Two Necessary Reminders:

Brilliant advice from Brian Buirge + Jason Bacher

And this:

When we trust ourselves, we become both more humble and more daring. When we trust ourselves, we move surely. There is no unnecessary strain in our grasp as we reach out to meet life. There is no snatching at people and events, trying to force them to give us what we think we want. We become what we are meant to be. It is that simple. We become what we are, and we do it by being who we are, not who we strive to be. ~ From The Sound of Paper by Julia Cameron

{in progress}

The summer's half over, and I'm swimming in a sea of chapters. Held down by river stones, the pages of various drafts flutter on the floor as the fan oscillates. Meanwhile I vacillate back and forth believing this manuscript will be complete by deadline and the book will be good; and that I'll never make the deadline, and it's all a pile of crap. Mostly I try just keep my eye on the page, my heart in my words, and my fingers flying.

The end of a really good week

We made chocolate chip cookie dough just for eating after dinner tonight; then wandered along the paths T just cut through the meadows. So many flowers. Grass up higher than the boys' heads. Bats swooping low above us. Sundown making everything golden and lavender.

This week was good. It was beyond needed: to have some time with my three boys. To write. To rest. To run. To recalibrate a little.

++

Sprout is suddenly, finally, talking in sentences. "My hands are filfy, Daddy!" he said tonight, holding up flour covered palms after rolling dough out for chapattis with me. Unlike bean who talked in sentences at about 18 months, sweet Sprout has taken his time. But now, in just the last week or two is words are tumbling out nonstop. He makes all of us happy. From the day he was born he's had this buddha presence: he is calm and centered and joy-filled and it rubs off on everyone around him. Bean adores him, even though they fight endlessly over ownership of insignificant objects: long sticks, particular crayons, certain books, matchbox cars.

Bean is all elbows and long legs. He rides a his new bike with gears and hand breaks like a pro, and gets up with aplomb and bravery when he takes a spill on uneven terrain, blood often running down a knee. He's decided wants to grow his hair long. For now we're kind of rolling with it. We lovingly call him mop-head. He wakes up with a tangled shock of semi-curls, and lures Sprout out of bed, and then the two of them come find us. It's still one of my favorite times of day, then, in those first moments of morning when we're all there together, still sleep and warm and trailing dreams.

++

The manuscript is now a complete draft. There are some rough chapters, but everything is there now, in place, in sequence, and my mind can hold it all at once. That's been so hard: I can't really explain it. There is something about the linear medium of the computer that makes it really challenging for me to see all the parts as a part of the whole. I went to UPS today and printed the whole thing at 1.5 spacing with wide margins for marking up. It's about an inch thick, and made things feel real in a way that they haven't until now:I'm writing a book. Really. Truly.

Now, if only I can stay in the groove when I get back into the swing of things at school + work.

+++

PS: I'm craving some new summer tunes. Do you have any suggestions?

And so I am learning to moon walk

The sky is grey and yellow and thunder moves about like a restless god above us. Rain falls then stops, and the gutters drip. In the yellow dark after the storm the birds sing twilight songs. The trees become silhouettes. The sky turns to taupe, then lavender, then black. Curled inside with my feet tucked under me like a cat, I can feel the way my breath catches in my ribs. The way I have to consciously remember to breath out. The way this week I’m always close to tears.

This summer I feel like I’ve landed on the moon: my third semester in graduate school, full time, in an immersive program that is, by it’s very definition a moving target: emergent media.

And so I am learning to moon walk, which is a lot like learning to fly except for the inevitable part when gravity always catches up in the end.

It’s work that requires leaping again and again toward the very center of what I love: telling stories with words, with images, with media that moves through time, with interaction. And inevitably: coming down hard again and again, as I fall short, underestimating what I think that I can do, imagining a project too big and wide for the scope of my limitations. Most of the time my limitations are about time. Ironic, isn’t it? Because of course, I’ve dared to write about this thing called the present tense. Of course I’ve leaped into the very thick of this glorious mess. Wanting all of it, hungrily, the way the humming birds come again and again for simple syrup we fill the feeders with. I keep coming back, even when every the nanoparticles of every minute are filled to the brim.

Some days being a mama and a partner while doing school and writing a book in a genre that blurs (personal essay + mixed media illustrations) makes my breath catch in my ribs like I’ve swallowed the pit of some magical tree that will burst forth from my ribs in full bloom.

Other days it feels more like standing in front of a fire hose. To move at the speed of emergent media means to be endlessly and simultaneously processing, considering, noticing, reading, questioning, answering, creating, making asking, and doing, all day, every day. But to write a book, means to dwell, linger, revise, consider.

It’s a brutal, brilliant, overwhelming combination. And time dissolves like sugar.

Maybe it's no wonder I've been feeling exceptionally thin skinned lately: as though the barrier between me and the world is as slight now as the screen that separates me from the night that arrives softly, filled with the trilling of tree frogs and bull frogs and the sounds of moths fluttering with their incessant, fragile wings.

+++

I’m so grateful for your comments in my last post. You have no idea how much courage and joy they gave me.

when I listen to myself, this is what I say

// Here is what my heart is saying today:

Take the time. Get more sleep. Let exercise be a part of every day. Soak up time with my boys more. Focus on making this book incredible. Stop being so scared of the potential for failure. Just let the fear sit there next to me. I will not fail. Narrow my attention. Breathe.

My Tuesday Muse

This boy and I get to spend Tuesday mornings together, and how I love this time. He is my muse, this little one. He reaches for the world, grinning, offering joy, laughter, and his face upturned for kisses, cheeks jammy, eyes sparkling. How I love him.

++

Also--My guest post is up over at 3six5 today. Go take a peak. It's such a cool blog--and just got nominated for a Webby!

The Big Deal

I am driving toward home. The road is rutted, and wet spring snow is falling in a blur against the windshield. There is the froth from a cappuccino from my favorite coffee place in a paper cup beside me, and good tunes on the stereo and I’m returning from two more interviews, my mind is brimming with the way these stories that I’m gathering all circle back to this:

Do what you love. Say yes. Risk everything. Practice, and practice some more. Then do it all again.

And then I’m at my mail box and all week I’ve been opening it looking, waiting to find the fat envelope I’m expecting. The promise, the whole thing spelled out in ink and official forms, and today it was there, and I signed and slipped the papers into a new envelope and stuck them on the wide bay window sill by the door so I won’t forget to bring them to the post office to send out by certified mail first thing in the morning.

And just like that: I’ve signed a book deal.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Life In The Present Tense: A Field Guide To Now will be published by Globe Pequot Press and available in book stores in September of 2012!

I’ve been waiting because it feels so good, so almost too good to be true good, that I wanted everything singed and sealed before I shared here.

Because this is it. This is the beginning of the rest of my life. The beginning of what I want more than any other thing, and it’s happening.

It’s happening because of your backing, and encouragement and trust in my process and my heart is wide ocean of gratitude.

My editor,* Mary Norris, found the book via Kickstarter and has been pushing me the past several months to hone my proposal and dig into my vision of what I picture for this book and it’s oh so good.

An I can’t wait to finally start sending out the long promised backer rewards. Cannot wait to make prints, and pull together postcards, and chapter snippets and a podcasts and sneak peaks and just pure goodness. Stay tuned.

* Yes! I finally get to say that. It feels amazing.
++

A week or two ago I found is the scrap of paper on which I scribbled this dream, before I could even imagine how it might be possible.

It's proof: ask, and the universe answers.

Do what you love. Say yes. Risk everything. Practice, and practice some more. Then do it all again.

All the love in the world,
Christina

Things that delight me

This series of shadows snapped from a walk with the boys yesterday.

Spring riding today: blue squares all the way. Easy turns. Wide grins.

Buying a new moleskine. The reporter kind with plain white pages. I the way the pages feel flimsy and effortless; the way ink shows through & the way words tumble after each other to be put down there in my messy handwriting.

A secret I can't wait to share really, really soon.

The way the light lasts longer and longer every day.

Mapping out my schedule for summer and blocking off whole days for writing, no excuses. (Or perhaps I have the best excuse.)

What are six things you're delighted by today?

in this moment

Just stopping in quickly to say hello this morning with these photos from my sunny, sunny bedroom... and to nudge you to go play. Do one thing. Today. You'll be so happy. (Promise.)
I'm finishing a big milestone for the book today (later than I'd hoped. Typing with fingers crossed makes things difficult.) And it feels good and terrifying and true to my heart. I wish I could tell you more, but I don't want to jinx it.
Today I'm crushing on this sweet song.
Reading the archives over at Slow Pony Home.
And swooning over every single afternoon here.

In it

I meant to post yesterday. I am a NaBloPoMo failure, but that is ok. I'm going to keep posting anyway. I'm in it. That's what matters. In this moment, in my studio, writing. The light is so bright today I had to pin up paintings the boys made over the windows; my own stained glass, the light opaque and sacred falling on my desk.

At the doorway, Sprout hovers. It's just us today, getting things done. He's so good: I make him a snack in a wooden bowl and tell him to play and he does, mostly, coming to my doorway to check in every so often. The hall is wide--a perfect playroom, and toys are strewn inevitably, a cacophony of things with wheels rattling down the length of it. I put on my headphones so I can think. This mix helps this morning. I go back to the page I am editing. There isn't any other way except to be in it, is there?

What are you in the thick of today?

Circles and lines

A trip to Boston and back in two days. Too many hours in the car; rain pelting, pummeling; grey, on grey, on grey. Mist hanging low among the pines and oaks, their leaves brown now, the last deciduous trees to loose their leaves. The boys in the back seat eating fig newtons and building things with legos. Four hours, then traffic, then dinner with dear friends and bedtime for little guys in unfamiliar sleeping arrangements, and wine and in the morning, the penguins, as promised.

Now, post workout, headphones on, I sink into the quiet circle of my thoughts. It's a slow descent. Like a plan landing. I circle around myself, procrastinating, getting the runway in order. Some nights the runway is obscured with mist; with rain; with memories; with gulls circling; other's it's a quick hard landing, and then I'm in it, fingers flying, QWERTY, and blink, an hour is gone.

mountains at the back of my mind

Frost in the morning. The mountains pink again with dawn and snow. A filigree tiny crystals on every blade of grass, each barren twig, the puddles frozen over. We talk about jack frost and watch the skies for crows. Count them, two by two, and see the blackbirds here and there, scattered across the fields of stubby stalks of corn.

*

A trip to Boston tomorrow, solo, with both boys, and I am writing lists for not forgetting: string cheese and juice boxes and etch-a-sketches and extra pairs of pants.

*

An email from an editor (the editor?) wondering about the status of the book; and I have lump in my throat because the past month has been very quiet on that front. I have ideas, and I’m working, but slowly. It’s so good, so good, but is it what the editor wants?

It is more prose poem than essay, more wonder, than advice, more solace than suggestion. It is a reason, to show up, to pause, to rest with the empty space on the page; to linger with the fragments of image, with the telltale narrative of a day lived one moment after the next, spreading like concentric circles, widening the view from here, from this moment right now.

Is this important?

More important than market? What of blockbuster hits, what of print dying and all that jazz? Do I listen to that ruckus, or just make what springs up urgently?

What do you think?

writing like this

I wanted share this piece I just finished--based off a still life of bones--for school. I love how it turned out and am totally digging the freedom of digital + messy media. +++

11 weeks into the semester, and I am starting to feel the way rivulets of thought follow the same paths across my mind, effluvial, tangential, but towards the same place. Grooves forming. Patterns

The culmination of bigger projects are looming on the calendar now; dates circled, deadlines in red, and for all the art and code and philosophy and discussions about emergence, I miss writing.

Writing like this: words collected and stashed like a grubby handful of chocolates; words that tell you how the mountains were gleaming white and pink with snow and setting sun; words that capture the birds on the wires that my eye notices now always, tracing the contours of poles and lines that frame nearly every view.

Words that gather like snow clouds on the horizon; words that hold the dry air and the crackle of yellow-brown leaves; words that gut the feeling of quiver and heart flutter when two police cars pass me, lights flashing, sirens blaring, as I pull to the curb, hesitate, then go again. Words that do this: magic, poem, prose, wonder.

I’m doing this program, this time, these commitments because of writing. Because of the way I need it, like breathing. Because I am an artist first, always, and now, and have finally found the courage to claim this title for myself. And because when I graduate I’ll have three precious letters to attach to my name and the opportunity to open doors to new jobs that support and sustain me creatively and financially. But right this very second I crave what words can do for the single frail fluttering leaf, rust colored against the blue that is my heart tonight; in flight before a certain settling.

And so even though I’m a day late, I’m showing up for NaBloPoMo. Whatever I have, that’s what I’m giving. Messy fragmented words. Whatever I’ve got.

Will you come along? Your comments make me happy every single time.

solitary moments

The valley is umber and golden and red below me, and the poplar that quivered all summer in turns silver and green has shaken it’s leaves to the ground. Crows call, squirrels churl, and the wind pulls at the house. It’s a familiar sound: the sound of the colder months here on this hill that I call home. It will be our fifth winter here and I know now the things I imagined I would when we first moved: where to find the brightest leaves for pressing; the softest moss among quarts in the woods; mushrooms under brambles; leathery skinned, fragrant and sweet apples.

Today I am inside and alone. In other rooms the floors gleam in the sunlight. In mine, the windows are backlit with the gold-orange of the trees, and the loudest clatter is my own fingers on the keyboard, my own breath. I soak up these solitary times when I can become reacquainted with the threads of narrative in my book, make progress, print drafts, scribble notes. It’s so very rare though, for me to be solitary, or even alone for more than an hour.

I imagine sometimes, dreamily, a little writing hut with months to spare. Time elastic and mine. But then I wonder if my mind would go soft; if I’d lack the discipline to persevere in the circle of my own circumscribed thoughts for so long. Self inflicted deadlines languish the longest, this I know. Similarly quiet rings the loudest in the absence of my small boys who fill the house with ruckus laughter; with the crashing of vehicles into one another; with wailing, with stomping feet, with squeals, with words.

When are you alone? What is the quiet like for you? What do you do that time, with only you? What are you like then?

snapshots like sunspots

From the past week:

1.

Frustration the color of crushed grapes; my fingers in my palms. We’re at a stand off: my five year old and I. He wants to do one thing, I’ve given him a choice of two others. It was like this when he was a baby. People said, “just let him cry it out,” but when we did, a single time, he cried for an hour, then fell asleep but woke up angry, remembering everything. Now his eyes are puffy with tears and allergies and I’ve had far too little time to myself, and far too many deadlines to make time now for this push and pull. I scream. SCREAM at him. I am ashamed, heartbroken. I want to snip through everything I’ve done with a small pair of embroidery scissors, thread after indelicate thread until I get back to the place where our hearts are close and our cheeks touch.

I hate you, Mommy. I hate you he screams.

Nothing prepared me for this. For the way I would feel like I had ruined everything. Like being broken up with, but irreparably worse. (Thank god we have a few more years before he is a teenager to figure things out...)

Finally I backed down. He played outdoors. We skirted each other ashamed by the mess we’d made of things. At bedtime he asked for Daddy to read to him, and slipped by my studio door without coming to goodnight.

2. T carries him into the bedroom before I am awake. The feeling of his bird like shoulder blades; the hull of his delicate ribs; the haphazard placement of his marionette arms against my neck, wakes me. I love you Mommy. I love you so much.

I love you too. I love you. I love you. I whisper back. His elbow makes an upside down V along the line of my chin. I press my nose into his neck where it smells forever just like him: like cookies and grass and autumn air, and slip a little towards a softer sleep.

3. We're downtown at a street festival and he stands watching the fire throwers, just like his dad, hands in pockets, one knee bent, transfixed. I leave the two of them watching and walk with Sprout and my mother to the Capitol green, where my littlest runs like he has something to prove. (He does: joy is everywhere.) His face beams. He climbs every set of stairs he can finds. He stops to smell every single flower; stroking the plush purple petals of the petunias as though they are the source of joy. (They are.)

4. My little one. He is the still point at the center of my heart, and a twirling dervish that colors my heart with of comfort. He is curls and sticky fingers and sweat on his brow and newly found independence and tantrums. He is laughter with juice running down his chin. He carries crushed gingersnap cookies in his fist and grins.

5. I can see them walking towards us across the green grass, both wearing yellow, like sunshine flooding towards me. They walk in synch and they are grinning: they’ve gotten lemonade and a new hat and gloves for him for winter, and they are almost one and the same, those two foreign bits of my heart.

6. The light is golden and the hills are purple and flame. The leaves have begun to turn to orange; tattered yellow; ocher. The grass is dewy now and strewn with the tree’s spent energy of a season.

Light refracts like fire in what remains.

an impossibly possible project

I’m driving with the windows down and my hair down and the late August light makes everything gold, gold, gold: the asphalt, the windshields of oncoming cars, the dozen college boys who run across the road in front of me, shirtless, their skin on fire in the setting sun, to run down the green median between the traffic. The air is sweet and the traffic slow and I drive away from myself and towards myself simultaneously. I’m going to class. The first of the semester. Already my mind is like a hive of bees, bristling with ideas, with longing, with possibility.

I feel like I am in the looking glass, slipping towards an alternate view of everything that I know, everything I can imagine, be, do.

I’m wearing a blue dress and it’s just me and the quiet and then, eventually, NPR as I wait at the stoplights and I want everything to feel the way it does tonight: full with opportunity, yet not saturated with the stress that will inevitably come as deadlines press and the hours cannot hold enough. Right now, anything feels possible. This is always the way things are before you begin them. You can be anything, right up until the moment when you try.

Then it’s all about sweat and grit and talent. I’m not leaving any room for doubt.

I have the feeling that I will be coming here often with words; with the little scraps of thoughts I invariably carry around in my head; with the wonder of all of it, and the terror too. I’m the only one in the program with two small kids. The only one living at the end of a long dirt road thirty minutes away. The only one nearly bursting with words for a book. It will all be possible, right?

If there was ever a time this blog had anything to do with balancing motherhood and a creative life, it will be now, for these next two years. I'm thinking it should be my new byline: My Topography: An Impossibly Possible Project.

{grin.}

I want to remember this: just before parking for class tonight I watched a middle aged couple, both blind, navigating the sidewalk together, their bodies a dialogue of halts and movements, their dark glasses reflecting the setting sun. They held each others arms, each tapping out a path for future steps with a long white stick. They encountered the park bench, a tree, and navigated around these obstacles with a kind of faltering grace. Without sight, they were wholly devoted to the task of being present in the moment of walking.

The only place I can be is right here, encountering the unexpected with joy.

I also wanted to tell you that I'll be posting links and inspiration and essays about emergent media and design here. (But I'll also be taking full advantage of all your awesomeness here. Stay tuned. I have a project already in the works that I need your input on.)

With grace

Good morning! We are just about to head out on a long bike ride (so happy) but I wanted to post these photos. I am loving the morning light this summer... and playing around with focus. I'm so looking forward to The August Break (there are a lot of projects around here that need some serious attention and it will be lovely to just show up in this space every day with a few photographs.)

In other news, there is still no news. I am learning gradually, slowly, to just settle into the present and let it be. I have begun to see how the mind in limbo becomes a trickster; how worry springs up when there is nothing else for the mind to do. When in a place of uncertainty, it's like the mind wants to be productive, wants to be doing something, and so, for lack of anything better--the untrained mind defaults to worry, to distraction, to imagining all the ways that things might not work out.

I am trying to do this part with grace. Already, some things that felt like they took forever to happen are behind me now with certainty: T is starting his new job next week, for one. I remember how we both obsessed over that situation, how the worry felt like a plum in my throat, swallowed whole. So we'll see. I'm trusting now that the right things will happen; that this is my right life filled with early morning sun, and words to write, and small boys playing harmonicas underfoot. Also: I spent all of yesterday thinking it was Tuesday. Imagine my surprise to discover today is Friday. Has this ever happened to you?

A studio glimpse + a way cool anthology

Here are a couple snapshots from photo booth earlier when T. interrupted me unexpectedly. I had just finished this update. I often use photo booth for editing actually. I read to myself out loud, then play it back, while following along and making changes. It helps me focus on the text, especially if I've been working on a piece for a while. I also hear the little things that I slip in as I speak; the subtle nuance of an added word, a phrase, an emphasis. I like catching that ephemera. Especially for this book, where the pieces are almost prose poems, and images--both painted and imagined, mean as much as the words.

+++

Mostly, I wanted to share this with you tonight ~ three of my pieces will be published in Milk & Ink this winter. I am so honored to be among this group of incredible authors. Go take a peak at the Facebook page...there are some profound, delightful, heartbreaking and wonderful stories being shared over there. And the very best part? All the proceeds of the book will be going to the charity, Mama Hope supporting women and children in Africa. Awesome, right?

August, just around the corner

Summer is galloping by. Full tilt. Allready the shadows are longer as we head outdoors after dinner, the four of us. The boys head to the sandbox. T and I grab our new rackets and giggle as we attempt volley after volley in the fading summer light. Around our heads halos of insects swarm; the air is mellow and smells of the honeysuckle and roses by the front door.
In the garden things are suddenly ready for harvest: arugula every single day, spinach, basil, chives, lettuce. I walk down barefoot, often followed by one or the other boy to harvest a colander full before lunch. The best salads begin with a simple vinaigrette, chopped fresh herbs, every green imaginable, and then whatever we have around to throw in: grilled trout, quinoa, carrot curlicues, tomatoes. I will remember this summer as the summer of fantastic salads.
And of changes.

Wild crazy wonderful changes.

Your comments on my last post really filled me up. I want you to know that. Each one brought new perspective, encouragement, thoughtfulness.

I especially loved this from V Grrrl, because it reaffirmed exactly what I believe:

I think a healthy family is one where everyone’s needs are balanced against each others, where family members recognize that everyone works together for the family as a whole, and that sacrifice and compromise are part of that process.

T and I and our boys all made a promise to each other about this upcoming year. It's going to be an all hands on deck kind of year, and all four of us are in. We're all going to try our hardest to do it the first time, follow through, pick up the slack, pick up the messes as we make them, remember to take walks, exercise, eat chocolate, laugh.

It's going to be such an adventure. I can't wait.

T and I have basically become adults together. We met when he was just turning 21, and in the decade that I've known him he's either been a student or working in the stock market and I cannot even begin to describe the relief and disorientation I feel at imagining him doing work that matters in the world; work that he loves; work for a salary. It will be a learning curve for us both to discover ourselves anew in these new roles. I imagine it will be all about patience and patience and patience. Also humor. And chocolate.

For the next month I'm working my way through the manuscript for A Field Guide To Now. It's exciting to finally be in it. Things are coming together. Art, words, ideas. I'm excited by the direction and beginning to trust the process now that I've had a few days strung together of consistent project time. (That last photo is a sneak peak at a piece of art that will go into a postcard.)

I'm curious: What are your plans for August? What food are you crushing on right now? What tunes are you loving?

Also: If you could hear just one thing that you need to hear right now, what would it be?

xoxo!

Saying Yes

The summer rain is falling slantwise against the open window glass. The sills are damp, the view a duotone of green and grey: foliage and clouds. In my new studio the window looks out on an apple tree, Norway beeches, and beyond the cloud cover, the mountains not so very far off. I’ve spent most of the morning here, working, and I love this new space so very much. I love how I can move from painting to words and back; how the book is taking shape now more quickly, my ideas knitting together from one day to the next. It's happening.

+++

Now for the news:

I will be going to graduate school full time, starting at the end of August.

It’s an MFA in Emergent Media (web and graphic design combined with the technologies and storytelling mediums that are emerging from the future.) It’s an opportunity for me to be at the forefront of field that is new and growing; and to shape a new career that is lucrative, creative, and complementary to what I already do. This has been in the works for a while...this shift...but I've said very little about it here because I didn't want to jinx, or speak too soon. Last year, doing part time work, discovered how much I was into this field; how I naturally had an eye for color and design, and for shaping a vision, or ad campaign.

It took me awhile to give myself permission to consider perusing a new career; a financially viable career; a fast-pasted, demanding career. (I've shared before how it has taken me a long time to shake off my father's altruistic expectations for me as a teacher. Whew. What a process!) It also took me awhile to dream up a career that would complement writing, maybe even sustain it, instead of detracting from it (as teaching has always done.)

So I'm in. I'm going.

Of course it is terrifying. Programming languages + me? Ha. Virtual worlds? Video editing? Pure crazy.

But I have never backed down because something is hard. And this is exciting-hard. It's thrilling.

I’ve written so much about the endless tug-of-war that goes on in my head about being a mother and being more than a mother. About being an creator in my own right; a writer, an artist, a shaper of my own financial future. And about being a mother who gets down on the floor with her boys every single day: plays legos, wrestles, builds things, paints, reads stories, bakes bread. Of course I’m torn. When making this decision I thought of my boys in 18 years from now. I asked their future selves what they would think if I went for this, or didn’t. I asked them what they would resent more: me super busy through two years of their childhoods, or me unfulfilled and holding that resentment deeply.

The answer seemed clear.

They offered me really generous funding and I had to say yes or no within twenty-four hours (I applied late in the game, after deadline) and everything was topsy-turvy yesterday and the day before, deciding. T and I stayed up late, late, whispering about our futures and looking at calendars and daily schedules that seemed impossible to navigate. And then my inlaws and friends joined forces to say: we want this for you. We'll make this happen with you. (They are amazing.)

So I said yes.

I can’t believe where this year has taken me; us. It’s astounding. And awesome.