It’s discouraging when you work something up in your head for so long and nothing comes of it; the moment I put something in there, I can’t let it go for the life of me. And it’s even more discouraging when you realize that what you want may not exactly be what you need. But John Steinbeck once wrote to his sons: “I have discovered that there are other rivers. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers.” I over-analyze literature like I over-analyze everything else, but what I took from this is that sometimes, we try to cling so hard onto what we know, simply because it’s what we know. But you have to allow your dreams to change so constantly because you are changing so constantly. There are other rivers, and other cities, and other places to grow in. And often, they are the ones you would never expect.

It’s been a hell of a year, but in the very ordinary, nothing-too-tragic-has-occurred sense. You know, the kind of hell that has nothing to do with a death or an incurable illness or a divorce or an addiction, none of that. In fact, if you were to peer into the window of my life from the sidewalk a yard away, it would look to you like it’s been quite a rich year from last summer to the new one approaching us: adventures all around the country and even the world, a new job, a new house with a kitchen so beautiful it should be photographed and framed, a new kitten, by golly! So much new-ness. All good. Objectively, that is.

But I’ve been a mess through it all, a big ‘ole blumbering not-pretty-to-look-at, please-avert-your-eyes mess.