The new pasttime

For those not following on Twitter (where, yes, I'm still alive on the interwebs), I've taken up canning.

Yes, canning.

The impulse, I believe, is part aspirational hipster, part nostalgic Southerner, part sanctimonious yuppie farmer's market scavenger.

I love baking, but, well, the products  of my hot oven are both transient and oinky. So baking is out. Until Christmas, at least, when I try to convince my mom that people will enjoy jars of pickles as much as they've historically liked my cookies.

Thus far, I've made sweet curry pickled (meh--will try again), spicy rhubarb chutney (intensely stellar), heirloom tomato salsa (also kickass), and, tonight, I made up a jam recipe!  Which I found worth recording.

As anyone who's been around me for 10 seconds will tell you, I loathe winter. But I am prone to spontaneously throwing little parties-of-one in my kitchen come summertime. Sometimes, I look around the farmer's market and bring home stray fruit with pleading eyes. And sometimes, I read a bunch of recipes and make up my own. And sometimes I do not have all the necessary ingredients on hand and am wont to make do.  Hence, I bring you:

Cardamom-spiced Strawberry Rhubarb Jam

3 1/2 cups tiny, perfect, ruby-red local strawberries (The water-logged, flavorless, mutant-colossus California berries will not do here. They won't.)
6 cups brown sugar, divided (every recipe I looked at called for regular sugar, but I had nowhere near 6 cups, so I substituted with brown, and man, was that a good idea. Whole new level of rich molasses-y flavor.)
3 1/2 cups fresh rhubarb chopped into 1/2-inch pieces
1 tsp lime zest
3 tbsp lime juice
1 1/2 tbsp freshly ground cardamom pods
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1. Sterilize jars and lids in a boiling water bath.  This recipe yields just shy of two quarts. I'm out of pint-jar lids, so I now have two BIG jars of jam, but that's fine.  Really.  I'm fine with big jars of jam.

2. Crush strawberries in the bottom of a Dutch oven with a potato masher. Stir in 4 cups of brown sugar. Add the rhubarb, lime zest and juice, cardamom, ginger and cinnamon. Mix together. Bring it all up to a rolling boil and cook for about 5 minutes.

3. Add the rest of the sugar, bring back up to a boil; cook for another 5 minutes or so.

4. Remove from the heat and skim off the foam. Ladle the hot jam into hot jars.

5. Put the lids on and process in the water bath for 10 minutes.

Apparently, home-canned stuff is supposed to be good for a year-plus, just hanging out on a shelf somewhere. I've yet to test this theory as I'm quickly consuming all the stuff I'm making.

Well, cooked-down, ecstatically fresh fruit and vegetables are good. You know it's true.

like a phoenix

Welcome to my new blog! 

If you followed my old blog, which shall remain nameless in order to reduce google-ability, I'm so pleased you found me!  If we haven't met before, hi!  Please note that all the posts here that are older than this one are the archives from a blog I killed so as to be less, er, obvious about who I am. Or more specifically, less searchable under my real name.

OK, so.

I don't have any particular grand plans for this space. It may be very similar to the old blog, but it may be a little or a lot different. I'm fickle. I often have trouble writing at all. I don't know what'll come of it. But I do hope, you know, something does, indeed, come.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy my new menstrual-lookin' backdrop. (It seemed fitting.)

If I can't write, I can at least make up recipes

Lest you suspect I only publish recipes that I make up so that I don't forget them, well, um, yeah, that's exactly why I do it.

Regardless, I just made up some salsa with random recent farmers' market spoils and, really, it's better than any salsa I've ever bought in a store. Honest to tomatoes!

Here's the deal:

Luck of Spring Salsa

4 smallish red spring onions, coarsely chopped
8 or 9 small, firm tomatillos (mine were about the size of a half-dollar in circumference), peeled and coarsely chopped
2 cayenne peppers (if you're pussy, I mean, if you don't like hot stuff, stick to one pepper), chopped, seeds and all
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tbsp fresh cilantro leaves
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground chipotle powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
the juice of one lime
4 medium-sized tomatoes-- preferably good acidic ones--chopped

Dump all your ingredients except the tomatoes into your food processor and pulse until everything is fairly, you know, choppy. I was aiming for more of a coarse puree texture, but you can leave it chunkier if you like. Add the tomatoes last (they just can't take as much of a beating as the other ingredients) and pulse to desired texture.

All done!

Be forewarned, though: this is definitely a late spring/early summer recipe, when the tomatoes are overlapping the spring onions and tomatillos. It's kinda hard to time it right so as to have all these ingredients in season, but it's well worth it.

Fucking and punching (keys)

I'm not dating and I'm not writing. These two things both are and are not related. Both, however, seem to make the handful of people who seem to care about me express concern about my general well-being. Now, I could write some treatise on how being single is a choice and being all up someone's butt (and having someone up mine) stresses me out anyway. And about how I get blocked from time to time and the average length of my writing blocks is about two years and so this one is really nothing to worry about. But, like, I'm a little worried about me too.

First, let's explore the creeping horror that overwhelms me every time I consider venturing forth into the jungle to find me a mate. It's not that I've acquired a growing husband-hunger or baby-hunger or that I'm feeling that mythical ticking of my biology (my body is not a bomb) hammering away at my insides. I do not feel a hankering to "settle down," as it were. But I do like having a little company. As I've confessed here before, I'm not exactly un-lonely. It's been about six years since I've had anyone in my life I'd consider a partner. And, truth be told, I have not had one single solitary date since I was pregnant. And that's coming up on a year ago already.

Oh, yeah. The lasting effects of my abortion. Sorry, this isn't really about that. Not exactly, anyway. I do not regret it. Let's take that off the table right now. I don't fantasize about having a little bundle of shit and drool--I mean, joy--to keep me company. I want a grown-up in my life, thanks. Not someone who'll make my house smell like spoiled milk. But there are lasting effects of the pregnancy. Or rather, lasting effects of the series of events that led up to the pregnancy and the series of men who populated said events.

My loneliness had me flinging myself from short-lived affair to short-lived affair with people I really didn't like very much. It was a full-scale clamor for some kind of intimate connection and I was using sex as a short cut toward that intimacy and/or a screening tool to determine if there was even a chance of ever getting there. I like sex. I need sex. I can't really get to know a person without it, I don't think-- not really. Not the way I want to know a person. But short cuts are unpredictable and this particular one seems to function more like a worm hole--hard to tell where you'll wind up on the other side. Sure, I should have known that I should have proceeded with more caution, when some other, less impetuous methods of judging compatibility would have had me ending most of those short-lived affairs before they'd begun. Pretty much without exception, I knew I didn't want to date those guys before I slept with them. But I second-guessed myself and worried I wasn't giving them a fair shot--only to learn a couple weeks later that my gut's not so stupid after all.

So, at this point, getting back on all those horses (or new horses, as the case may be) just makes me tired in my bones. And there's a bigger problem too. Even if I swear to forgo sex until I'm sure I like someone, I don't have much faith in the notion that there IS someone out there I'll like. (Panic button thought: and then I'll never get laid!) Now, friends tell me this attitude is overweeningly pessimistic, so much so that it sounds just like one of those prophecies I could fulfill all by my lonesome (so to speak), right? But is it? I mean, sure, I can put on my saddest of sacks and bemoan that Mr. Right For Me just doesn't exist on this mortal plane, but that's not really what I'm getting at. I feel as though I've been dating for a long time. A long, long time. I've gotten snarled up in a long relationship that almost worked, but had some irreparable flaws. I've played around with some not-quite-real relationships that I knew were wrong from the start. And I have met a lot of no-way-no-how-I-don't-care-how-hard-your-cock-gets kind of folks. Actually, I would say that a preponderance of this latter sort of fellow has filled my dating cup and overflowed it.

So, here I am, 33, carrying so many emotional suitcases you could call me Madame Tutli-Putli, and thinking, you know what? Maybe the dude who can put with me, and who I can also tolerate, doesn't exist. I don't come to this tentative conclusion out of pessimism. I come to it out of experience--the sort of experience that's left me too exhausted and wounded from the oft-repeated first, second, third date grinds and the disappointment and the plain ol' cringing remembrance of mistakes past to go at it again. I'm not real sure I have another college try in me. I mean, I'm fucking old. And cranky. And not just a little world-weary.

So, I'm lonely. So, I'm not dating. Frankly, I still want to skip dating. I want to get to the partnership thing already and leapfrog right over the obligatory getting-to-know-you steps. And, perhaps, this has always been my problem. Only now I know that fucking my way past the early stages drags some ugly side-effects behind it. Like a pregnancy by an asswipe, for instance. And a handful of guys who think I'm this awesome, liberated, no-strings fuck-beast and therefore seem to like me a lot more than I like them (up until, like, date 7 or 8, at which point they discover that I'm a depressive, neurotic, anxious little thing (Seriously, dudes. Just read this blog. It's right here.)), for another instance.

Shut up. I know this stuff --sex not being a short cut to real intimacy-- is supposed to be obvious and all decorated with circus lights and shit. But it isn't. It just isn't. And, for me, I don't think the temptation to use it as such will never be more than a whim away.

So, I'm not dating right now. I have no idea how long this dormant period will last--but probably at least until the idea of ending it doesn't make my stomach roil with bile. Really, I think that if the idea of dating, in the abstract alone, has puke-phobic me glancing sidelong toward the bathroom, it's probably for the best that I not push myself on this issue just yet.

Of course, this also means I'm not having sex. Which is hell on this blog, amirite?

Yes, it's long been true that my sense of creative enterprise has been fueled by my sexuality. Sometimes I've wondered if my brain's just wired funny, because reading good writing makes me lubricate. Likewise, when I'm in the flow of my own tumbling, loopy prose. So, am I gonna blame my not-writing on my not-fucking? Yeah, no, not really. I can't do it. That's not why I'm not writing.

I'm not writing because nothing seems important enough to write. Sometimes I come across some little point of interest. I hold the idea of writing about it in my head for a minute, right before I decide someone else is gonna do it better, more sharply, more astutely and so why would I bother adding my own sub-par variance to the mix? Or, like, I'll find something that excites me for half a minute and then I discard it, already bored. Like I can't work up the enthusiasm for any given topic (save my own self-doubt, apparently) to be able to yoke myself to it for a sustained post. Really, it's that I do not believe that my tiny little piping voice, in the maelstrom of the internet, is worth my own time -- let alone yours.

Sure, I recognize that this is a particularly loathsome variety of perfectionism: if I can't write something of monumental importance, something that'll speak to the very souls of multitudes of internet habitués, well, then I'm just gonna take my keyboard and go home. It's retarded. I'm don't have the chops to aspire to that kind of bullshit posturing and I should just get the hell over myself. I know. I know.

But the problem is that I look at the volume of text of which this blog is composed and I'm both a little aghast and a little embarrassed that I was ever arrogant enough to put fingers to keys in the first place. That I ever thought any of it mattered. And, again, I know. That's not the point. Very few folks out there are writing the next Great American Blog, and I never really had that ambition in the first place. I merely had opinions and liked words (have/like, whatev). But in the absence of being in love, in the absence of having a job about which I felt passionate, I had this blog and I had a handful of people who read it and responded positively. And therefore it accrued great, great value for me. That is, it did until I walked away from it for a little while and very quickly stopped missing it. At which point, I lost all confidence that I was ever doing anything here other than feeding whatever part of my ego was wrapped up in my "identity" as a "writer."

I mean, even this post. It is another navel-gazing, overshare-y, excursive exercise in convincing myself my mind isn't atrophying. Do I have a point beyond that, I wonder? What might it be? Eehh. Don't answer that. Please.

To top it off, last week, I was reading "Octet" from David Foster Wallace's book, Brief Interviews With Hideous Men. He's got that section in it, you know? The part that devolves into, essentially, a direct address of a certain writerly persona that one could interpret as not being terribly divergent from DFW himself? The part in which he sort of neurotically parses the problems of trying to write any damn thing at all? Right? And tonight, as I doggedly plug through this mess, I keep thinking, Oh! But DFW already did it better and funnier and more honestly and with more heart than I ever could.

So, why am I trying? Why am I about to expose this post to an audience with parameters so amorphous that I can little judge its friendliness?

Yeah, I have I no idea why.

Lately, I've been besieged with a funk pertaining to my growing feelings of all-encompassing ineffectuality. This morning, a friend told me I should write something--anything--as a stab at pulling myself out of it. Of course, because I'm a contrary twerp, I told him that was a stupid idea because all of my writing, past and future, is stupid and pointless and would only exacerbate my feelings of being ineffectual. And then because I'm a really contrary twerp, I went and wrote this thing.

So, um, the short version is "I'm fine, Mom."

Cream of refrigerator soup: snowpocalypse edition

I don't know. Maybe you've heard that DC's gotten a little snow lately. And by a little, I mean:



Of course, another 4-6 inches fell on top of this insanity after I took this picture of the sidewalk outside my building. You know, I have a very distinct memory of my mom plopping me on top of a snowbank so I wouldn't get into trouble while she opened my stroller when I was maybe 2? 3? years old (yes, I have a freakishly clear recollection of my toddler years). I recall that snow as being enormous. But I was very short then. I'm not near so short now, but this snow is enormous. Not sure I've ever seen anything quite like it.

But, once again, I'm stuck inside with an odd assortment of ingredients. Tonight, however, I think I might have topped my last soup. Truly, this thing I just made? It could only be improved upon if you licked it off the body of your beloved. Oh, you only wish that was hyperbole.

So, um, let's see. What, exactly did I do?

Snowpocalypse Turnip, Leek and Mushroom Soup

8 or so decent-sized turnips (I had a bunch of different ones, red, gold and the usual white, that I'd picked up at the Farmer's Market last weekend.), cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
4 leeks, chopped
12 oz cremini mushrooms, quartered
1 clove garlic
1 1/2 TBSP olive oil
1 TBSP butter
1 tsp dried thyme
1 cup dry white wine
1 qt chicken broth (I like the low-sodium organic because it taste more like actual chicken.)
1 1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 TBSP dijon mustard
1/4 cup heavy cream
juice of 1/2 a meyer lemon (You could use regular lemons here too, but go skimpy because they're more sour.)
salt and pepper to taste

1. Boil the chopped turnips in 6 cups of water for about 6 minutes. Drain and set aside.

2. Heat olive oil and butter over medium high heat in the bottom of a Dutch oven. Add the chopped leeks and sauté for 5-8 minutes or until they begin to soften.

3. Add the mushrooms and garlic and sauté for another 3 or 4 minutes or until the mushrooms begin to release their liquid.

4. Add the white wine and bring to a boil. Then, add the turnips back into the pot. Mix the vegetables together and bring up to temperature. Add the quart of chicken broth and bring it to a boil. Reduce temperature to a simmer, cover and cook for about 30 minutes. Test to make sure the turnips are soft before you continue.

5. Mix in dijon, heavy cream, nutmeg and lemon juice. Salt and pepper the soup to taste.

6. Remove from heat and puree the soup. I used my favorite kitchen device ever, the immersion blender. But you can ladle the soup into a traditional blender (carefully--it's hot and blender lids can blow and spew boiling soup all over you if you're not vigilant) to puree the whole thing if that's all you have.


Enjoy!

cream of refrigerator soup: snow day edition

I haven't been to the grocery store or farmer's market it over two weeks. The weather reports at which I looked predicted flurries today and a little bit of accumulation in the afternoon. Instead, we got what looks to be about four inches of snow that fell in fat, fluffy clumps all day. Needless to say, I got hungry and had to make do with rations I'd reserved in my freezer. Because I'm a genius, however, my concoction turned out most delicious. And so, I give you my "recipe."

Chicken and Black-eyed Pea Chili

2 chicken breasts, poached and shredded (1 qt poaching liquid reserved)
2 tbsp EVOO
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 sweet red pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 qt broth (I used vegetable because it's what I had, but I probably would have used chicken, were it available.)
1 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes
1 1/2 lbs pre-cooked black-eyed peas
3 tbsp chipotle in adobo, minced
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp Mexican oregano (Conventional oregano will NOT do. It's not the same thing.)
1 tsp chili powder
salt and (tellicherry, of course) pepper to taste
3 cups pre-cooked rice (I used basmati because it's what I had and it's my favorite, but any rice will do.)

1. In the bottom of your Dutch oven, sauté the onions and red and green peppers in olive oil until they begin to soften. Add garlic and sauté for a minute or two more.

2. Add can of tomatoes, broth and reserved poaching liquid and bring to a boil.

3. Add the shredded chicken, black-eyed peas, chipotle and other spices. Bring the whole shebang back up to a boil. Reduce heat to a pretty serious simmer and cook for 20-30 minutes until the flavors meld.

4. Spoon 1/2 cup or so of rice into the bottom of a bowl. Ladle soup/chili over the top.

5. Slurp hungrily.

If you have it, it would probably be pretty tasty if you garnished it with chopped cilantro, fresh minced jalapeños and a squeeze of lime juice, but, alas, I didn't have any of that stuff.

No joke. This turned out really well and I'm trés impressed with myself that I just made it up with random crap I had in the house. Not too shabby, considering my limited resources.

Bon Appétit!

Why I wrote

I wrote because it was fun. Because I was an inordinately verbal child -- demonstrably so, early. Because there were stories of pink monsters, who lived in pink houses and slept in the top drawer of my pink dresser, in dire need of telling. I wrote because I was told to, for school. I wrote because some short piece I'd dashed off moved my fourth-grade teacher to tears as she read it aloud to the class -- and that was really something. And then I wrote because people told me I did it well. For a long time, I did it simply because of that -- for the praise from grown-ups.


I wrote because I read. I read a lot. Somewhere in all the reading, the writing about reading became habit. Responding became habit.

Sometimes I didn't write and sometimes I did.

I wrote because someone said, "You wrote exactly what I felt." Or because someone said, "No one else could have said that the way you did." Or because someone said, "These are real poems." I wrote because I was unhappy -- with myself, my life, my world. I wrote because things outside of myself made me angry -- crazy angry -- or inconsolable. Because dissatisfaction gave me fuel and fire. Because I have always been solitary but needed to talk about it. Occasionally, I wrote in spite of being happy, though that's always been harder.


I wrote just to finish the goddamn manuscript. I wrote in spite of disappointment with myself. Or maybe I wrote to write myself out of that disappointment. I wrote because I went to grad school for the sole purpose of writing and I. Do. Not. Give up. I wrote to come to terms with what it means to be a white girl from the American south. I wrote because my body was teaching me something new every day -- things I deeply desired to shape into language. I wrote out of a desire to make something pretty, even trinket-like. I wrote because I'd fallen so madly in love with the oddities of my mother tongue. I wrote because I was supposed to be good at it, even though I wasn't. I wrote to get better. I used writing as a vehicle for sorting out how I wasn't in love anymore. To tell the tale of the demise of a relationship I'd held dear, and to obfuscate the tale with politics and some fancy Sanskrit words. I wrote to get a handle on my own sexual identity, which defied both the relationship and the world beyond the relationship. I wrote to know myself, then, right?


And then I didn't write. I didn't miss it. I didn't need it. Until I did. So, then, I wrote. For practice. And also, to keep from fighting with a friend about movies.


And then, I wrote to respond and to engage and to partake in so-called conversations with a world I never thought would answer me. Which were really just conversations with myself. Obviously. I wrote because I wanted the writing to serve as beacon, of sorts. Because what if someone else out there was working similar stones smooth? I wrote because I had a "project" and because the Internet is a fascinating, immersive place. Because the Internet is provocative, in one way or another, every damn minute. And so is the world that isn't the Internet. And I wrote and I wrote. For 10 days, I wrote just because I was really hungry. Other days, I wrote because I was heart-broken. Others still, because I was amped beyond cranial capacity. I wrote because it was the most important thing to me. And as I wrote, the writing became ever more so.


Sometimes, I wrote because I was turned on. Because I wanted to turn other people on. Because I had this fantasy that my writing could be so charged that it would draw folks to my bed in droves. At times, I thought I wrote simply in service of this fantasy. As though the writing amounted to so much sublimating, which, I'd secretly hoped, would inspire folks to provide me opportunity to sublimate no more. Or less, at least.


At some point along this trajectory, I began to write because I thought I was a writer. Because writing is what writers do. What I mean is that I wrote because doing so had become a facet of my identity, my personhood. Because if I didn't, what am I? I'm a girl with a job, that's what. Not a bad job -- a job that sustains me and for which I'm grateful -- but a job I wouldn't miss, for itself, if I didn't have it. I wrote because being a writer meant that my job didn't have to matter as much. And neither did my lack of investment in my obtuse notion of "career." And again, I wrote because I needed to. Because it made me part of conversations bigger than my own experience. Or because I wanted it to do that for me, maybe.


So, then, it's really a pain in my ass that it occurred to me that I don't actually need it. That, kinda, I don't miss it. Not enough. Or maybe just not often enough. And while I can enumerate a hundred and one reasons I once wrote, I can't name any for why I will or would write again. Save this nagging grunt in my mind that nudges, "Oh, but you should." What is this "should" business? What's the basis for "should?" Why should I? Because writers write. It's what they do.


So what, then, if I'm not a writer?


What if this role I've (at times, forcibly) adhered to my identity is bogus? What should I do then? Huh, mind? Huh? What fucking then?

Now, I write this not because I'm in need of a pep talk or because I'm feeling particularly inadequate in terms of my chops (though I do feel that way, and often). I'm writing this because, last night, a friend asked me why I wrote and he put it in past tense, just like that: "I want to come back to this. Why you wrote." In the moment, his past tense sunk me -- and then it kept me up all night, stewing. Of course, he clarified and said he meant for me to answer the question with a comparison between why I used to write and why I'll write in the future, but it's not like I'm not keenly aware that I am not writing at present. And that, besides this niggling feeling that I should be posting something, anything, because I've established expectations that I would (mainly from myself, but also from the handful of you out there who have so kindly asked me for more), I haven't felt any real tremendous compulsion to write, really, at all, lately. Therefore, though this may be just another bout of blockage, of the likes I've encountered in many iterations before, I think the question of how integral my writing is to me bears consideration.

So, that's what I'm doing. Considering. Because I can't help but notice that a nauseatingly high percentage of those reasons for which I've written in the past seem to be all about seeking external approval and cosseting my puny li'l ego. And I'm considering because I've never nursed any serious aspirations to get paid for my writing (likely out of chickenshittedness) anyway. Given that cold light, I think asking myself just exactly how much I profit from adopting a writerly persona at this juncture is entirely appropriate. Funny how I have to use words to do that, though, eh?

The dormant month

For the first time in the history of this blog, I didn't write anything for the entire month of September. Perhaps you've noticed? Writing a post just to say that, yes, I too have noticed that nothing much has been happening whenever I open up an empty post window feels sort of dramatic and self-aggrandizing in itself, but a few of you have commented-- and I thank you for doing so. It's lovely, really, to feel as though what I do in this space is, in some way, miss-able.

The truth is that writing that abortion post seems to have taken a lot out of me-- intellectually, emotionally, and also in terms of my writerly self esteem. I didn't intend for that to be the case. I was so sure the whole event would come and go, rolling off my back as though I'd grown duck feathers. Friends who've been through similar experiences shook their heads and warned me when I swore it was going to be no big deal for me, but, you know, it was. It is. It is in ways both difficult and astoundingly awesome. I have new friends now. I have new readers now. I have new perspective now. But I also have new anxieties now. This, of course, is how it is.

Three months on down the road, I remain nothing but steadfast in my conviction that writing about my experience was the right thing to do, but -- if nowhere but in my own mind -- it seems to have raised the stakes of this blog. It may well be the most "important"-- whatever that means -- thing I've written to date, and it's certainly the most charged (emotionally, politically) thing I've written here. And it made me want to write better, more seriously, less glibly and with more of a real aim-- at what? I'm not yet sure.

Also, I've been busy. The offline conversations that post generated were plentiful. Some of have dwindled and, as I mentioned, some have kindled new and important friendships. I didn't know the sort of people it would bring into my life, the sort of people who'd respond to it in some way or another, the sort of people who'd take interest in me as a person because of the way I chose to handle a problem that isn't really so uncommon. But now that they're here and talking to me and challenging me and encouraging me, I can't really help but feel like something I wrote -- something I made up out of my own little brain -- has made my own world a little bit bigger. That's kind of amazing, right? And no one is more surprised, humbled and excited about that than I.

So, let's call this quiet period my Epoch of Re-assessment. I'm thinking about the possibility of going to school again. I'm thinking about the sort of platform I want this blog to be -- the sort of ideas I need to process. How a blog is good for processing but not necessarily all that great for instilling rigor -- insular and self-congratulatory as it can be. And I'm thinking about how a relationship between added rigor and my usual spin cycle of ideas might look -- the thoughts I express here and the sort of persona I'll need to cultivate if I want to make a go at... something more... serious?

I'm intimidated, frankly. Well-meaning folks in my most bare-bones support system have been very encouraging, indeed. With a handful of exceptions (exceptions that made me doubt my efficaciousness as a practitioner of written communication, but did not make me doubt the rightness of my choices, I might point out), I received remarkably kind feed-back on that abortion post. But somehow all the well-wishing has me feeling as though I have even more at stake every time I sit down to pound out something -- anything -- witty, wise, winsome or resolutely un-ambitious -- whatever. Yep. Pretty classic. I'm psyching myself out and I know it. I did the same thing when I was working on my manuscript in grad school. Once my classmates and professors began to respond positively to my work, I found I had to lock myself in my office for an entire semester just to keep their encouragement from staunching the flow, just to squeeze those few little coagulated, sticky poems from the turnip that is me. For me, living up to the accomplishments of which I'm sorta kinda proud is always harder than overcoming failures. And that's where I am now--scared it's all downhill from here. And, from here, I know, I've barely gotten started.

So, I'd ask the friends who've been asking after my writing to be patient with me, but that's not really the point. I love that they care whether I write and notice when I don't, for sure, but the standards I'm worried about living up to are mine. So, really, I'm better served trying to be patient with myself and to let the writing come when it comes and not to become exasperated when it doesn't. I am trying not to assign so much significance (to piddly ol' blog posts) that I can't even write fluffier fare -- because it seems silly to take this blog so seriously. But I am having trouble writing fluffier fare. And less fluffy things too.

Which isn't to say things aren't percolating. It's just a slow drip. And that's okay. This time around, moving from the dormant state into a thaw is not something I want to rush.

Mixing metaphors, however? I'm totally fine with that.