I've had quite the whirlwind of a last few months. If you read my last post or heard my story slam at The Sydney, you can see I'm trying to move forward and keep putting pieces together--doing my best to figure out this thing called life.

I think I'm getting closer to the life I want, however, if someone were to ask me what's new, I'd sound crazy and a bit like a hermit: I'm starting to brush my dog's teeth, I sold my house and almost everything I own, I'm learning German, and my favorite two hours of my week are spent with Middle Schoolers working on slam poetry. I'm also working really hard on affirmative self-talk, so instead of saying I sound crazy, in my head I'm telling myself that the good, the bad, the crazy are all part of my story and if I only get one life, why not go for it?

I'm brushing Yadi's teeth because I want him to live forever. I sold my house and most things in it because I want to be free to go anywhere and everywhere. I'm learning German because I want to live  in Germany. I love being a teaching artist with the Nebraska Writers Collective's Louder Than a Bomb youth poetry program because my poets are really damn cool. And talented. And they aren't afraid to tell me when my writing is crappy.

When my writing is not my best. The affirmative self-talk is not my strong suit. Scratch that. The affirmative self-talk is something I'm working on. Mostly, it's to stop thinking, oh, yeah, f-that every time I think something that makes me angry or sad or is hurtful or negative. The things that hurt are part of my story and that is beautiful. I'm surprised how often I think f-that now that I'm trying to be aware. To be clear, I think feeling, really embracing and feeling the suck of sadness and angry are important, but, as Andre 3000 says, Spaceships don't come equipped with review mirrors. My past is my story. I get to choose what happens next--if the focus is only on what's behind, how do you rise?

In embracing my story (and the crazy), things are staring to happen. My long short story "The Volunteer" which I posted a clip of earlier this year was pick up by the anthology I wrote it for. I rewrote the entire piece in less than a week for the press submission. You can find the anthology here if interested. One of my pieces of flash fiction is being anthologized and nominated for best flash of 2017. I got my eyeballs fixed. I slammed another story. I've traveled to Oregon to volunteer in the forest and chased a sunset over the Pacific ocean only to miss it and happen upon the moonset the next morning. I'm planning a trip to Costa Rica to volunteer with sloths. SLOTHS!

For 29 years. or whatever of my 29 years that I was capable of this thought, I thought that really living had to be extreme--jumping off cliffs and out of planes, coming face to face with jungle snakes, and scuba diving with sharks. For me, I think living is writing and hanging with Yads and running through forests and never stopping learning. Choose you. Choose your story. There will be shitty things and you will mess up, but if you stay true to you, the small things--story publications and sloths and a healthy dog--will fall into place and those little things will slowly start to make the big picture of who you want to become. And it's not weird at all that it's looking like the person I want to become is a writer in the German forest with a clean-tooth dog--I'm getting on that spaceship.