I Hope

I can always tell it’s been too long since I wrote a blog when it takes me more than one try to figure out how to post. At this point, I’m not sure how long I’ve been on lock-down, but I know that for me it started sometime around March 12. That week, my roommate let me know she was headed back to Detroit to be with family for the quarantine, and I knew I’d have to stick it out on my own for a couple months. She returns this weekend, and that will be a major relief.

My lock-down is more comfortable than most. We’re not densely packed here in New Orleans, so it’s easy for me to take walks with few encounters of other people along the way. For a while, anxiety kept me indoors for long stretches, but my doctor assured me I could go walking without wearing a mask unless someone drew near or I went inside anywhere. That was enough to get me back at it. By the way, here is a lockdown play-list I put together on Spotify to share with my coworkers: Lockdown Blues

One of the bright spots during this period has been my new job editing for Rm. 220, a local online literary journal. I’ve been publishing semi-regularly with them since 2018, working mainly with Kristina Kay Robinson as my editor. Working more closely with her now is a delight, and amid all this worry and anxiety and misinformation and madness, I sometimes lose sight of the fact that I have not one but two jobs I dearly love. I had always meant to start doing this sort of editing, but I had never pursued any positions—busy as I was with my own projects. There are few things better for me than the feeling of publishing work I believe in.

I’ve also been writing more poetry. It felt strange for me to begin writing verse after twelve or so years away from the genre. But I’ve begun producing regularly enough that I have to stop telling people I don’t think of myself as a poet. There will be more news on the poetry front before too long, believe me. In the meantime, if you haven’t seen this poem I wrote in response to the Covid Crisis, check it out here.

Anyway, I started this entry as a way to take stock of how I’m doing. I don’t know. I feel like over the last decade or so my life has been marked by an increased tension between positive and negative circumstances, between sickness and health, between increased capacity and profound dysfunction. This present period only intensifies that trend. I can’t see my parents or siblings and I don’t know when I’ll be able to. I’m terrified as entire states begin to open back up to save “the economy.” My god damn dishwasher isn’t running, and my landlord has given me no clue when someone will come to look at it. But… there’s new love in my life, I’ve got a story coming out in Strange Horizons toward the beginning of July—I finally joined SFWA after all these years. My pool is finally open for swimming—ah, the pooooool! There are projects coming down the line that will knock your socks off. I think in most ways, I’m more okay than I’ve ever been, but my God, the not-okay makes me feel powerless, foggy, and painfully isolated. Anyway.

I hope you are well. I hope you are safe. I hope you are all right. I hope you are well. I hope you are safe. I hope you are all right. I hope.