Halatia

It is a life suck. The readings don't end, the seminar papers at once useful and utterly horrific to muscle through. And it all culminates in preliminary exams -- which are institutionalized hazing (though I really cannot say enough about how humane my program has made them). But I'm through the other side. I've defended my dissertation proposal. I've started the endless process of actually writing the damn thing. I have started to read for fun again (falling in love with Ravka and Ketterdam -- no mourners, no funerals) and it's stretching out those old muscles that had atrophied away. The ones that want to build worlds -- to create charact

I get nostalgic for deviantArt in the same way I get homesick. There are just moments that flash in out of nowhere, memories of ridiculous conversations, of passionate critiques, of affirmations so strong they would buoy me for days. In my mind, dA is a physical place as much as my childhood  home, a place where I grew more than I thought I ever could. And it calls me back just as much as that home, too. I always feel as though there is something to reclaim, to remember, to relearn. But like that childhood home, I've been away for so long that I'm not even sure where to start, where to look for the awesome people, the awesome stories. I jus

I turn 29 tomorrow. In the past five years, I have written more than I ever thought I would. Two theses. Countless articles. So, so many papers for school. And I am happy where I am. I am still a science journalist. In the fall, I begin the next chapter of my academic career which I'm sure will heap boundless more writing opportunities on my plate. I write every day, and I am so blessed for the chance to do so. But I look at my pages of pages of writing, enough to fill a book, to fill two (after this semester, gods, maybe three),  and I love them, but I do not feel as though I am writing the right words. A voice tells me there are other s