also markedly shorter and it seems like midnight by 6 p.m. and I’ve been a little down—emotionally burned out, creatively stuck, and exhausted.

That’s where the MFA program comes in, forcing me to sit and write, which is apparently the only way books actually get made. At least it’s an especially cozy time to write—there’s something magical about sitting in a cafe as the sky turns black and the inside lights reflect like halos in the window. This and the endless cups of coffee keep me going.

I’ve been keeping busy in other ways, freelancing here and there. I also just finished a wonderful class, Comics for People Who Can’t Draw, led by the kind and viciously talented Aubrey Hirsch. I signed up for the class after purchasing a Gemma Correll zine in a San Francisco bookshop. I want to do that, I thought to myself even though I wasn’t entirely sure what “that” was. Now, more than two months later, I still really can’t draw, but the class tapped into a side of my brain that I never realized needed attention (see silly illustration above).

As we slide into December with its holidays, year-end lists, and ruminations, I am making a conscious effort to take a deep breath to focus not just on those which nurtures and inspires me—because let’s be honest here, those things only take one so far—but that which keeps me plodding along with forward motion into sustaining tangible goals. That which keeps me from panicking at the thought of creating, but instead nudges me to reset expectations, show up and put in the work.

No promises, not even to myself, but onward and outward.