maybe trying maybe not

Two-ish years ago I got a day job.

The day job isn’t great. It maybe was once, but now it is just where a lawyer and my boss said I was lying, where my union rep told me “you have to be perfect right now”, as if being a short, femme, woman in a male-dominated field that is not already expected of me, where my coworkers treat me like their admin assistant if and when they even remember I exist. Mostly they don’t. Mostly I can be alone.

I have a notebook with a blank page. I have a pencil. But writing is just like work: another way to get rejected.

There are things about me I don’t like, so then others don’t like me either. I write stories that people think are odd, but aren’t odd to me. They are just what I am. People will never love me the way I love them apparently. That’s just the way my brain works now.

Maybe I’ll write some words down on a piece of paper. Maybe it’ll turn into a story. But probably I’ll just end up feeling sorry for myself while laying in bed, annoyed at my coworkers, but, in all reality, actually annoyed at myself.

there were two things I read this weekend

as I feel spilled out.

“I don’t really allow myself to get close to people on an emotional level because my insides are all riddled with maggots, which is very frightening for people to see, especially up close, especially when they are, you know, inside you.”

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

The Brain is deeper than the sea —
For — hold them — Blue to Blue —
The one the other will absorb —
As Sponges — Buckets — do —

The Brain—is wider than the Sky—, middle stanza, by Emily Dickenson.

Art (The Brain — is wider than the Sky) by Spencer Finch.

Better than 2023

Finished a book already. Graphic novel, which I just speed through since I don’t look much at the pictures, hence ruining the whole purpose of the medium, the same way I turn on the subtitles and read those rather than look at the screen. And, sometimes I don’t even do that. Sometimes I watch something in a language I don’t even understand (right now High Water; I don’t speak Polish), only half-glance at the subtitles, and spend my time crocheting or knitting instead.

That’s right: at the end of 2023 I taught myself to knit. Why? Perhaps I thought it would impress the universe, or at least someone.

Spoiler: It did not.

Question: Why is purl so easy and knit so hard?

I might get a second book done tonight, but only because I read 90% of it when it was still 2023.

Wolf Children found a home!

Wolf Children at Kaleidotrope.

I wrote Wolf Children in what felt like a fever haze in the summer of 2015, but if a haze lasted weeks rather than hours, by taking a set of stories that I thought were unrelated, but then realizing they weren’t.

So it is a weird story, like a dream. But I am a weird person, like a dream’s character. Everything about Wolf Children is its own closed fictional ecosystem. I don’t really feel like living in reality anymore, but I wouldn’t live in Wolf Children for anything, but it’s strangely prescient considering how long ago I wrote it and how relevant it is to the BIG BAD THING I can’t discuss about my job. The world, any world, even the ones I make up, aren’t made for women, especially weird ones. Eldritch ones I suppose. Like Enid too. Just weird women who don’t fit in and feel it every second. This past year, this line from The Little Mermaid:


every step you take will be as if you were treading upon sharp knives, so sharp as to draw blood

I know this line. I live it now.

Photo source — interestingly the file name says it is a female wolf, which, if you’ve read Wolf Children, is fitting.

The Summer the School Burned Down Amigurumi Mascot #7

I’ll put one of the amigurumi’s I’m least happy with with one of the stories I’m most happy with. And why does this story get a syringe? Well — come to my reading on Sunday and find out! The Happiest Place on Earth is one of the stories I’m going to read!

Event info: 7-8.30 this Sunday at the Sackville Commons.

Special Guest: Fellow author Eric Sparling

Door prizes! Books for sale! You can ask me questions not even about anything related to writing. Bring your Calculus homework (I’m great at Calculus).

More info here.