Sliding through predawn darkness, my car fishtailed toward a snowbank along the canyon’s edge as a semi listed sideways, bearing down in my askew rearview mirror—the oncoming lanes choked by a pileup.
Amid my brain’s cacophonous, contradictory flight-and-fight mental directives, I attempted to maintain some semblance of composure—feeling a momentary sense of relief that I’d remembered to tell my parents where JoJo was being boarded. She might not appreciate Alabama’s humidity, but she’d enjoy my parents’ cozy fireplace—quickly forgetting that curly-haired man who’d so selfishly taken time for himself, and subsequently hurtled down a mountainous gorge.
But before my car’s back bumper skated into the snowbank and over the side, I regained control and slid further along the obscured canyon pass turned bobsled chute. Decelerating, I put “Heroes” on a loop, straightened my mirror, and refused to exceed 10 mph until the road revealed itself beneath the thickening layer of ice and snow. Behind me, the semi pulled off, leaving me and a rust-speckled Tercel shuddering down the corridor alone.
Eyes trained on a strip of blue sky bursting through the snowy veil, and knuckles clenched over the steering wheel, I cautiously reached for my nearly cooled coffee as my salt- and snow-caked rental sedan’s wheels finally reunited with hole-pocked asphalt.
Sun glanced across the snow-smeared windshield. And as I watched the behemoth monuments rising from the landscape—their jagged, brownish-red formations stark against the snow—I took a long, deep pull on the lukewarm dark roast and melted into the music.
“We can be heroes just for one day.”
Image description: taken from far away, the shot features an expansive blue sky with a few white clouds. A few brownish-red peaks are visible above the snowfall on the ground; the bases of the peaks are covered in snow and sage brush.
***
Naivety bookends travel, and travel infantalizes us: everything is new, awe-inspiring; we’re jellyfish floating in an expansive sensorial sea, drifting into and longing to experience its deepest depths.
Two days before my foray into the canyon, I locked my apartment and felt a mantle of anxiety lift from my shoulders. I had a very schematic outline of what I intended to see and do over the ensuing 3,200 mile road trip, but left most of it open to chance. As my windshield defrosted, I familiarized myself with the rental car’s most vital functions, and slipped my crowbar beneath the driver’s seat.
Hours later, I passed quietly through southeastern Washington’s green, amoeba-shaped agriculture fields and wine vineyards with aged, woody plants wrapped tightly around cracked pergolas. Manicured stretches along the horizon gave way to broken, upturned trunks and tilled fields. Treed oases shrouded weathered clapboard houses and trailers with glowing porch lights: tiny beacons welcoming a new day. The rising sun bathed the fields in a lavender glow, and outlined the snow-flecked, rolling hills against the steeply rising mountains far into the distance.
With an impatient produce hauler tailgating me, I eased into an abandoned convenience store parking lot to snap a few photos of an array of midcentury chairs encircling a fire pit. Across the road, coyotes perched atop the hills, keenly attuned to the hoards of bloated finches gliding down over felled, shattered trees. Down a produce farm’s cottage-lined gravel road, a school bus rumbled out with its charges: tiny bodies clamoring over the seats, lowering the fogged windows—shrieks of laughter and curious, wide eyes as they passed me: the stranger regarding the entire spectacle.
I lingered out in the chill, taking in a panoramic view, listening as the sounds of the morning crept into the air. Hairs pricked on the back of my neck, cajoling me back into the car’s encapsulating warmth. Sections of the sky remained forebodingly dark. And as my sedan glided through northeast Oregon and across Idaho’s wide, empty fields, I felt an encroaching storm stalking me.
Having finally arrived in Salt Lake City, I scanned my phone screen with heavy, drooping eyelids, and then screamed. The clerk inside the gas station raised their head, momentarily scanning the dark parking lot for the source before returning to their newspaper. Through a combination of exhaustion and ineptitude on my part, and clever subterfuge by a third-party hotel room reservation platform, I’d unwittingly blown most of my lodging budget in my first night. Once I abandoned my futile attempts to find loopholes in the cancellation policy, I pulled into the hotel’s parking lot, wandered into the brilliantly gleaming, gilded and colonnaded lobby, and asked for my room keys. An apartment-sized suite appointed with an uncomfortable bed and mint green accents in its superfluous living room area all but greeted me with, “Welcome, sucker.”
I lay prone on the king-sized bed, willing my anxiety to dispel and enthusiasm to surge.
It’s ok. Everyone fucks up. It’s a learning moment. EVERYTHING’S FINE.
It was nearing 8pm, and my residual anger combined with overwhelming hunger fueled a speedy restaurant reconnaissance walk. I inched up to the stoop of a highly rated sushi bar on my list, opened the door, and faced a wall of hard, accusatory stares from hipsterish poseurs and wannabe influencers taking selfies and rapping out captions—most of which undoubtedly included #YOLO.
As I turned to exit, I cut a sideways glance at two bouffant-capped tweens in acid-washed mom jeans and Carhartt jackets—clothing reminiscent of my earliest field clothes as an archaeologist.
Silly Salt Lake City children. You won’t out-hipster me. I’m from fucking Seattle.
Twenty minutes later, I took a deep breath, straightened my brilliantly vibrant sweater, flecked my conditioned curls, and charged back inside—bulldozing my way through the hipster gauntlet to the host’s stand.
“Name for the waitlist, Matt. Seat for one.”
I flicked off my generic gloves with an air of decided disinterest in the entirety of the belabored, attention-seeking social positioning unfolding around me, shoved a crumpled jacket toward its owner, and seated myself at the end of a crowded waiting bench. I smiled into my phone’s dark screen, and turned it over. Looking up at the ostentatious light fixtures, I closed my eyes and rested my head against a bank of planters.
It’s all a performance. Just keep dancing.
***
With the canyon and Salt Lake City behind me, I parked at a rest stop to soak in the sun and massage my tense shoulders. Albeit brief, my visit to Utah’s capital had been remarkably uneventful, bland. Everywhere I went, I sensed an air of subtle surveillance, which only amplified my desire to leave quickly.
Overhead, open, blue skies streaked with pillowy clouds entreated me to keep moving forward; I felt more at home there, at a rest stop, than I had in the entire city.
Back on the highway, as the air whipped my hair, I hollered into the vastness—whooping at the arching rocks, the stoic cliff faces, until my lungs felt like tattered rags.
Image description: taken uphill, the shot focuses on an arched geological formation dusted with snow. Sage brush grows in the foreground.
Hours later, as I stooped in thigh-high snow to capture a few shots of a mural stretching along an abandoned storefront, a man pulled up in his Bronco. Immediately, my shields went up, and I angled toward my car; he called after me.
“Hey, you trying to get Horsehead?”
Unsure if this was a local proposition, I stared, vacuously cow-eyed.
“Up there, just near that triangle of trees,” he continued, angling over his seat and pointing far uphill, toward a mountainous stretch.
I aligned myself with his outstretched arm.
“Oh! Yep, I see it.”
He leaned back and smiled.
“So, you’re from Washington, huh?” he said, adjusting his cap and nodding toward my license plate. “What part?”
“Seattle.”
“OH, Seattle,” he crooned nostalgically. “My wife and I go up there once a year. We moved here to be closer to her family. I’m from there. But it’s so expensive now.”
“Yep, it is. I’m sort of on a mission to get out of there myself,” I replied. “On my way to Santa Fe.”
“Welp, yeah, you got a ways to go, but it’s nice.”
He finished by reciting a complex roadmap for reaching Horsehead Canyon. I knew it wasn’t on my way, but waited until he was done, thanked him, and waved him on.
Placing my camera on the passenger seat, I chuckled to myself.
Of course I encountered one of the most open, friendly people from Seattle in New Mexico.
That night, as I drove along streets sprinkled with adobe buildings bedecked with bright tiles, porch arches glutted with hanging chiles, mammoth Cottonwood trees towering overhead, and low, Gaudi-esque walls outlining succulent-peppered greenways, I exhaled.
This feels better.
Image description: an adobe facade with an entry gate, which is made of wood and metal. There are colorful tile mosaics flanking the gate; urns sit atop pedestals on either side of the gate.
***
Fueled with multiple helpings of scrambled eggs slathered in green and red chiles, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and began traipsing around Santa Fe.
Within the first hour, I found myself near tears in the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. While her art has always been inspiring to me, what continued to swirl in the back of my mind was how she described her affinity to New Mexico—the landscape, the beauty of natural forms—and how much of a foil it was to her life in New York City. Blocks away, in the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, I became even more overwhelmed by the place-based narratives on Native life and traditions, and the destruction wrought through colonialism, and its modern day avatars—all reflected through generations of artists.
Exiting the museum, I ran into droves of people leaving the main square—pink hat-wearing Womxn’s March participants, most of whom were coupled and white and clearly satisfied with their annual contribution to democracy. I scanned the area, landing on the pavilion where Native speakers continued addressing the rapidly dwindling crowd, calling for Indigenous rights to be recognized, honored, and protected. Scattered applause from the crowd faded, melding into the rising conversations from nearby cafe diners and shoppers. Methodic drumming began onstage, rising as the bells from the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi intoned.
Everywhere, this country’s violent history collides.
***
Over the ensuing days, I explored the city center, and ventured out to the periphery—always observing, contemplating, absorbing everything: spiced drinking chocolate; green and red chile; cheese-slathered enchiladas; honey-sopped sopapilla; lime-infused caramels; baskets of bloated bags of homemade red pepper flakes; soft lavender soap; and dark piñon coffee.
The strong, arid air that sucks the moisture right from your skin while refreshing your lungs with its deep, cool gusts. Passersby who acknowledge you and smile.
And, of course, I forced myself to face the downsides: I’d have to buy a car, and I’d probably have to wave goodbye to any hope of a romantic life—but I could probably rustle up a few LGBTQ+ retirees to commiserate with.
On my last night, after a whirlwind jaunt to Albuquerque and dinner in Española, I watched the blood moon rise. A formidable, massive orb, it hadn’t yet flushed red; from my vantage point, it hovered between two shadowed peaks. Its massiveness in the desert’s vast emptiness made it one of the most beautiful moonrises I’d ever witnessed.
Everywhere here, there is natural beauty.
***
With my sights set on Taos, I made a short detour to Abiquiú, again marveling at the richness of the landscape. Soon thereafter, I crisscrossed winding roads, and felt my excitement build as I began noting the amorphous, small hills dotting the Greater World Community: earthships. Walking through the model earthship was like stepping into the future—or, more appropriately, how the present should be. Experiencing an off-grid, sustainable building constructed with recycled materials—tires, plastic bottles, cans—was indescribably inspiring.
About a mile down the road, I crossed the Rio Grande gorge, and spotted my last lodging in New Mexico, spread along the Taos Mesa: a hotel of vintage travel trailers arranged next to a brewery.
Image description: two vintage green and turquoise trailers with a connecting deck, taken an an oblique angle. Snow is on the ground.
Once I stuffed myself with sweet potato fries and tofu tacos, I settled into my small trailer, and peered out at the sprawling, snow-covered mesa. Approximately 15 feet, the trailer had everything I needed: a functional heater, bathroom, bed, and kitchen—as well as ample storage. Given my desire for a more mobile, longer-term living situation, I’d wanted to experience this, in all its imperfect glory. And while the space was expectedly small, it felt effortlessly comfortable.
I gazed out the windows as snow fluttered down, and the heater kicked on.
I think I could do this.
Image description: me wearing a bright sweater, laying across the trailer’s bed, and looking out the window.
My eyes drifted to the empty storage shelves and cubbies, and I mentally populated them with my belongings from home.
Wind from a snowstorm began buffeting the sides, and the heater continued humming; I stretched over the bed, dipped beneath the covers, and slowly fell asleep.
***
Steam writhed inside the rim of my tin coffee mug and a snowy haze glowed outside; it felt like the entire world was asleep.
As I rubbed the night’s sleep from my eyes, I marveled at the trailer’s beautiful simplicity—having the necessities within reach, allowing you to melt into being present in the moment.
I looked around and couldn’t help but think: I could give up the rest of what I have to make my own version of this. After all, at the heart of it, the beautiful remaining pieces I possessed weren’t really any different than the built-in table, small shelf by the door, or ample bed with ruffled sheets: all bits of wood and metal and fabric pulled together into a workable shelter. And, as such, their faults could be sanded, repainted, darned, and mended: a patchwork tapestry encouraging growth and change, propelling me into life rather than suffocating my desires or intrigue with a burdensome mortgage, inescapable debt, or a string of unnecessary belongings.
Over my third cup of coffee, I fleshed out a scheme to steward a small parcel of land just north of the earthships. There, I could move a small trailer while methodically building an earthship hut: which, to most, would resemble nothing more than a hole in the desert. But in my mind, it’d be the manifestation of so many personal goals: a base from which I could live a more sustainable, debt-free life.
A few hours later, I made one final pass through the trailer, and then headed to my car. Soon thereafter, I punched in latitude-longitude coordinates for various parcels I’d been stalking online. Snow began cascading down, icy veins of it blowing across the road. Cautiously, I pulled off at the mouth of one of the dirt roads leading to a slew of my target acreage. With little reception and no cars in sight, I decided not to chance it.
Instead, I stood against the wind and snapped a few blurry photos. And questioned my mental state.
What a wildly absurd idea, right? I mean, this is sort of mad.
I took in one last gulp of frigid air and exhaled.
But living is all about exploring the madness.
***
Whether or not I can translate my musings to reality—be they maddened dreams or viable alternatives—remains to be seen.
But if I don’t try, I’m not living.
So, I plan to continue dreaming of a day when, somewhere out in the desert, I’ll dig a hole, and shape it into a home. Where I’ll feel the warmth of the earth around me, and admire the small place I’ve made for myself—embracing the cracks and fissures that’ve formed in my life along the way, whilst acknowledging that I haven’t let the most vital parts of who I am cleave away.
Like the ancient land around me, I’ll weather on—bathing in the starlight, reflecting all of the character and subtle gifts from the myriad turns of the sun and moon.
A curious feeling swept over me when I realized the Trader Joe’s cashier scanning my tempeh once sat on my toilet and fucked in my bedroom.
Like most new tenants, I’d spent the first week in my apartment receiving former residents’ mail—briefly scanning their names, shuffling the junk into overflowing recycling bins, and nosily assessing the heft of more serious parcels before shoving them back into the outgoing mail slot. Her name was one of four I’d come to know in my very brief tenure as an addressee reviewer. And then, quite suddenly, here she was: the person matching the standardized black-and-white typeface printed across coupon packets.
Her nametag was chipped at the edges and hanging askew. She smiled, waiting patiently as I wrestled from my laden basket a burrito and box of chocolate.
“Nothing like stress eating after signing a new lease,” I chuckled, waiting for the card reader to cooperate.
“Oh, where’d you move?” she asked, mechanically disinterested.
“Just across the street.”
“It’s a pretty good complex,” she said, her tone changing slightly as she ferried my groceries across the scanner. “I’m moving a few floors down, into another unit with my boyfriend.”
Where I’m from in Alabama, this would’ve been a revelatory exchange, a gateway encounter to a budding friendship. But in Seattle, I already knew there’d be no neighborly invitation to get to know one another tacked on as a conversational addendum. It was a simple, matter-of-fact observation.
“Small world,” I said, smiling back.
“Yep. Have a nice day.”
Days later, when my bathroom sink and shower drains began backing up, I imagined it was her long blonde hair contorted into amorphous, matted blobs that clogged the pipes.
***
My apartment was dark, save some light from the blue television screen—the conclusion of “Annihilation.” Around me, plants listed lethargically, while others hurtled into an even more obvious state of unstoppable decay—my beloved, mammoth African violets rotted shades of what they’d been back at Gay Gardens. Even my most prized geranium—once over six feet tall—shrunk markedly, its tendrils browning, its sinewy body stiffening and breaking down. As each floral charge withered despite my best efforts, I mentally reframed their demise as altruistic entropy—unburdening me of their care, pushing me onward. Even as they diminished, a sense of resilience continued to grow inside of me. I scanned the apartment, regarding it more for the necessary aspects it afforded—shelter, security—than its ebbing decorative vitality. Naked brass screw-ends pocked the wall, free of their framed charges, and corners sat shadowed, devoid of their previously appointed furniture.
“I’m pretty sure it’ll fit right there along the back,” I said, arcing my arm across the pickup’s deep bed, whilst watching the foreboding sky, willing it not to open up.
Moments later, the sideboard I’d lovingly restored a decade before on the stoop of my first apartment shuddered down the road—its heavy, beveled mirror angled upward, reflecting the graying sky.
The day prior, I’d bid farewell to my beloved Mission-style dish cabinet as it made its way to a farm in Oregon. When I walked back into the apartment, I followed the cabinet’s vestigial trail of white paint flecks to a bag of fresh produce and herbs—the bartered portion of the cabinet’s cost.
A few nights later, my eyes watered as I gently, methodically, set down the basket of remaining Fiestaware into the woman’s cigarette smoke-saturated car. As I nudged one additional bag into the floorboard, I recalled the rush of adrenaline I’d felt over a decade before when I ripped off the tightly wrapped, yellowed newspaper to reveal the brilliant turquoise plates and saucers—the striking colors gleaming in the scarce, dusty light of my parents’ attic.
Memories are much lighter than things, which can easily transform into beautiful traps.
***
We’re all renters—of life, space, objects. And yet, through social conditioning and mental self-subterfuge, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time convincing ourselves it’s entirely normal to expend our lives paying off debts incurred by attempting to own something we never will.
Downsizing my life over the past six months was an exercise in self-care and disciplined boundary-making. I pushed myself further than I ever thought I could—both in terms of acknowledging how little I needed to thrive, and the extent to which I could, with nearly surgical precision, emplace necessary boundaries to maintain my emotional and physical health. And through it all, I strived to acknowledge the privileges I carried in being able to do so.
For me, self-care has involved introspective reflection, study, and understanding of my place in the world: how I got to where I am, by which I mean what oppressive systems have I benefitted from over the course of my life, and what steps I can take each day to dismantle those same institutions and systems and restructure them to be equitable and sustainable. And in so doing, I’ve had to remind myself that I will always be a student—learning, failing, and working harder to get it right the next time.
Never did I expect a year to make such a difference—to be in a place where I’d have enough mental clarity to better understand the intersections of my interests in social justice, ecological sustainability, and health and wellbeing.
***
Adjusting my glasses, I perused the tiny panes of potential matches—assessing perceived flaws, swiping on the ones I thought would be incompatible, and jotting down notes. Each had its merits, but I knew what I wanted; I could wait for the right one. Good bones were a must, and any hint of faulty undercarriage was grounds for an outright dismissal: slipping transmission, pervasive rust, overtaxed motor. Unlike airbrush-happy Tinder users, buses had very little ability to hide their blemishes.
Thoroughly unimpressed, I darkened my phone screen and set it on my bedside table, and then reviewed my latest musings. Across the worn, tattered pages, I reread the plan I began devising in the Olympic Peninsula’s mist-covered woods months ago—to convert a school bus into a tiny home. I’ve dubbed it, “Not the worst plan.”
Feeling the rising anxiety and doubt, I took a breath.
You can do something this monumental. You already have.
Selling nearly everything I had of value helped free me from crushing credit card debt, untether me from the strangling grasp of materialism, and add a modest contribution to a long-empty savings account.
In downsizing even further over the coming year and a half, I intend to push myself into uncomfortably uncharted territory as I prepare to live within a much tinier, more mobile footprint. My goal is to live as efficiently and sustainably as possible, have a home that is mine and not the bank’s, and mobilize it so I can move wherever, like a hermit crab. Ultimately, I want to operate on the periphery of this hyper-consumerist, capitalistic system as much as possible, to live more freely.
The hardest parts are yet to come, but I’m tired of paying exorbitant rent for a place I don’t like and that isn’t reflective of me, that limits my creativity. And as thrilling as it can be to live in a thrumming city, I’ve grown weary of being surrounded by the droves of closed-off shell people scuttling to and fro, heads angled down—their entire worlds seemingly confined to their phone screen. I want to look up, toward the tree-lined horizon, whenever possible.
My plan is a wholly different re-imagining of what I thought my life would look like by my mid-thirties. And while I never expected to become an increasingly tattooed gay with a penchant for wearing loud sweaters living in a skoolie alongside an overly anxious Chihuahua, I’m learning to love the idea.
There are so many steps in between the here-and-now and the there-and-done. But having my atypical goal post set far afield from traditional expectations, I feel more empowered than I have in a while.
Because I want freedom from the surrounding monotony; to drift into wide open spaces, rove through forgotten places, and embrace the changing scenery—the glamor and tarnish: a space apart.
Leaning against the front door and eyeing the cabinet’s dusty outline on the chipped, white-painted floor, I felt an unexpected weight lift; my mind was slightly clearer. Outside, rain drizzled down, and I hoped the man had made it down the hillside and back to the bridge without too much trouble.
I thought about the glass-fronted Art Deco cabinet in the back of his homemade hauling trailer—draped in a burlap shroud, like the recently deceased in a western: being slowly removed from home, taken far, far away. I recalled staring at myself in the glass door’s reflection the night I’d planned to kill myself a decade earlier.
We map so much emotional weight onto things.
I reached inside my jacket pocket and removed the crumpled bills, counting them out before folding them into the growing roll hidden inside a tin in my bedroom. Little by little, as pieces I’d cherished for well over a decade left me, I quieted my exhausted, fretting mind by reminding myself that I was doing this for all the right reasons: to work towards financial solvency, and improved health. And to experience a long-overdue catharsis.
The next day, I watched the sun slowly rise, bleeding through the opaque glass sliding doors separating the bedroom from the rest of my new apartment. The light warming my arms, the rumpled sheets washing wave-like over me.
I slipped into a favorite pair of worn jeans, threw on a holy tee shirt, and took JoJo out to welcome a new morning: the first day of a new beginning.
***
Before I reached the summit, I paused and looked out over the mossy canopy—a primeval, forested canvas. Rain dripped down from the tightly knitted fronds and branches, dappling my camera and sleeves with refreshing moisture. As I shifted my backpack and headed uphill, my bear bell clanged lowly—a metronomic reminder of my vulnerable place in the natural order.
A few feet later, I peered over the falls, absorbed the soothing sounds of fresh water flowing over weathered rocks—churning pools disappearing underground and re-surging downslope. I took a few deep breaths, exhaled, and soaked in the view, expecting to feel a crushing weight lifted off my shoulders.
But I felt nothing, except a needling question creeping into the back of my mind.
What in the fuck am I doing here?
Somewhere along the line, I’d convinced myself that I had to travel far stretches, overcome amazing feats, cross the country or the world to be rewarded with life-changing clarity. But my short foray into the Olympic Peninsula’s woods only reaffirmed what I already knew—what I recognized each evening as I slowly drifted off into a fitful night’s sleep in my tent with a writing pad, bear bell, knife, and canteen within arm’s reach, the solar-powered lantern hanging overhead: we need so very little to thrive.
We surround ourselves with so much superfluous stuff to blunt the simple reality that the more we have, the less we actually live.
***
The apartment was blissfully still—overburdened fans and the sound machine retired for a brief reprieve. Sunlight warmed the worn leather on the love seat, and dripped over the heat-racked, withering tendrils listing out of chipped terra cotta pots. Seattle was experiencing a protracted, more intense summer than usual—and prized plants that weathered Gay Gardens’ drafty chill had succumbed to the inescapable, stagnate heat.
JoJo braced herself against the gracile legs of the Art Deco buffet turned TV stand, and leered into the beating sun—her tongue gradually inching out as she lapsed into deeper sleep. I, too, felt the heat climbing—sweat beading across my brow, dripping down my nose.
I’d just hit the six month mark on my apartment lease, and it felt as though I’d been living here for ages. Albeit a glorified studio with few furnishings, there were chairs I never sat in, things I didn’t use—so much space allocated to stylized tableaus that were wholly unnecessary. Everywhere I looked, charmless sterility stared back—no uneven angles, no roughened edges, just cool, muted cream walls and dark grey carpeting, particle board cabinets, and an overly massive bathroom. I began to regard it as a charmless easy bake oven in which I felt suffocatingly uninspired.
Weeks later, just before midnight, I scanned the room—soft light from the only remaining lamp illuminating a smattering of plants, cascading over a haphazard assortment of empty pots and stickered surfaces. I hugged the brownie-packed Cathrineholm casserole to my chest with one hand, and used the other to wield my fork—shoving it into the cakey middle and boring out a hole. As Ghost’s end credits rolled, “Unchained Melody” reverberated throughout the apartment. I felt like crying out of sheer exhaustion, but I didn’t want to saturate my brownies. JoJo rustled in her crate and let out an exasperated sigh; I was up far too late and making a ruckus. I tucked the DVD back into its case and slid it into the “Keep” pile.
Hours before, from the overstocked Fiction section, I watched the bookshop’s buyer assess my bags of DVDs and books. As he thumbed through the thick, leather-bound art book I’d toted around for years—but rarely opened—he called back to his partner, “Yeah, we’ll make an offer on this lot.”
I circled back through the shop to give them time, and sidestepped into the Social Sciences section for amusement. A few of my previously sold books—including one of the referential cruxes of my anthropology Master’s thesis—sat on the shelf gathering dust. I flipped through it, chuckled at my margin notes and dogears, and slid it back into the uneven line of bindings; the symbolism was laughable. Shortly thereafter, I found myself back at the counter.
All told, my haul garnered $16.25.
I sighed dejectedly. “Sold.”
The clerk who’d reviewed my pile sidled up to me.
“Hey, you know, it’s a bummer. But take a look at that back wall.”
He pointed behind the counter to a far wall partly obscured by mounded boxes of DVDs.
“I think I’m going to have to start pricing their resale at five cents apiece. But hey, this book, it’s so weird.”
He touched the large volume with unexpected gentleness. “I have no idea what it is, but it’s going to look great on someone’s bookshelf.”
I laughed.
“But at least it’ll stay in circulation. We’ll keep its story going.”
I smiled, patted the pile, collected my receipt, and walked away.
***
Days later, JoJo struggled against my snug hold. She was more interested in our coiffed visitor than being sandwiched against my sweat-saturated shirt. I couldn’t blame her.
The woman rapped her bejeweled press-on nails across the weathered dining table as she surveyed a pile of studio art pottery, and lifted up small mid century cache pots pocked with struggling succulents. She extended her index finger, the polished nail tip squaring dead-center on the glazed pot behind me—one that friends from North Carolina had gifted me right before I moved to Raleigh. Out from it grew a large Pilea peperomioides—what I’d come to dub as one of many “hipster plant necessities.”
“How much?”
I’d already told her that I hadn’t yet priced many items in the apartment, that I hadn’t anticipated having any buyers over. Still, I tried to reframe the whole situation as an opportunity.
I quoted a price, and then she motioned toward a small cluster of pots lining a corner table.
“And those four?”
As if sensing my growing irritation, JoJo sighed in my arms and descended into full-on fainting goat, her tiny form sagging as she exercised her greatest anti-holding technique: dead weight.
“All together, forty-five,” I blurted, setting JoJo down.
The minute the “five” rolled off my tongue, I cringed. Albeit a painfully low price, the plants needed to go.
Exceedingly pleased, the woman began doling her cash onto the table. Seconds later, she upended her purse entirely, counting quarters into one-dollar piles as her bangled bracelets clattered together in metallic applause.
JoJo sniffed around the woman’s pristine suit pant cuffs, and I snapped at her to back off. She glared back, wandered over to the spot vacated by the large planter I’d dragged over to the woman’s pile, and proceeded to roll around in the sun.
Touche.
“I have thirty-one dollars,” the woman said confidently, adding, “This is my laundry money.” As if that somehow justified the low-ball counteroffer.
I sighed.
“Fine.”
“So, you do this for a living?” she asked, apparently forgetting she’d already posed the same question thirty minutes prior, as I helped her load six large plants into her oversized, battered Ford pickup.
“Nope. But I’ve thought about it.”
“You really should. You have a lot of nice things.”
That line gets me every single time. It’s a kind sentiment to express, and it’s certainly a prospect I’ve explored. But I remind myself about how stressed I get when I’m surrounded by those same “nice things”—and the associated, incessant drive to collect more and then immediately shed the bulk. It’s bulimic materialism, one of the waste behaviors we’re taught is normal. Because, from an early age, people in America are conditioned to believe that the Norman Rockwell-esque “American Dream” is the pinnacle of success: two kids, a spouse, a generously-sized house with a new car parked in the driveway, and Scraps the dog running through a perfectly manicured green lawn out front. But that same dream has always been rooted in white supremacy and white privilege, racist policies, and a tarted up version of Manifest Destiny—move to the West and take what is rightfully yours; a hallmark of this country’s deep-seated taproot springing from genocide and slavery. This problematic mirage is perpetuated through hyperconsumerism, capitalism’s key driver: the notion that, with “hard won success” and a “can-do attitude,” comes the ability—nay, necessity—to conspicuously consume the right house, car, wardrobe, and on-trend decor. And we all fall for it; I certainly did.
Only after I finally got out of debt, and through ample self-reflection, was I able to acknowledge that I don’t want or need most of the elements of that force-fed image of success. More than ever, I now crave physical and mental space to breathe—to be free of things. I intend to wholeheartedly embrace this mentality while I’m young, rather than burying myself in baubles or committing myself to an unhealthy, toxic relationship in the short term, and then spending my precious golden years fretting about how to escape. So much of this next chapter is unwritten. But those parts I’m beginning to author are all about self care, and putting boundaries in place. Of cherishing what little I need, and letting the rest go—keeping only that which helps catapult me into my next phase. No matter where I end up, I’ll continue to map on my sense of personal beauty through the experiences and company I keep.
I slammed the truck’s heavy tailgate, and nodded to the woman. After I crossed the road back to my complex, she drove by slowly and rolled down her window.
“And let me know when you, uh, leave for good. What you want to do with the rest of your items. I have sort of a buying problem. HAHA!”
I waved her on, and assured her that I would. But I knew I’d never see her again.
***
As a high school senior, I was assigned a 10-page paper—a dreaded semester-long project, the tales of which resonated through my predecessors’ ranks. It’d be a literary rite of passage, a hurdle to clear. Each student chose a word, and that was the singular focus of their paper—its etymology, symbolism, and its evolving usages throughout history and through the works we’d read. It required calculated introspection.
I chose “growth.”
Decades later, I find myself in a far-flung corner of the country, away from everything and everyone I know. Moving here was a decision made as part of a joint life being cultivated; two years ago, it became a solo journey. I stayed and forced myself to root, to grow into my surroundings. I rehabbed Gay Gardens; I lost myself there. It became my Eden, from which I begrudgingly acknowledged I needed to fall. And I did.
I evolved, adapted.
Whenever I think of growth—as I did all of those years ago—the most common reflection is something new, generative: intimating some greater experience—a building of momentum, toward a logical conclusion or form. But the personal growth I’ve experienced here has been antithetical to how I assumed my life would develop: that it’d grow in a defined, understood direction. That’s not the case.
My anticipated “beginning” in Seattle is no longer dependent on when I find someone, or the “right” job, or encounter some fortuitous windfall, or even accomplish long-held dreams. It’s suddenly so painfully obvious, and within my ability to kick-start. I just have to lean into it, allow myself to grow into this new mindset, and stop pretending as though I know what my life is supposed to be like. Because none of us knows. We’re all pretending like we do, but we’re really just here for the ride.
We’re all growing into journeys we never thought we’d take. And that’s the messy beauty of it all.
Rain cascades through the canopy and pummels my freshly planted mint into the loose soil – bubbles gurgling up from underneath the clods and resuscitating the bound roots.
A lone curl bobs up and down in the wind, occasionally plastering itself across my forehead and funneling rain down the bridge of my nose. I gulp down the cool, heavy air and meander over to a cleared bed, situating myself beneath a few interwoven branches and gazing across the terrace.
When I’m cycling through a toxic welter of anxiety- and depression- inducing synaptic misfires, I stop, look at the sky, take a deep breath, and focus on something – usually Gay Gardens, my cathartic flex point.
On heavy rain days like today, the house always appears saturated and dirty, like the moldy yellow sponge my dad kept in his homemade car-washing kit in our crawlspace. Evening is creeping in, and I begin my slow, calculated circuit around the house, all the while mentally scrawling a running list of things to fix. Off the sun porch, a gutter hangs sloppily, channeling a constant stream of water into my shoddily dug French drain below – causing dirt to splash up and pepper the flaking yellow paint sloughing off the clapboard.
Inside, the residual heat and steam from my shower fog the window panes. I switch off the lights and peer out the gradually clearing windows. Moonlight illuminates the yard, and casts shadows into the garden’s recesses. As the furnace clicks on, the house seems to heave – the floorboards creaking, the rafters popping; the labored, forced air knocking the cold and damp down just enough for me to doze beneath the bed covers.
Just as I’m drifting off to sleep, louder snaps and pops from the back of the house rouse me fully awake. I listen closely for more, and then my imagination does the rest – crafting a horror movie sequence that climaxes with an ax splintering my barricaded bedroom door. Heart racing, I deftly slide my hand down to retrieve a concealed hammer I took from my last job, the name “Kate” scribbled in Sharpie along its dented head.
Flicking on light after light, I study each darkened corner and fiddle with the door locks, convincing myself that everything is fine – that my imagination just got the best of me.
I laugh into the darkness to reassure myself, sigh, and squirrel Kate into her hiding place before sliding back under the covers.
I comb back through the day, reciting off each to-do, like sheep leaping over a fence.
Paint floor.
Seal baseboards.
Clear weeds.
And then, I’m waking up the next morning.
Over the past few weeks, each morning has been successively refreshing. With mental cloud banks clearing, I’m steeling my nerves for what I know is going to be an uphill battle.
It’s been over a year since I submitted my manuscript for publication, and received my first crushing “Thanks but no thanks” response. Since then, the manuscript has migrated from my underwear drawer to a top closet shelf – always relegated to the darkest of alcoves.
Like my personal life, I’d deemed the tome complete. Now, it’s time to start again.
***
Sun rays pierce the foggy haze, and the floor vibrates – the slumbering house rattles awake.
And I sit here, feet firmly pressed against the cold floor, willing the warmth to pulse through my legs, propelling me forward – awake.
Seattle’s hallmark fall mist filters down through brittle leaves to parched soil. From a single, mossy branch at the top of my plum tree, five purple orbs dangle enticingly – the last vestiges of the growing season.
Deterred by the empty fridge, my growling stomach convinces me that coffee and plums will work just fine for a Saturday morning breakfast.
But then, emerging from the shaded side of a rhododendron, an obese squirrel lazily lopes toward my bounty, sniffing at the decimated plum skins and pits he and his brethren have littered around the yard as he nears the tree’s gnarled trunk.
Animal instinct kicks in, and my disheveled fro grows menacingly – my own hackles. The dogs scatter as I run out the back door, dragging a paint-spattered utility ladder in my wake. The ensuing ruckus from the ladder clanging down the squeaky mud porch stairs startles my nemesis, freezing him midway up the trunk, his marble-like eyes fixated on the insane person running toward him, hissing madly.
He flees. I win. Breakfast is secured.
Back inside, I slice my spoils and drizzle them with honey. Coffee steams in my mug, and Joanna sits nearby, pulling at the stitching of my childhood Care Bear turned dog toy.
On the faded, leather-topped drum table above her, a shock of pink from an African violet’s flower catches my attention. Sometime in the night, its tiny buds sprang to life – blooming quietly, elegantly, fully; the cupped blooms fill with morning light – nature’s entreating communion chalices.
***
After my second cup of coffee, I decide to check in with the rest of the world and open my email. Just a week ago, I’d refresh my inbox every five minutes – hoping for relief in the form of a subject line reading, “Job Offer.” Now that that particularly exhausting, yet satisfyingly cleared hurdle is behind me, I’ve purposefully unplugged – looking skyward, reading, working outside, painting, and relegating my phone to my mental dustbin until I need it.
A property management company rep has responded to my email about altering the lease with a sterile: “We’ll need to ensure that your income alone can cover rent. Please send your most recent pay stub.” Although the response isn’t entirely unexpected, I’m suddenly awash with anxiety – my eyes darting around to freshly painted walls, out the windows to cleared planting beds and newly rooted shrubs.
All this could be taken away with one email, one turn of phrase.
I delete “Thanks a fucking lot!” and reply appropriately, infusing my message with the requisite saccharine subservience most tenants convey to avoid falling out of grace with their landlords. I know this is a business to them, and they couldn’t care less about all of the time, effort, and expense Andy and I both dumped into this heap; that there’s still some persistent electrical problem; that every morning I clear away cobwebs, courtesy of my arachnid roommates; that I’m constantly fighting against some natural element to reclaim this house of paste and popsicle sticks. (#FirstWorldproblems)
But as unintentionally hurtful as the message was, the subtext is nothing new. Just like everyone else, I have to carve out my own niche of existence and defend it.
To live means to fight. It’ll never be an easy ride, and that’s okay.
Living in this cute, rotting house, I’m constantly reminded of the transitory nature of material things. Years from now, will someone be sitting on this sun porch, scribbling away in a notebook or chatting over coffee with friends? Or will these walls and weathered floors be splintered into the earth and overtaken by ivy, or gone entirely and replaced with a McMansion block devoid of personality? I wonder where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing. If I’ll drive by one day to remember my new beginning in this little house.
Part of me accepting the inevitability of change is acknowledging that I’m constantly in motion, colliding with possibilities, obliterating obstacles while creating life, energy, and fulfilling moments in which I feel complete – as though I’ve curled up in my most threadbare, comfy clothes on my weathered sofa with a mug of hot cocoa in hand, watching a storm roll in through the open windows.
Letting the wind blast my face, the cool air filling my lungs – my mind marveling at life’s ebb and flow.
Life is weird. If being an autonomous agent in this world teaches you anything, it’s that. You can plan and scheme and outline your entire future – or even just your morning – and everything can change without pomp or circumstance, without some clouds parting or an internal voice telling you “This is your moment.”
Things change. People change. We get older and more tired. But something that few of us leave behind fully is a taste for life, for the sweet, sometimes unexpected bits sprinkled into our daily existence like toppings over ice cream. And right as you’re squaring your jaw, drawing a hard line, you break into that bizarre, alien sweetness – an experience that, again, throws you off balance just enough to make you pivot and change course.
As freeing as moving here and there can be, I’ve found myself waiting for that inevitable push elsewhere, using a bad day or passerby’s glare to fuel some choking ember into an inferno – raging and demanding change, being that ostensible evidence that I belong somewhere else.
Not long after we rooted in Seattle, we both started having misgivings. Perhaps we succumbed to Seattle’s permeating dampness, its seemingly impenetrable gray skies; or maybe we just needed something in the world around us to reflect our internal dialogue. So, yet again, we vowed that perpetual motion was the only way out of this overwhelming, emotionally draining welter. And where better to funnel our efforts than toward the place where we first met, where we first made a home together – on the other side of the country.
Returning to a place you consider home almost seems a given these days. Or maybe it’s just a product of getting older, realigning priorities – all of those revelatory moments you witness onscreen and never imagine actually taking hold in your own consciousness, made audible by your two lips and shaky vocal chords. And for a while, we began to pave our road back to Raleigh, imagine house-hunting around our old haunts, remembering all of the goodness we shared with family – genetic and chosen. But, as I’ve said, life happens.
***
A few minutes into my 90-day review, I know everything is about to change. My director is leaving the organization, and I know with the utmost certainty that it’s only a matter of weeks before the other member of our dwindling department raises anchor and sets sail too. I swallow. I smile. I say all the things a professional would – interjecting humor where necessary, blunting cynicism with sarcasm.
And so the shift begins. A week after she leaves, my other teammate departs, as I’d suspected he would. So, it’s down to me.
This is it. There’s no point investing my time or energy here.
But the departmental chaos reveals a chance to propel up the ladder a few rungs faster than I’d imagined. Coupled with a few other wrenches that’ve been thrown our way, we have a lot to consider, more than a few decisions to make.
***
It’s easy to run away; it’s harder to stay, absorb, learn, grow as much as you can, and have confidence that, no matter what, you’re doing something because you want to – not because you have to, or because it’s what’s expected at this point in life.
So, we’re leaning in. We’re staying in Seattle – for now.
We’re acknowledging that where we are today is incredibly different from where we were in May, when we first set foot in the Pacific Northwest. And that’s a good thing. And we owe it to ourselves to keep making it as good as possible, to let the ink dry on this latest map we’ve scribbled down before wetting the quill again and drafting a new one.
For me, the scariest character in all of our conversations has been that familiar specter – the great and powerful Unknown, which gobbles up fear and optimism, dreams and nightmares. And we never know if what we entrust to it will ever manifest down the line in some guise – vindicating or damning us.
But at some point we have to look beyond the paths we see ahead of us and take stock of what encompasses them – limitless beauty and opportunity and, yes, that terrifying, ghoulish Unknown bathing in a soup of ambiguity.
You can yoke yourself to the trite saying “There’s a time and place for everything and everyone” – that when you hit some arbitrary number of years on this earth, you must fall in line.
Or, you can acknowledge that there’re lots of places, and time enough to do some exploring.
Dust quietly layers the sideboard as the week-old carnations brown and droop. The apartment still smells faintly of cumin and chili powder and paprika from last night’s chickpea dish, and Toby attacks his new toy before dragging its stuffed carcass into our bedroom, his lair.
I close my eyes, sink into the reverberating sounds from the living room fan, and let my mind doze.
In two days, I start my new job. After a little over two months of applications, rejections, and interviews, I finally snagged a position that I’m actually really happy about. Even still, its imminent kickoff triggers all the typical qualms that most everyone whispers to themselves – all of which boil down to something along the lines of “Don’t cock it up.” But at least this time around, I’m not quite as fretful as I was starting over in LA – mostly because I’m not completely recreating my career. And I now know that mastering nonprofit code-switching is the key to succeeding in Nonprofit World. All that aside, it’ll be nice to get back into the swing of things, and do some good.
***
Lately, I’ve pulled back a bit from the world. Everywhere I turn – and every time I read through my Facebook feed, or peruse some news site – there’s so much ugliness and tragedy and terror that I want to curl into a ball and sleep, or throw a vase against the wall.
It seems I’m lacking a much needed groundswell of inspiration – something wholly necessary to offset the stressful annoyance of trying to bring this whole publishing-a-book goal to fruition. I’ve been hoping that the greasy sheen of oil pastels or the earthy richness of potting soil will jump-start my mind like a drained car battery.
But there’re no sparks to be felt, no gears shifting around upstairs.
Usually, my recourse would involve complaining and violin-playing, and then I’d get over it. Now – whether it’s a few more years of wisdom, or a few more reality checks under my belt – I’ve found that putting a little good out into the world and having the courage to keep going are more appropriate responses. Because even if these tacks don’t spur some genius idea, or break through that writer’s block, I know that I haven’t fed into the defeatist mentality that lords over so many folks’ minds. My mind is still free.
***
Sirens howl through the afternoon heat, and I reach out and rub the tabletop geranium’s fuzzy leaves, their peppery fragrance steeping under my fingernails.
I look over at the mint plant’s new, fragile shoots bending upward toward the light – growing slowly, silently, and gracefully.
I’m not gonna lie: 30 hasn’t exactly been easy. And even though I only have a few months until a 1 shoves that 0 aside, I’m not discounting the rest of this allegedly life-changing year.
This new decade feels nice. I have the emotional maturity to deal with life as it comes, with an experiential arsenal chock-full of missteps and tiny victories to help guide me along. With the last plumage of my twenties shaken off, I’m a fully fledged adult – feeling less like an impostor with every passing day.
The associated life knowledge that comes with it severely blunts my ability and desire to blame others or Society or Life for my problems. Because I know, in the big picture, whatever I’m challenged by is pretty minor stuff. I’ve overcome plenty, and I’m more than capable of handling the hard stuff.
Still, there’re also things that I crave with the same ferocious intensity I reserve for my first glass of coffee (yes, a glass – in the morning hours, a cup is a laughably paltry half-measure) – like seeing more of the world, buying a house, adopting another dog, having a kid; not a long list, really.
But sometimes those things become clouded by battling expectations of what I’m supposed to want or do during this transformative decade: traveling to every country imaginable, renouncing materialism, living in a yurt, and finding inner peace while buying a massive house with a matching mortgage, having two cars and two kids, and having matching IRAs. These contradictory ideals often come in rapid fire bursts – shouted through social media posts or those annoying Buzzfeed lists. I’m somehow supposed to become a hippie with a Lexus – a socially aware materialist. Maybe these polar opposites stem from the Millennial context – growing up and balancing a pre-tech, outdoor-fueled childhood with a post-pubescent, office-centric tech explosion. And like plenty of folks, I find myself caught in between.
Do I want to see more of the world? Most certainly – but not all of it; I still want there to be mysterious places “out there” where my imagination can wander. Do I want a massive house filled to brim with kids and cars and stuff? No. But I’d love a small, manageable house with another shelter dog, where we can bring up a human pup sometime down the line.
To accomplish these goals, though, we’ve both acknowledged that we first must develop greater senses of self, and take care of ourselves. The thing is, prior to this decade, I’d already passed through a lot of mental sieves – left unnecessary, emotion-laden clutter and baggage caught in the webbing, and let thought and ambition and optimism flow through. None of it was easy, and I still have a ways to go.
But as I near 31, I’m at the point of looking in and past the mirror and acknowledging that, yup, this is it. And I’m pretty damn happy with it.
So I need to treat myself accordingly, and embrace the all too infrequent senses of calm – of knowing that a decision or thought is true and right.
A few weeks back when Andy and I decided to move back to Raleigh in a year, I experienced one of those clarifying moments. All of the doubt and uncertainty I’d been feeling about making a home on this coast (the costs, the isolation, this and that and everything in between…) cleared. And I could see the future that we wanted. It’s still distant, but we’re inching closer to it every single day.
I’m not going to wax poetic and project ahead – assume that this year is going to be a revolutionary one.
To be certain, it’s going to be challenging. But every year, every decade is pocked with cake walks and welters of madness. So I’m not expecting 31 to be anything more than another year of me doing the best to live the life I want.
And lately, my cup overfloweth with rejection from potential employers and publishers. The emailed lines “Thanks, but it’s not what I’m looking for” and “We had so many wonderful applicants, but…” are becoming such expected parts of my days that not receiving one or more after my first cup of coffee has me questioning the functionality of our WiFi service.
No matter how many times I quietly advise myself not to get overly excited about a particular submission, there’s always that little optimistic fairy buzzing around inside my head chirping, “THIS IS IT. YOUR BIG BREAK!” It’s the human condition, undergirded by the absurd notion that we’re each unique snowflakes and we’re all going to do great things.
But the fact of the matter is that I don’t need a particular job or to be published to feel like I’ve accomplished something meaningful – that I’ve succeeded. Would it be nice to have a job right now? Sure. And I’ll have one soon enough. Would it be amazing to have my manuscript published? Undoubtedly. Will it happen? Yes, one day – even if I have to self-publish it at age 84.
Oftentimes, I dwell on the sting of rejection because pushing on and staying strong are so much harder – and no one wants to constantly travel the hard, more pothole-pocked road.
But I’m finding there’s a certain silver lining of rejection: in those first moments after a particularly trying rejection letter, I have to cling to what I do have. I reflect on what I have at that exact moment – a logical mental calculation to offset the defeat with a triumph, or at the very least, a comforting realization.
That’s exactly what I did this morning after I got my first query rejection for my book. It came from my top publishing company pick, the one I was sure would be “the one.” And right after I read the last line of the email, I screamed into my darkening mind, “THAT’S OKAY. KEEP GOING.” I took a breath and closed my eyes.
And then I walked around, and let my eyes stop on a framed wedding photo.
I have a loving husband. He’s mine. I’m his.
I looked around our apartment.
We’ve created this.
I sat next to a slumbering Toby and hugged him.
We’ve given this furry being a new, fulfilling life.
I thought about our future.
We’ll create a family. Together.
And the rejection’s sting subsided.
Albeit blunted, the sting will be with me until it’s supplanted by a more biting one, or balanced a bit by hopeful words, or even an acceptance letter.
The important thing for me is to first feel it, then absorb it, and ultimately let it go.
Because each day is a celebration of much more than what we do or accomplish, and I fully intend to keep reveling in it all.
Someone’s scraping a shovel against the sidewalk outside, and I’m hugging Toby – much to his dismay.
Usually Andy’s the one coddling The Tobes, but this morning I require a little extra reassurance, and Toby’s blobby self is exactly what I need.
I’m re-reading my query letter for the 400th time, ensuring that the email formatting isn’t going to jack everything up, and double-checking that I did everything exactly the way I was instructed to by the publisher’s website. By the time I get to the last period, I’m exhausted.
My shaky lil finger hovers over the “Send” button for a few seconds.
“Here we go, Tobes!”
He shifts uncomfortably, and hops out of the chair to attack his eyeless Piglet doll.
I send the email, then check my Sent folder to make sure everything looks alright. I exhale, wander around the living room for a minute, and gather my thoughts. This is the first step of many, but getting here has been harder than I thought.
***
It’s hard to believe that over two and a half years ago, I was jabbering about writing a book. And then I worked and worked and worked, and it felt like the closer I got to the end, the longer the process was going to take. Especially when I realized I had to write a proposal on top of everything else.
But after some intense proposal writing and query letter development, I feel as though I’m pretty good to go. It took a while to figure out how best to structure my proposal – mostly because all of the available articles on the Internets tell you a hundred different ways to write one. But I distilled out what I felt worked best for me and infused the proposal with humor – because if nothing else, I want it to accurately reflect me and my personality.
In all honesty, I had no idea that a proposal was so involved – that it’d need its own table of contents. Between the marketing and promotion sections, the chapter-by-chapter summaries, and all of the other goodies, my proposal ended up being 30 pages. And sure, that’s probably way too long. But at least this way I can pull out parts that various agents/publishing houses may require – and I won’t have to reinvent the wheel every single time.
Late yesterday, I finished re-reading the full memoir – whilst spot-editing for little grammatical mistakes. I cut a few things here, added there. But then, around bedtime, I realized I was as done as I’ll be – and not just with one task, but with everything.
And now, I’m in that terrifying phase of shopping my memoir around to see if anyone wants to bite. In many ways, I’m back at the starting line.
