What I've been...
Working on:
- Curating Nations' blog, collaborating with writers, planning Volume 3, and writing this post. Also, I'm thrilled to feature Plant With Purpose's partnering farmers in this next volume. In October I tagged along on a trip to Oaxaca and it was so special place to be back in that place with an organization I adore.
- MFA work, which continues to be consuming and invigorating and exhausting and wonderful. I'm finishing a major critical paper this week and am nearing the program's home stretch (can I say that yet?! Still in denial). I'll spend the next two quarters putting together my manuscript and will start submitting pieces for publication after that.
- Miscellaneous freelance projects including copyediting a book. And Monika designed a new logo and business cards for me to make things official! I strategically choose talented friends for just this purpose (joking, Mon).
Reading:
- Michael Paterniti (The Telling Room and Love and Other Ways of Dying are both excellent)
- Fred Bahnson's Soil and Sacrament, an intelligent, nuanced, and compelling spiritual memoir on farming
- "The New Mecca," George Saunder's big-hearted essay on Dubai and "misconception from afar"
Resolving in 2017:
- Host more often
- Value courage and vulnerability over perfection and self-protection
- Make a daily habit of returning to the essentials
- Say yes to the good things (like ocean dips and weekend travel)
- Run two half-marathons, which is, I know, the only real resolution on the list.
Listening to:
- Laura Gibson's Empire Builder
- Everything by Devendra Banhart
- La La Land soundtrack (who isn't?)
- Latin pop (always and without shame)
Quoting:
- "Your memory is made of light." - Pablo Neruda
- "Almost every time I was super afraid it was of the wrong thing. And stuff that first looked like the worst, most humiliating thing that could every happen almost always led me to something extraordinary and very fine." - Mary Karr