an intro to this space

It’s January 2024 and I’m at my last MFA residency before I graduate, surrounded by my very first snowfall of the season. I’ve been in snow before, but this is the first time I’ve ever been in a place where there was no snow, and then wake up to snow, to everything transformed.

This kind of beautiful seasonal change doesn’t really happen where I grew up in Florida.

We do have sudden thunder storms, which can make surprising sunsets. But at the end of the day, seeing snow lightly plop off a tall pine is more enchanting than watching a hurricane slam a palm tree through your roof.

All that to say, I feel a season change. That kind of wake up in the morning to piles of crunchy snow feeling, a feeling I know now. A feeling of holding fresh snow in your hand to make a tiny snowman.

For me, this change looks like only writing when I feel like it—for fun—and whatever might delight me. (Will there be turtles? The Last of Us? Probably.) There will be no promises. No cadence. No deadlines.

I’m taking a break, a rest, some time to recover after releasing a book and spending two years in an intensive MFA program. I am so proud of those things. I am also so exhausted.

And yet.

I still want to play.

In an exercise in my MFA workshop today we were asked to write about the shape of what we are writing next. This is what I wrote:

The shape of what I’m writing next is a kid’s playground with swirling twirling red slides and swings that go so high you think you’re going to fall off but mostly it feels like you’re flying. Running in little pieces of mulch everywhere. Smiling at friends but not needing their approval. Laughing. Running. Scraping knees and not minding.

I thought that sounded like fun. So this is my playground, my slide, my swing. I don’t know what I’ll write here or even when or how often, and that’s the fun. It’s an open space. One that really is just for me. But I’d be happy to hold your hand on the swings.