When the muse leaves, I am bereft.

Writing, for me, is a feeling of mania. My own thoughts and criticism are often at war with my ideas. When the inspiration is louder than the criticism, I scramble to get every word down. I lose hours to the sound of my fingers typing. I lie awake in bed thinking of characters. Eventually, my criticism always catches up.

I don’t say that to be trite, or nihilistic. I know it will, and I know my own cycles. My fear of creating something bad, despite bad being a mostly subjective term, is so strong that it stops me from finishing anything. Pattern recognition is both a blessing and a curse. I know I will get stuck in a cycle of criticism again – it’s one of the hallmarks of my OCD, which despite what some guy I saw on TikTok says, is not a curable disease (see: treatable, not curable).

Writing has always felt like breathing. I recently re-discovered a quote I’d highlighted in Writers & Lovers by Lily King –

I don’t recall much of that book – apparently, I awarded it four stars. Her follow-up (slash prequel?) novel, Heart the Lover, was much more memorable for me (see: me sobbing at 1AM while also unable to breathe because of my allergies). But that quote knocks the breath out of me. I do not write because I have something to say, not always. I write because otherwise, I am something stuck. A stoppered drain or a frog in the throat.

Yet, the thoughts. The thoughts want me to have something to say; they ask me what is the point of this and what are you doing with your life and what tense should you write this in if you ever want to be published again and are you sure you’re not accidentally copying a book you read recently and then what if they sue you for plagiarism even though you didn’t mean to? All writers have doubts. Mine have always been so incessant, I figured I was just weak. Not cut out for the world of writing and publishing. Creativity is exhausting, synonymous with the ongoing battle in my mind. My thoughts are a chain around my neck that tug and tighten and twist. The moments of relief, of loosening, are why I continue to come back.

I wrote fiction for the first time in a long time, recently. A single chapter. An opening. It’s an idea I’ve had for a long time. I remember when it first came to me – with different versions of characters and scenes but the same feeling. I was running in the gray Pacific Northwest weather and listening to Noah Kahan’s 2022 album, Stick Season. A song led to a feeling which led to a setting and led to a character. And so on.

When that idea first came to me, I mapped it out desperately. Drained myself of all my juice before the thoughts could catch up. They grabbed onto me, as they always do. Stopped me in my tracks.

Four years later (what even is time), I am brought back to the idea by a forest fire on the news, and a handful of several good books in a row, that all hit on that very feeling I’m trying to capture. Grief, not only for death, but for growing up. For the what-ifs of time.

I do not know if it will go anywhere. Going anywhere is subjective, anyways. Does it not count for something, to write a paragraph, as much as it counts to write a book? I know that the thoughts will interrupt. Already, I have pancaked back and forth about the tense. But I do know that I can leave and come back to writing. That it waits for me, even if the muse is fleeting and unpredictable.

I was thinking of a quote, recently. A quote that oddly enough, I wrote, in my debut novel. I don’t often return to that novel. It feels separate from me, and when I think about it, I feel a shameful knot in my stomach that I can’t quite figure out how to untangle. I have not read my book since my last edit, in early 2020. I had to leaf through it’s pages to find the exact wording:

Art is recycling. When I write, I take songs and characters and versions of myself and I twist them into something new. In Laurel Everywhere, the main character and her love interest were both versions of myself. I didn’t realize it when I wrote it, but I can see it now. Laurel, who I felt like on the inside, and Hanna, how I felt like I was perceived. The first full book I ever wrote, when I was eleven, was about a group of siblings that were orphans (Boxcar Children) and traveled into a magical world through a door (Chronicles of Narnia) and met a bunch of high elves (Lord of the Rings). Art is stealing, in a way, from your life or from others’ lives or from other art.

Other stories and characters are usually my entrance points into my own creativity. Can I take a beloved character, and twist them? Can I take something I heard once, and place myself into the situation? How can I push the envelop, fold it, crumple it up and create something new altogether? It’s why so many authors get their start writing fanfiction, whether they’ll admit it or not.

The muse has been sitting inside of my chest. Perhaps it is because of the summer – my job slows down and I have more space for creativity, both at work and at home. My increasingly unbearable seasonal allergies have kept me indoors more than I’d like to be this time of year, and I’ve turned to my laptop, to my journal, as my escape. I know she will leave me soon, just as I know the seasons will change. Maybe there’s no greater meaning to it – the muse simply comes and she goes and if she goes again, she’ll return again. Returning to something after leaving is harder than beginning, for me. It is accepting defeat. It is showing up bedraggled and apologetic to an abandoned idea. To an old friend. Did you miss me? I ask. And maybe they didn’t. Because the stories exist without my writing, they are an amorphous feeling inside my chest, that know I will always return to them, time and time again.

I mentioned a handful of good reads recently. I’d like to shout them out. These were my favorites. I notice that they all weave with a similar, yet very different, thread – the transition from childhood to adulthood, and how our relationships change and mold based on our choices, and the choices of those around us.

1. I reread Normal People by Sally Rooney in April. It lit something within me that had been long dormant – an incessant craving to consume words. My reads this year had been slow, before that. So I returned to an old favorite, and devoured it in a few days. I honestly can’t fully articulate what it is about that book that has a hold on me. I love the imperfect nature of the characters and their ugly thoughts. I love to watch the transition from teenage love into adult love. I’m 99% sure Connell has OCD, and his thoughts feel so familiar it hurts me. And I love/hate the ambiguous ending. UGH.

2. Sula by Toni Morrison, which I found for only a few dollars at Third Place Books. Anything by Toni Morrison is always breathtaking – her prose, her descriptions, her dialog. The cashier at the bookstore told me that she read the book in graduate school for creative writing, and learning about the term “False Start” from it. Meaning, the beginning of the book is not where the story really begins. It almost tricks the reader. I loved how so much of this book was about a very flawed friendship and a betrayal. Further fueling my love for a very flawed main character.

3. Talking At Night by Claire Daverly. I could scream about this book. I almost don’t want anybody else to read it because I don’t want them to ruin it for me – it feels like it was mine, entirely. I wish I had written this book. It had every trope I adore in writing – a will-they-won’t-they relationship, straight A girl and sad overlooked boy, shocking trauma, a character with OCD. I read this book in two days. It was described as similar to Normal People, and while the premise is indeed similar, it’s also very different. Many of the more negative reviews compare it to Normal People, unfairly. There is a scene that I read and I cannot stop thinking about. A simple scene, between teenagers. One warming up the others hands in the cold. It was so sweet I could taste it. (Note: the quote in the graphic above is from this book).

4. Heart the Lover by Lily King. I thought it would be about a love triangle, based on the description, but it really wasn’t. It was about different forms of love, and how they change over time, and how so much of what happens between people occurs off-page. The prose was fantastic in this, as well. And the ending absolutely gutted me.

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Some people have ghosts that haunt their closets. I have books.

Publishing a book in 2020 was a very strange experience. I remember, on the brink of the new year, thinking it was going to be My Year (whatever that means). I was supposed to get married and publish my book in 2020. And I did do all of that, but none of it looked the way I had planned. A wedding turned into a elopement, and a book tour turned into a virtual launch party. My experience with my publisher was wonderful — shoutout to Ooligan Press, a small pub in Portland, Oregon — yet marketing fully online made me feel so disconnected from the art itself. I spent hours reading reviews, searching hashtags, brainstorming posts and promotional stories. It felt like taking bites out of my own heart.

People have stopped asking me when I’m going to publish another book (it’s probably because of the fear in my eyes!). I have a full nervous system response to the thought of query-ing and marketing again. As I’ve mentioned ad-nauseum in my past couple of posts, I got an OCD diagnosis in the past year, and recognize that my relationship with writing got warped into an obsessional fear and doubt cycle. There was a period of time where I could not go a single day without checking reviews, despite everyone in my life and online telling me not to read reviews. If only I had known about ERP then. But it’s not just all in my head — the publishing industry really sucks right now.

I wrote Laurel Everywhere the summer after I graduated college, when I was working part-time. I had ample free time, and I lived at home, had no rent to pay. I traveled that summer, and spent my days off in the woods, breathing in inspiration. To write, to really write with the pure intention of creating and being authentic, requires a certain amount of privilege. Even my ability to write these pieces sporadically is in large part due to the nature of my job, and the slowness that comes with the end of the academic year. Most days, after a full day spent on the computer or working with students, I do not want to type when I get home. It’s exhausting to tear into my thoughts and feelings and put them into words. Sounds a lot easier to just watch TV.

I used to subscribe to the American-Dream-esque vision of a writer: someone who grinds at a day job and writes at home until their Big Break. But I have grown tired. I dream of a world in which I can go away to a cabin and simply have some space to create. I am stuck between the need for my job (student loans, anyone?) and my need to create and rest. I made a joke the other day about skipping my meds so I can take medical leave. That’s how you know the capitalism burnout is Bad Bad (and don’t worry, I won’t actually skip my meds. Take your meds, folks!).

Publishing has always been about money and access. That part is nothing new, unfortunately. Privilege has always played a part in who can publish what. The mere fact that I was able to publish a book when I did was largely due to privilege and luck. Yet there is something odd and new happening right now, which is that the industry now cares about the marketability of the author, of their public persona, in a way that hasn’t happened quite like this. Every influencer and reality star has their own book now (and most were probably ghost written, to be honest). If the author has a huge following, they’ll be able to publish a book. It doesn’t matter if their writing isn’t good — editors, or god forbid shudders AI, can make structural changes (albeit, the ladder is not good at it). The last time I queried, which was over a year ago, I noticed that most agents ask for follower count and links to social media platforms. It made me want to bang my head against the keyboard.

If people didn’t have to worry about money, there would be so much more art. I can’t imagine anyone’s ideal way to spend time is actually sitting in an office. Just look at the nepo babies — generations of children who grew up with parents in industry and wealth, choosing to create art. Discussions online about nepo babies in the last year have been filled with such vitriol, and I really do think it comes from a place of envy. Because let’s be honest — if you were the child of rich, famous people, if you never had to worry about money, you too would create art. I know I would. We turn our hatred onto the latest generation of nepo babies, because it’s easier to hate them than the systems that allow them the privilege and resources to create, and keep others out. We live in a world in which we cannot create without money. It’s killing all of us, slowly.

Art breathes life into me again and again. It’s the thing that keeps me going. It always has been. I used to make paper countdowns on my cork board for movie and book releases, would cross them out with colored pens each day. When I feel sad, I make lists of things that I’m looking forward to. The Sunrise on the Reaping movie in November is one of my main motivators at the moment.

Even though I am not currently working towards publishing something at the moment, my art still has value, whether it’s the doodles in my notebook or my musings on here. All of us orbit art, even beneath the weight of capitalism. When I ask people what they are looking forward to, what they’ve been up to, they often mention art. Shows they’re going to, places they’re traveling to, books they’re reading. It’s been said again and again: creating, especially right now, is an act of resistance. It’s of utmost important. Yet, perhaps that’s why it feels so much more draining. Resistance requires rest. And rest is a luxury.

post-script musings: I have an unusual number of ideas cooking at the moment. You may notice that my postings on here are sporadic — it’s either 3 a month or radio silence. I’m embracing that. That’s just the way my brain and creativity work. Be back at some point with some more!

I have long-since harbored a belief in the power of premonition, in preventing the inevitable. Significantly less aesthetically pleasing or mainstream, the other scariest story to me as a child was Little Bunny Foo Foo. An early memory of mine involves crying, screaming in my pre-school classroom, plugging my ears as my teacher read the book. For those who don’t know this niche reference, the story is about a bunny that likes to abuse field mice, despite being told not to. He refuses to heed the warnings, and is turned into a “goon.” I remember my teacher pealing my hands from my ears, telling me there was nothing to be afraid of. I heard all warnings like writing on the wall, all possibilities felt like actualities in my little body. So deeply afraid of messing up, of doing something wrong, of punishment. I couldn’t even stomach it in stories.

I’ve spent my life plotting out possibilities and forewarnings. A stream of what-ifs in my mind and from my mouth. I have an affinity for Cassandra of Troy, the woman cursed to prophesize yet nobody will believe her. I wonder if, instead of a prophet, Cassandra just had OCD. I convinced myself I had psychic abilities at the age of 10, because the night my friend was murdered, I had a bad feeling and couldn’t sleep. It was only recently that I recognized that I had bad feelings nearly every night as a child. I often lay awake envisioning houses on fire, or trees falling, or bombs dropping. A broken clock is right twice a day.

How strange, to question my version of the truth. Maddening. I have spent hours scouring old journal entries to double, triple check my memories. This, I know, is a compulsion in itself. An incessant, painful itch for a truth that is guaranteed to be subjective. Laying in bed, cycling through my rolodex of recollections. I think of Peeta, in the Hunger Games — Real, or Not Real?

The first week of May, I had a really bad OCD spiral. I couldn’t sleep. I barely ate. I was stuck reviewing my actions, my words, my feelings. My OCD perched atop a throne, like Hades judging a soul upon entrance to the Underworld. Moral scrupulosity is one of my many faces of OCD, a deep seated fear that I’m secretly a bad person, that I’ve manipulated everyone in my life. No words that anyone can say can negate it — I will convince myself everyone is lying to me, despite my firm belief that my friends and loved ones are good people who wouldn’t do that. I went to work that week in a trance, my mind on it’s own torturous plane of existence. Stuck, walking towards the spindle. Teetering on the edge of pricking my finger, always.

I often feel like a woman in a trance. I am afraid of the inward pull towards self-destruction. Perhaps that was what jarred me so much about Sleeping Beauty and Little Bunny Foo Foo — this deep fear of myself, a fear that I will not heed the warnings. That I will succumb to temptation, to danger, to pain.

This is the lens through which I watched Phantom of the Opera on it’s national tour a few Fridays ago. While I know many view the story through a tragic romantic lens, or commentary about disability and ostracization, I was captivated by the young ingenue in a trance. Christine Daae, led to the depths of the opera house by the Phantom with his melodic voice. How easy it looked to give in.

I love a haunted woman. A woman in a trance. Somebody nobody believes. Cassandra of Troy and her crazy prophecies. Christine in her white dress, told over and over again she had dreamt up the Phantom. Nell Crain in Haunting of Hill House, nobody believing what she saw in the Bent Neck Lady. While on the surface level I am nothing like any of these characters, there is something about their madness that has felt so representative to me. Seeing something that nobody believes is there. Moving through the molasses of the world in a trance.

With most of these characters, they do not end up okay. They fall victim to their trance-like states of emotion, to their madness. Cassandra, murdered. Nell, hung. Little Bunny Foo Foo, a "goon” (whatever the hell that means). Something I was struck by in seeing Phantom of the Opera for the first time, was Christine’s relatively positive fate. She is not saved by a man, not in the same way Aurora Rose is in Sleeping Beauty. She is saved by herself, by her own decisions, by her embrace of the Phantom. Is that the key? To embrace our madness, to treat it with kindness instead of fear? A foreign concept, and a difficult one. When I have thoughts of violence, how else can I respond to them but with fear? How can I approach these thoughts with kindness, when they torment me so? Is there another way?

I have been tasked, this week, with making a list of exposures. As I put it in therapy last week, I fear I may have “exposured too close to the sun.” I am Icarus before he falls, wax dripping from his wings. Pushing the limits of what I can handle. Compulsively exposing myself to triggers, to what avail? To get an A in OCD? I’ve had a recent unraveling of self-imposed limitations, coming to terms with my self-restriction. Most of my diet has been dictated by my severe emetophobia. Eating fish, drinking coffee, drinking alcohol, are all seemingly small exposures for me. For some reason, I decided to try out all of those things over the course of April, which culminated in a larger exposure, going on a plane. The wax is dripping. It’s time to scale back.

When people think of OCD, they think of cleaning tables and checking ovens. Not of endless thought spirals, or entertaining distorted fears. One of the key characteristics of OCD is that it is ego-dystonic: meaning, the compulsions and obsessions go against my core values and beliefs. That’s what makes them particularly distressing, and incredibly difficult to disclose to people. I have begun to think of my intrusive thoughts and fears as a separate entity altogether. Something outside of myself, a fly buzzing around my mind. A phantom, if you will. My thoughts do not need reassurance, no matter how hard they crave it. Instead, I wonder, an embrace.

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I know, this piece was chalked full of references to some of my niche interests that people may not understanding. With that in mind, I highly recommend checking out the following for better understanding:

• Trojan Women by Euripides (my inner college honors student is coming out)

• Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. Obviously.

• Like, the entire soundtrack for Phantom of the Opera. But particularly Music of the Night and the titular song, Phantom of the Opera.

• Every time I think of Icarus, Icarus by Bastille plays in my head (whatever happened to Bastille?). So now it can be stuck in your head.

• In searching for Bastille’s song, I discovered Mumford & Sons ft. Gigi Perez have a song called Icarus.

• I hate to do this, because of my deep-seated grudge against Little Bunny Foo Foo. I don’t even want to give him a link (I hate that dumb bunny bitch!). Just google the nursery rhyme.

My street was a circle. From my bedroom window I could see the towering pine tree in a round bed of dirt, an island surrounded by an ocean of concrete and stone driveways. The houses leaned in like they were in conversation, a Socratic seminar of suburban two-stories. I learned the phrase cul-de-sac but that never quite rolled off the tongue. Over walkie-talkies, my neighbors left instructions that made us feel like spies amidst the boredom of summer days: “Rendezvous at the circle.”

We used to race up the limbs of the pine tree; it was impossible to reach the summit, as about halfway up the trunk, the branches grew too far apart for the stretch of our arms. I tucked myself into the crook of branches while we played hide in seek, pine needles in my hair like reverse bobby pins, pulling my braids apart. Higher, higher, until the dirt beneath mocked me, one more branch and you’ll break your back, visions of myself tumbling to a dirty demise. My knees braced as I dropped down and stuck the landing.

In my bedroom I would watch the circle. See the cars pass. Some would turn in, take a slow lap around our houses, looking down at printed MapQuest directions that predictably sent them to the wrong place. Others would zip around quickly, using our stomping ground as a turnaround. Sometimes, cars would get stuck. Lap after lap, I’d watch, until they eventually escaped whatever concentric pull our cul-de-sac had on them and drove away.

The next car will be blue, I’d say to myself. A silver car appeared instead. I held my breath. No breathing until a blue car.

I was a child who loved rules. Rules were my religion. So much so, that I made up my own. There were the rules at school – put your name on your test and sit with your hands together and no talking unless you raise your hand. There are pictures of me in Halloween costumes at classroom parties with my hands crossed, still. The one time I forgot to put my name on a test, I cried so hard I had to be sent home.

Then there were the rules I made for myself. Sacred, secret. Hold your breath until a car drives by and let the last drop from the shower land on your left toe and say goodnight to every single stuffed animal or else or else or else. Take three laps around the circle on your bike. Grip each handle exactly the same. Around, around, around.

My street was a circle. I grew up orbiting, whether it was a tall stretching pine tree or my rules or my somebody else’s. My earliest memories are of warnings – what if somebody kidnaps me, hurts my younger sibling, breaks into our house. Once, there was a house fire in our town. My mother came home with bright red ladders and showed us how to hang them from our windows, if we ever smelled smoke. I lay awake at night picturing flames licking my face. Crafting superhero fantasies in which I braved the smoke to pull my little sibling from their room and carried them down the rungs of the ladder. Our parents would perish in the fire, but they’d be proud of me, for being good.

I have inherited my mother’s expertise in crafting horror scenarios in my mind. A previous therapist said it was because I am a writer. You just need to write the scenarios down, make stories about them, she told me. My fiction was of death and violence, what people on the internet might call Trauma Porn and I call My Brain On A Daily Basis.

My current therapist calls it something else.

Obsessive was synonymous with Erin during my youth. I was either obsessing over my favorite books and movies, or obsessing over death and destruction and what people thought about me. Girls who I thought were friends scrunched their noses at me. “You’re so obsessive.” I wouldn’t shut up about my favorite characters. Nobody understood, not even me, that I orbited fiction to keep from circling a much more destructive drain. Around and around and around.

I still do. If I don’t have a book or show I’m enjoying, my thoughts grow loud. Decisions feel like pulling teeth, options spreading out before me much like Plath’s Fig Tree. Perhaps that’s why I go back to the Fig Tree, again and again. I am trapped in the cage of my thoughts, staring at them from below, spinning around and around until I collapse, dizzy. It feels as though my friends and loved ones are making big moves, yet I sit on the couch paralyzed, unable to decide what to eat for dinner because what if I throw up.

My street was a circle. Is a circle. Am a circle. I am a directionless amoeba stuck in a brain cul-de-sac. I live miles away from my circle yet I also live inside of it. In the limbs of the tree watching cars go around and around, watching them leave, wishing I could go with them.

My compulsions as a child were secret. Thoughts I had to think, items I had to touch, words I had to whisper. The only outward sign the rawness of my hangnails, unable to stop picking, or the number of times I had to bounce the volleyball before serving across the net. Coaches told me I needed to relax, to take a deep breath, but they didn’t understand. The rules in my mind told me if you mess up, you will die in a car crash or if you eat before playing, you’ll throw up all over the court. My return to playing volleyball in recent months has coincided with an increase in compulsions. I am working through it. I am tired.

The point: I was diagnosed with OCD a few months ago. It is the first diagnosis that has felt accurate to what I experience in terms of my anxiety. It is not that I am anxious; it is that I cannot stop being anxious. That the anxiety is a circle. That I am stuck in a drain of thoughts.

It is perhaps a long time coming. When I read John Green’s Turtles All The Way Down in college, I felt like he was describing the inner workings of my mind. I was completely destroying my fingernails at that point, unable to stop. But I had a bad experience confiding in somebody, somebody I thought would relate. They told me I didn’t have it as bad as them, that I was making it up. I stuffed it down. I constantly reasoned with myself that my problems were not worth investigating, not worth taking up space. I created a rule — if you confide in people they will not believe you, so do not confide in people.

I’ve been having a hard time with it. The diagnosis is enlightening, sure, yet also exhausting. So much of my life has been dictated by made up rules in my mind. I sit paralyzed in fear of making any decisions because of all the possible outcomes, all the ways things can go bad. Hell, I became a vegetarian because when I moved to college, I didn’t trust where they cooked the meat, and was so afraid of throwing up. I am terrified of travel despite wanting to see more of the world. One of my deepest, core obsessional fears is that I am secretly bad — I feel as though I am constantly waiting for the penny to drop, for all the people in my life to throw their hands up and say they’re done with me and that I’m evil. I constantly review my actions and words, searching for proof that I am a villain. I haven’t been writing outside of journaling and this over the past year, because I’m so terrified of feedback, that if I write something bad will happen. It’s taken over so much of my life. I’m not sure what to do with that. While there is a solace in diagnosis, in treatment and addressing it, there’s also a lot of anger. I don’t want to be like this.

Author’s Note #2:

This isn’t so much post-essay afterthoughts as it is a continuation, a few months later. I re-read this, and felt a flood of emotion. Of empathy for myself just a few months ago. I left the piece hanging on a pretty somber note. And I think that’s important to include. The fact that I will have to live with OCD for my whole life and am now cognizant of it has been staggering. What I used to view as intuition or superstition has been reframed for me as illness, as a web of inferences and obsessional doubts. I’ve spent the last few months (which have, naturally, coinciding with my Saturn Return) wondering if all my memories are real, and then getting stuck in obsessional thought patterns about that. That knowledge, as I said above, is solace and power, and is also grief. Grief because I’ve been in therapy for so long yet clinicians never clocked it. Grief because I was so fucking stuck in these circles all the time and never had the words to describe. Grief because, despite knowing logically that the obsessional doubts in my mind are not happening, the scenarios in my mind feel entirely real in my body, and I have trouble distinguishing the imagined future from the current reality.

Most people associate OCD with cleanliness. It’s almost comical: me, a scattered person with OCD. Yet many people with OCD do not have OCD that revolves around cleaning or cleanliness (in fact, what’s often portrayed in media as OCD is actually OCPD). People often say, “I’m so OCD,” yet I highly doubt they mean they’re sitting paralyzed by imagined possibilities.

I’ve been doing better than I was when I wrote this. I think. I’ve been doing I-CBT and ERP in therapy, and am in the process of changing my medication. (Notably, medication changes is a huge trigger for me because of the side-effects, so send me all the good vibes. I’ve had a headache like, all week). I went on a plane last week (which is one of my other biggest triggers) and did okay. I was practically a nervous wreck the entire week leading up to it, having to stay home from work multiple days, simply because I kept convincing myself that I would throw up on the plane. But I DID IT! And I hope to continue to work on that particular trigger as I have a bit of travel coming up this year.

This is what I’m talking about when I say it’s been a rough 2026 so far. It’s interesting, because it’s not like the OCD is a new problem, but the diagnosis and treatment, which came about in the Fall of 2025, are new. I am hopeful for the medication change to help, and also hopeful for the summer. For some more changes that are brewing. I would say fingers crossed, but… I’m trying not to be as superstitious.

Now, to end things on a wholesome note — some things I’m enjoying thus far during this hellscape of a year:

• My friends. DUH. They’re the best people ever.

• Playing volleyball.

• Watching the Traitor’s. Trying to convince my husband to throw me a Traitor’s themed birthday party for my 30th. I think he could pull off Alan’s outfits.

• Monochrome coloring books. I’m not even kidding when I say that these have gotten me through the last few months.

• Noah Kahan’s new songs. I cannot WAIT for his new album to drop.

• Hot yoga. My old and most favorite studio closed in 2023, and reopened at a new location this year. It’s been so nice to return to.

• Matcha lattes!!!

The deluge of 2025 photo dumps doesn’t help the sense of doom. Constant comparison to others has always been a vice of mine, and the dial is turned up when every single post on social media is a recap of travel, achievements, and candid-yet-curated year-end photos.

In preparation for a 2025 dump that I never posted, I looked back on all my photos from this year. I didn’t travel abroad, I didn’t get married or have children or move, I didn’t change jobs, I didn’t experience anything completely life-altering. Most of the changes this past year were what I would call “smallbig.” And instead of feeling a sense of failure about this, instead, I found myself oddly calm. Perhaps because I only looked at the photo dumps posted by friends, and ignored those posted by people who’s lives I know nothing about. (PSA to all my friends — when I talk about annoying photo dumps, it’s never about yours!!! Please show me all your photos all the time!!!!).

Some examples of my smallbig changes: no longer keeping my phone in my bedroom at night, regular journaling, playing volleyball for the first time in 10 years, making new friends, getting a new therapist (and subsequently a new diagnosis that has been so eye-opening), trying new crafts, coaching girls volleyball, road tripping to new places, taking on new leadership roles at work, reimaging my relationship with distraction and social media, growing Camp Half-Pod. Many of these things were not photographed. Some were.

I am grateful for the changes I made this year. Things I never would have expected if you told me back at the start of 2025. Like, I used to need my phone to fall asleep. Now it resides in the living room after 10PM. There is something to the act of making small, controllable changes in a world that is constantly changing. Everything outside my scope of control feels dire. The country I reside in is rapidly descending into fascism and terror. There is a new shooting almost every week. We have been bombarded with graphic evidence of violence, of injustice, of systems breaking down, for the entirety of 2025. Merely surviving, and doing things that have brought me joy, is a feat in itself.

As I’m sure all 1996 babies are feeling at the moment, this is the year we turn 30. Just the other day, I had a full freakout about how my body is shriveling and my value as a woman feels like it’s slipping through my fingers. I am both young and old and so many things are out of my control.

I like control. I have oft been called a control-freak, which is a term I mostly hear directled towards women. So much about our bodies, our lives, the physical space we occupy is out of our control. Who can blame us for being a bit obsessed? For grasping at any semblance of control we can find?

I do not know what 2026 has in store for me. I would like to know — hence my obsession with astrology, with 2026 predictions, with doomscrolling on Reddit about when the world will end (yes, I deleted Reddit this year, thank god). The majority of my 20s have been overshadowed by political upheaval and a pandemic. It’s difficult, I’m sure for many of us, to come face-to-face with 30 and recognize how much of our youth we’ve lost to “unprecedented times.” We are not the first, nor will we be the last, people to live our youth through upheaval. But that does not discount the very real grief that we are entitled to feel.

When I was in my early 20s, I thought by now, I would have children. I would have some big job and name recognition. I’d be able to quit my 9-5 and work creatively. Yet I had no vision of how I would get there — these glimpses of a future self existed in the dream-sphere. They felt fleeting, not to mention at war with mental illness, which has at times hindered me from long-term planning. It’s easy to focus on the things I don’t have. And I think it’s okay to focus on them, to grieve them, while simultaneously recognizing the things I have achieved and created for myself. I have my own little funky family of me, my partner, and our chihuahuas! I have a house full of love! I have a job where I help people! I have published a book! I have a podcast that’s become a community! I am so, so happy for the things I have, and also hold space for the sadness and grief. We can tell ourselves that our 30s are the new 20s again and again, but we do not get the time back on our bodies. The shoulder pain I’ve developed from desk work, the faint wrinkles on my forehead, the tension in my jaw.

Despite my overall tone of dread, I do actually look forward to my 30s. To the sense of assuredness that everyone in their 30s is promising will come. To watching the people I love blossom alongside me, to see the different versions of adulthood that we show-and-tell to one another. I look forward to my friends having children, if they choose to, to seeing their wrinkles form constellations on their faces, to all the pets they will adopt, to the places they will go. So much of my 20s has been characterized by comparison and fear, and change. Big changes, small changes, and of course, smallbig changes. While I cannot control the fear on a largescale, nor can I control the change, I hope that my 30s are less about comparison.

I don’t know what 2026 has in store for me. For the world. I am afraid. I am curious. I am sad. I am grateful. Most importantly, despite it all, I am hopeful. For at the beginning of 2025, I was filled with so much dread. And yet still, I found such moments of joy. Despite it all.

My 2025 Reading Wrapped (because it wouldn’t be an Erin newsletter without book discussions)

1. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
   Literally the best book I’ve read in years. Like, I was up until 1AM reading. I felt like a kid again. I am SO EXCITED for the movie in November. Like, that is keeping me going.

2. Reading the Waves by Lidia Yuknavitch
   Yuknavitch is one of my favorite authors, maybe ever. The way she crafts memoirs has inspired me so much. Her other book, Chronology of Water, is my favorite memoir I’ve ever read. Highly recommend that one. Plus, Kristen Stewart directed a film adaptation that just came out, which I have yet to see!

3. Salt Houses by Hala Alyan
   I’ve never read a book like this before, documenting the story of so many family members and places. Highlights so much about the history of Palestinian families and the generational trauma. This one stuck with me for a long time after reading.

4. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
   TJR books are always a hit with me. Space? Check. Queer? Check. She writes such, for lack of a better word, atmospheric novels. Great read.

5. The Other Valley by Scott Alexander
   This book blew my mind. I think about it constantly. It’s a great foray into speculative fiction. What would you do if you could go back in time? How would you change things, and what would those ripples be?

6. We Could Be Rats by Emily R. Austin
   This book made me sob. Something about the dynamic of the sisters made me feel seen, put words to something buried deep inside of me.

7. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
   Another fantastic spec-fic/sort of dystopian novel. Left me with so many questions, in the best possible way. Also, relevant commentary on authoritarian governments.
   

A lot has changed since then. I don’t use Facebook except for the messenger app. I deleted Snapchat in college and Tik Tok after the election and I limit my Instagram time per day. I feel constantly caught between the desire for connection, to staying up to date on all things internet, and the desire to throw my phone down a well.

“The internet is bad, actually” discourse is overdone, I know. We all know it’s turning our brains to mush, absolutely wreaking havoc on our attention spans, overstimulating us at all times, etc. etc. But what I don’t see people talk about much is the grief that comes with watching this place of supposed connection transform into something else. I used to log onto Instagram and only see my friends and family, people I actually followed, and maybe a few select celebrities. Now it’s all reels of people I don’t know giving their hot takes on something I don’t care about, interspersed with ads for products I don’t need. I typically end my screen time feeling a level of rage, whether it’s about politics or pop culture or Instagram couples that irrationally piss me off (I’ve had to block multiple of them because they make me so mad. Don’t get me started on Hunter and Maya, LMAO).

I’m sure I’m romanticizing the past. It wasn’t all great, not even close. I remember waking up on my 13th birthday and immediately opening my Facebook page to check for birthday messages. Refreshing my page minute by minute to see who had written on my wall, counting up the Happy Birthday posts at the end of the day and no matter what that number was, never feeling like it was enough, never feeling like I was worth anything. But there was a period during which I was in college, and no longer cared much about likes and friends, and was just sharing things with people I knew. My small liberal arts college was very into the finsta, where we’d all make extremely unhinged mentally ill posts (that made many of my non-SU friends think I was insane; they just didn’t get the ~SU culture~).

There is something about that time period of the internet that I miss. Before Buzzfeed went off the rails. (do you all remember my Buzzfeed viral days? One of the quizzes I made STILL gets hits and weekly emails). Now, I feel like I can’t enjoy music without my FYP calling my favorite artists too breathy or too skinny or too cheesy or too sexual. I can’t enjoy books without Goodreads telling me that apparently everyone actually hates the book that changed my life. I can’t enjoy my favorite shows without people ripping apart the appearances of actors and calling the writing “trash” from behind screens, where they’ve probably never written anything in their life. I know I can just log off, or ignore the reviews, but I miss the era of reading something and then scouring the internet for people who felt the same way about it, who drew art of characters I loved and made playlists for them. Now, it’s just… everyone and their brother’s hot takes about why this book actually sucked.

I don’t want the internet to be like this. I am clinging to it with freezing fingers. I know I can just log off, and I do, from time to time. But I crave connection, connection that is hard to come by in such an isolated world. The internet used to be a place where I found people who loved the same things I did. Now, it shoves in my face people who hate the things I love. And I am not sure what to do about that.

Hell, maybe it really is time to go back to Tumblr.

I used to type “sad” into the search bar of Tumblr when I was first feeling the intensity of depression. I always associate the month of October with that first feeling. I am coming clean about being an October-hater. I am not a Halloween girly, nor a Fall girly; I am a seasonal depression girly. I am a almost-always-cries-on-Halloween girly. One time, after I searched “sad” on Tumblr for the umpteenth time, a warning popped up, encouraging me to get help. That made me feel worse. Even Tumblr, my once safe space, thought I was insane.

That’s what the internet feels like,now — the first time I got a We’re Concerned About You pop up on Tumblr. I know they’re meant to be helpful, and maybe they do help some people, but I was just a kid looking for connection, not a clinical diagnosis (lord knows I needed one). I still feel like a kid searching for connection. I feel alone all the time, even when I’m with people. The internet used to connect me with stories of people who were going through the same things. Fellow mentally ill children, other teens with adverse childhood experiences, other kids whose parents put them in therapy because they didn’t know what to do with their outbursts. Now anytime I try and find any sense of connection about mental illness, I’m met with “We’re Concerned About You” or infographics about mental health made for people who are not mentally ill.

Maybe I’m just being dramatic. I’ve been crying a lot lately, and half the time, I can’t even articulate why I’m crying. I really don’t have anything to be sad about. I’m not going through anything of note. I haven’t had anything of note going on for a long time.

Maybe the internet was always bad. In fact, it probably was.

My recent reads:

1. How Far the Light Reaches by Sabrina Imbler (5 stars)

2. House of Grief by Helen Garner (3 stars)

3. Immaculate Conception by Ling Ling Huang (4 stars)

On repeat:

1. Laufey’s whole A Matter of Time album

2. Harriet by Chloe Slater (the music video is chef’s kiss for fans of Normal People)

3. Death Wish by Gracie Abrams

A while ago (years? months? pandemic-time isn’t real) the would you still love me if I was a worm meme permeated my corners of the internet. I think of that question often, perhaps in a much deeper way than the original meme intended, especially when I devolve into my conspiracy theorist thought patterns about myself. Would you still love me if I was worm? If I was insignificant? What if I am insignificant? Would you still love me?

Along with most other millienial/zillenials, I’ve been listening to Amy Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang, and one of my favorite episodes thus far was Cole Escola’s episode. They said that, written on their dressing room mirror for the hit show Oh, Mary!, was the quote “Can you love me if I’m annoying?” I had to pause the podcast while listening and write that quote down in my notes app. I’ve been told I’m annoying since I was five years old. People love me, despite it. Maybe because of it. Yet still, I am constantly afraid that one day, I will be too annoying. I will reach the limit of annoying-ness. Can you love me if I am too loud, too weird, too awkward? Can you love me if I show you all the sides of myself?

We constantly quantify and qualify our worth, attempt to measure the bounds of our love. We are so deeply convinced that we are unworthy of love, that we pick and pry at those who claim they love us. What if I am too much, or not enough? What if I was a worm?

There are a lot of people in my life that I would care for if they became a worm. I’d become a dedicated worm mother. I’d take their worm-selves out to the park and let them wiggle around in the dirt and I would NOT lose track of them. I’d keep them in a jar, and then probably deem that too small, and buy them a glass tank full of dirt and play their favorite TV shows and movies for them, even if their worm eyes couldn’t see. We would have worm dates. Take your worm to work day. I’d learn to sew and make tiny worm hats for them.

Who would I care for if they were a worm? And who would care for me?

At the root of that question is perhaps a more vulnerable one that we are afraid to ask — will you offer my annoying human self the same tenderness you would offer a helpless worm? Can you still love me if I’m not good, if I’m ugly and tired and grumpy? If I am the essence of a worm trapped inside of a decaying human body?

Becoming a worm might actually be much easier than being a human. Worms probably don’t care what other worms think about them. Worms don’t have to work jobs or pay taxes. Worms don’t have dictators (as far as I know). If I did become a worm, and nobody looked after me, I wouldn’t know, because I’d be a worm, and worms don’t care about that.

Alas, I am not a worm. I am attempting to make the most out of my non-worm, anxiety-riddled existence. And I will love my people with the same tenderness (more, probably) that I would if they were worms.

Some life updates — I am very busy. I’m not sure what overcame me, but in August, I decided to commit to a bunch of new things for the Fall. I am now slightly regretting it, but enjoying everything, minus the lack of sleep. I’m coaching 5th graders in volleyball. They have named the team “Queens of Hearts,” which doesn’t really roll of the tongue, but sure. I am also playing volleyball with friends and trying very hard to be Chill and Normal and Not Competitive. Mike and I fostered two puppies for a week to help with an emergency (one of which has been adopted already!! Fingers crossed for the other one soon) and it was total chaos and love. I took on a new leadership role at work. I’m working on getting approved to volunteer at the local shelter, once coaching ends.

I was a major over-committer in high school and college, and then severely burnt out, and have since not committed to much outside of work, podcast, and social life over the last few years. Truly, I have no clue what happened to me, but for some reason, I’ve decided to Do Things this fall. Turning 29 scared the shit out of me, and kicked something into gear. The past few days, as work has gotten increasingly busy with the start of the quarter, I have felt myself tipping into max-capacity. Into aforementioned anxious thoughts and depressive inclinations. Which brings me right back: What if I am annoying and overcommit and crash out? What if I am sleep deprived and put my foot in my mouth and make mistakes? What if I am loud and strange and passionate? Will you still love me? I hope so.

My family used to take the 4-hour drive down to the beach for the 4th of July every year. We would participate in a parade and toss salt water taffy out to other kids lining the block. We would stay in the same blue-painted hotel, where me and my cousins would roll around in the grassy lawn. As I grew older, and my family members moved too far away to join, I was allowed to bring a friend for the trip, and adored getting to show them my favorite places.

My senior trip after high school was with a group of friends down at the beach. It’s still one of my favorite trips I’ve been on. We climbed on rocks and dipped toes in water and rode short sand bikes along the beach, as far as our legs could take us. A handful of trips after that one, I got married down at Cannon Beach. It was 2020, so the wedding we sent 70-something invites for got dwindled down to a small elopement, with just close friends and family. It was nothing short of magic. I got married young, for someone in the Seattle area, at 24. Five years later, it feels like we were just kids, but I don’t regret it one bit. We got to get married before I had been involved in many weddings, before I had much to compare it to. We got to celebrate in such an intimate way, and our first dog, Peanut, was alive for it. Each year we’ve gone back since then, we return to the spot on the beach where we got married, where my friend Carigan set up the flower arch for us (shoutout to her sister’s floral business!). The first time we took our two current dogs, Maggie and Wally, there, they both peed on the spot. Obviously, I interpret this as a blessing of our union.

Each time I visit, I notice how things have changed. Shops have disappeared, new ones taking their place. Colors have shifted. The streets grow more crowded. Yet still, the curve of the coast remains the same.

I feel like we cracked the code this trip — after a week in a house with my family and four dogs, my partner and I took our dogs into central Oregon, which, I’ve got to say, is underrated. We stayed in the small pseudo-western town of Sisters, Oregon, where the Three Sisters Mountains were visible from the backyard of our AirBnb. We hiked a trail that’s been on my All Trails Wishlist for at least 5 years, the Tamolitch Blue Pool, which was just as blue as I hoped. I have a thing for exceptionally blue water. I like my lakes to look like Gatorade, to make my mouth water with thirst. This one did not disappoint. And everyone give Wally a round of applause for hiking the whole 5 miles (Maggie got to ride in her chariot backpack, like the princess she is).

I feel refreshed upon returning home. I returned to my most nostalgic spot, and then got to see someplace completely new. My partner and I like to say we’re making brain wrinkles when we go somewhere new. No smooth brains here.

I returned home to a copy of Blood Tree Literature’s 15th issue in the mail, in which I’ve been published. I haven’t published a piece in a moment. The grind of submitting is not for the soft of heart, and I, admittedly, have a soft heart. Personally, I think we should all have softer hearts. A piece I wrote in late 2024 is available in the publication, which can only be purchased via print or eBook, right now. I am happy to lend any of my friends my copy, or, if you want to support a small publisher, I suggest purchasing it from their website. It’s actually the piece I went “too deep” in, as discussed in this Substack entry.

It feels good to have my writing out there in print, again. I often don’t feel like a real writer. I feel like a bunch of squirrels in a trench coat. I think my family forgets I’m a writer. My siblings art decorates their house, but I have never once seen my book on their shelves. On the family portion of our vacation, I listened to my sibling discuss their writing group and was never once asked about mine, despite being in a writing group for over 3 years. I was always the “serious” child, while my sibling was the creative one. It’s strange, the narratives our parents project onto us. I was quiet and studious, and therefore serious. My grandmother always encouraged my writing, hung my hand-written poems on her wall and asked to read my stories. I think of her often, when I write.

I will always be a writer, no matter what I have published or have not published. But like I said: it certainly feels good to have my name printed again. My words in somebody’s hands. Mine, mine, mine.

There is a story that’s been in the back of my mind for a while, inspired by my yearly trips to the coast. I wrote the first 10 or so chapters last summer, and then, when the days grew short, lost inspiration. I hope to return to it soon. I haven’t been drawn to writing fiction as much, over the past few years. I read almost exclusively fiction, but haven’t wanted to write it. I’m not sure why. I don’t know that there needs to be a good reason why.

Anyway, here are the first few paragraphs of that WIP, because why not? Let me know if you like it. I may remove this later if I ever finish the story, so read up while you can.

We used to count our years by Augusts. 

By bright sun and heatwaves and lake water and dog-eared pages. By long days and short nights and rare, pacific northwest cloudless skies. By the smell of smoke (whether from campfires or forest fires) and mosquito bites. 

We used to count down the days. But the last few Augusts have passed without notice. Come and gone. 

The first August that really mattered, or so I’m told, was in 1987. I wasn’t born yet, but Dad tells tales of the infamous summer in which Peter inherited the cabin on the lake from his grandparents. There were four of them there, tasked with cleaning out the cobwebs and fixing the broken floorboards. Peter Reed, Dad’s best friend. Helena Mendes, Peter’s high school sweetheart. Dad. And Mom. 

Dad still speaks wistfully of that summer, despite everything. Like it was the best he’d ever had. Maybe it was. No kids, no jobs, no mortgages, no parents to supervise. No messy divorces. No missing person searches. No funerals. 

Those things would all come in later Augusts. 

(No, not the legal courts. Despite being told I’d make a good lawyer since the age of 6, I have never had a desire to be one).

I mean the volleyball courts.

If you didn’t know me before the age of 18, this probably doesn’t sound particularly significant. I don’t talk much about my volleyball days, except as a truth in two truths and a lie during icebreakers, as nobody looks at me and thinks I played volleyball competitively. I’m standing at a whopping 5’1”, on a good day.

It was a huge part of my life between the ages of 10-17. Like, huge. I played through school for 7 years, and on a competitive club team for 3 years. Certain times of the year, I would practice nearly every day, and have weekend long-tournaments, on top of busy schoolwork. I went to summer camps and weekend skill workshops on my time off. A large part of my time, and my parent’s money, went into volleyball. No, I never had any dreams of playing professionally — on pro teams, even the liberos have at least five inches on me — but I took it so seriously, at least at the high school level. I still have a faint scar on my left knee from what I hope was a miraculous dive.

However, I had a pretty bad breakup with volleyball. Despite being the starting libero on my high school’s varsity team my junior year, during my senior year I didn’t make the team. The coach never told me why, something that used to haunt me a lot. The two other seniors that she cut, she told them the specific skills and reasons they were cut. For me, she just said: “There wasn’t enough room.”

I have my suspicious as to the reasons. I was an extremely anxious teen. My junior year of high school, I was depressed and suicidal. I never told anyone, no coaches or therapists, but I developed a sort of obsessive, compulsive relationships with rituals when it came to volleyball. I would convince myself that if I didn’t listen to a particular song before games (see, “Eyes Open” by Taylor Swift from the Hunger Games Soundtrack, for some reason), I would miss all my serves. If I ate lunch like the rest of the girls, I would throw up on the court. The eating one mixed with disordered eating habits was a recipe for disaster. I’d come off the court malnourished and anxious.

Before my senior year, I attempted to confide in my coaches about these things, just the tip of the iceberg. They told me I needed to loosen up and watch videos of myself to improve. I told them that I really struggled with anxiety. They told me to try breathing (LOL. Classic early 2010s response to anxiety). And then, I didn’t make the team.

Maybe I just did a shit job at tryouts. I did injure my knee my junior year, and it’s never been the same since. But I can’t help but think that at least a little bit of it had to do with the fact that my anxiety was impacting my performance, and also, I struggled to make friends with the other girls (let it be said that like half those girls are now following RFK Jr and instagram and were bullies in high school, so, I wasn’t missing out on much). Overall, it was an important part of my journey. I probably would have had a really terrible time, physically and mentally, if I had played that year, just looking at where I was with my mental health. But it stung, so much. It was also the day before my 18th birthday, which felt especially cruel from the universe.

I hadn’t stepped on a court in over 10 years, until recently.

My husband’s work has a rec volleyball team, and spouses are allowed to join, and he coerced me to come along. We were planning to only stay for an hour. What actually happened? We stayed for three hours, I was somehow ended up elected unofficial coach of the team, I bruised up my knees, and I had so much fun.

The day after, when my body was sore and my old knee issues were acting up, I cried. “I can’t believe I didn’t let myself play for 10 years,” I said to my husband. I felt angry that I let a bad coach take away that love I had. That I let her make the court no longer a safe space for me.

The environment of competitive sports was never a safe space for a teenage girl, to be honest. My body was constantly on display, in tight spandex shorts and tight spandex jerseys. But when I was in the middle of a game, when I could just focus on the ball and where it was going, I was able to tune out everything else. For a few moments.

I felt that again, when I stepped back on the court a few weeks ago.

I sometimes fantasize about screaming in the face of my high school varsity coach. Three years ago, in the early days of my writing group, I wrote for the first time about my relationship with volleyball, in a piece I titled “oranges,” that perhaps someday I will publish. It was largely about eating, and body, and grief, through the lens of volleyball. I will always remember the feedback a member of my group said, someone I’ve since lost touch with. “I’m so sorry so many of these coaches, these trusted adults in your life, let you down. Didn’t see what you were going through. Didn’t listen.” That, I think, is the crux of the heartbreak. These adults let me down. They saw a kid who missed practice for panic attacks and never ate at team lunches, and looked away.

The worst part is, none of those coaches probably think of me now. They might not even remember my name. Of all the coaches I’ve had, only one is someone who had a positive impact on my life (shout out to Kelli, my club coach for two years <3). The rest made things worse. I will never get an apology. I’m not even sure I need it.

When people hurt us, we want them to suffer. We want them to know how much it hurt. We dream of them apologizing, one day, groveling at our feet. I had a friend in middle and high school, who turned into a bully my senior year. She tormented me. Spread rumors and would physically push me out of conversations and groups. Years later, after I graduated college, she messaged me to apologize. I was surprised to find myself so numb to it. The apology did nothing for me. A delayed apology is sometimes worse.

I held onto that hurt, that resentment for my coach, for so long, that it kept me from the court. I don’t want that to have control over me anymore. There’s a level of grief that unfurls itself inside my chest; after just two weeks of playing, my bad knee is already rearing it’s head. I sat down after playing just the other day and my leg locked up. For a terrible moment, I couldn’t stand up. And that’s on being close to 30… if I’d played in my earlier 20s, perhaps it wouldn’t have hurt my body so much. I’ll never know. Maybe the knee injury is a microcosm of something larger. Something that I never healed within myself, that’s been waiting, dormant.

This substack has turned more into a visual journal than writing advice. A place for me to reflect and write and share in a low pressure way. If you’re wondering what I’m up to, I’m reading weird speculative fiction, I’m listening to a lot of Laufey while working, I’m watching The Summer I Turned Pretty despite hating every character (#TeamBellyLeaveThatFamilyAlone!!!!), and I’m very ready for my annual road trip to the Oregon coast. And I’m playing volleyball (just gotta say, this development is very saturn return coded, in a way I was not expecting).

Here’s a snippet from the aforementioned piece, “oranges,” for your reading pleasure. Until next time!

oranges

My body is no longer mine – it belongs to the squeaky gym floors, sweaty knee pads, wins and losses, to bouncebouncebounce-spinspin-breathe                          -serve. 

I play through doubled-over period cramps, 
through dripping nosebleeds, 
through gym-floor friction burns. 

One evening at practice, someone ricochets the ball across the court. I dive, slide my hip against the hard court, save the ball with an outstretched fist and watch it arc into the air, up to one of my teammates. My hip stings, a tiny fire on my side. I try to ignore it, focus on the game. During a water break, I peel down the elastic waistband of my sweaty, sticky spandex. A chunk of my skin comes with it.

I swallow bile and put the spandex back in place. The elastic holds my flap of skin over the wound, like it never happened. When I get home, I strip the clothes off my body, watch the skin fall to the bathroom floor with my shorts. Flabby, rubbery, bloody – for a moment, I picture peeling other parts of my skin off, digging my nails into my stomach, unraveling myself. My grandmother taught my sister and I a game once, as we sat at the kitchen table, tiny tangerines and a glass full of goldfish crackers on our placemats. 

“Watch,” she said, and dug a nail into the peel of the tangerine. “Try and peel it all in one go.” Around and around she unraveled, the peel never breaking, until it fell to the wayside, the tangerine pulpy and naked in her palm. 

“You try,” she encouraged. It was harder than we thought – my sister failed almost immediately, the peel breaking off and staining her fingers orange. Slowly, I dug my fingernails in and peeled. I made it about halfway through. 

The flabby chunk of skin from my hip stares up at me. 
I flush it down the toilet.  
In the shower, my hip stings so badly that I have to hold my body at a tilted angle, hip jutting                                                out. 

If you have not heard of the fig tree (first of all, go to the library), it’s the most memorable and frequently Instagrammed passage from Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar. I read that book back in 2019, while sitting in the bath, feet propped up on the porcelain rim of my too-small tub. Now, I could not for the life of me tell you anything about the plot of the book, other than that it’s about a depressed white woman. I cannot recall whether I liked it, or hated it, but I can tell you about the fig tree.

This passage haunts me. It pokes and prods at me, unsuspecting. It’s strange, how much it stuck with me, while the rest of the details from that book slipped away. Plath put words to the timelessly human conundrum of how to spend our lives, what to do with our days, how to use our bodies. Around the time I graduated college, I bought a guided adult art/self-help book from an artist I loved. It helped a lot at the time. I recall a particular page of it, on which there were rows of empty hand-drawn circles meant to become faces. The book asked me to draw different versions of myself, and to get as silly and creative as I wanted to. I drew myself as a marine biologist, my very first dream job. I drew myself as a teacher. As a politician in D.C. As a writer living in Europe. As a B-List movie star. A hard-hitting journalist. A mother. I gave them each stories and backgrounds. These potential selves, however absurd or realistic, were fun to imagine. To give life to a version of my self I once dreamed of, but perhaps no longer did.

I turn 29 this summer and find myself thinking of the fig tree more frequently. I keep reflecting on the last decade, despite the fact that I still have one year and one month left until The Big 3-0. 29, for some reason, feels more daunting than 30. Perhaps it is because for so much of my younger life, 28 stood as an arbitrary guidepost for having children. I used to claim, back when 28 sounded old and mature, that I wanted to have a baby by then. I turned 28 while traveling Spain, enjoying being (human) child-free. Shortly after that trip, there was an election, and well, we all know how that went. Now, having a child is not only something I am unsure about, but also something that feels unsafe with potential abortion bans that prevent pregnant people from life-saving operations. I do not want to experience pregnancy, even by choice, in a country in which that choice is taken away for others.

Over the past few months, I’ve found myself in multiple conversations about birth with fellow 29-30 year-olds who can get pregnant. Just last weekend, while out for my partner’s birthday, I found myself on the right end of the table with the two other women there, talking about birth while sipping cocktails. I overheard the rest of the table (see: the boys) discussing the merits of mashed potatoes. While this indeed sent me into a fit of giggles and gave me a good story to tell about my weekend, it simultaneously highlights the starkly different world cis men are experiencing right now, even the cis men who are strong advocates for reproductive justice. We are constantly thinking of the horrors of birth. They are thinking of potatoes.

Which, don’t get me wrong. I do frequently think of potatoes, as a lover of a good fry.

Motherhood is a fig. I am not sure if I want it, but it does not matter what I want, for it feels too far away too reach.

I am also not sure what to do with my life. What I am doing. The first 5 years of my 20s passed distinctly, each year taking on a different character. (20: The Year I Studied Abroad. 21: The Year I Graduated College. 22: The Year I Moved Like Three Times. 23: The Year I Rescued My Soul-Dog, Peanut. 24: The Year I Got Married And Also There Was A Pandemic And Oh Yeah, I Also Published A Book? 25: The Year I Could Rent A Car Without The Young Driver Fee But There Was A Pandemic So It Didn’t Really Matter I Wasn’t Going Anywhere Anyways). In the ladder half of my 20s, the years have blended together into a sort of montage. Which year did that happen? Have I really been at my job that long? And how has it been that long since I’ve published a book? The figs are rotting.

There is a dissonance between this existential dread of the fig tree and the actual joy and beauty I do experience in my life day-to-day. The montage is full of both mundanity and adventure. I am overall so grateful, yet also feel like I’m on the verge of a total crash out. In a meeting recently at work, my boss’s check-in question of the day was: “What board game do you most identify with?” The first thing that came to my mind was Jenga. I feel as though pieces from me are taken from the middle and rearranged. Sometimes into something beautiful. But one wrong move, and I crumble loudly.

For example: I keep almost crying in my writing group, anytime publishing is brought up. Erin, she wrote a book! people love to say, by means of introduction. When they do, I tumble into a self-created abyss of failure. Because any time I have to tell someone about my book, they ask me what’s next, and I have to tell them about how it’s been five years, and no agents want me, and I gave up on finding one and also every time I sit down at a laptop to write fiction I get about 10 chapters in and then want to cut every single word I’ve ever written from existence !!!!! (ugh). The fig that was being a Big-Five-Six-Figure-Writer is in my hands. I chose it, took a bite, but found it was already rotted.

As I near my birthday, I attempt to assuage the dread that has settled inside of me. I am planning a pool party for my birthday that I am very excited about (invites coming soon, Seattle friends. They’re actually ready but I am waiting until it’s less than a month out so I don’t seem insane). I’ve been scouring hikes to take on my actual birthday, which I’ll obviously take off work. I’ve been filling my summer weekends with connection. Trying to go to things that I otherwise might have said no to.

Perhaps obsessing over the possibilities, the Great Big Future, is one of the many fatal flaws of humanity. Perhaps it’s what drove Plath to her death, shortly after publishing The Bell Jar. We are too obsessed with this rugged individualism that is so pervasive in Western culture. The notion that we each need to be Special and Unique and have everything figured out, by ourselves. We are taught that it is a feat to do things on our own. Yet the most whole I feel is when I am supported by others, when I am a part of a community.

I will my mind into the present, into the joy I am creating and cultivating. Yet at night, when my eyes droop and pull, I find myself once again beneath the fig tree. Staring up at all these figs, these possibilities. I am 29 years old. Have I done anything I’m proud of? There is a graduate school fig. A motherhood fig. A stay at the same job until I die fig. A move to San Diego fig. A buy a small ranch and rescue dogs fig. A tortured writer fig.

Also all the figs cost money. They take Venmo or CashApp.

The worst part is, I don’t even like figs, much.

A level of anxiety often finds me in the late spring, during the transition to summer, once my calendar begins to fill. Despite not yet commencing, summer feels fleeting, already. Summer is, and always has been, my favorite season. Sure, a part of that is due to my birthday falling in late August. My strongest childhood memories are rooted in the summers. The inflatable pool in my front yard. Squeezing the juice of an Otter Pop into my mouth. Sidewalk chalk beneath my fingernails. Skinned knees and twigs in my hair.

The anxiety I feel now, as we approach summer, is surely in part due to the allergens in the air and the long, long days. (Not to mention the fact that I every time I check the news, I want to smash my phone and explode into a ball of pure rage). There is so much time, but not enoughenoughenough. Already my June weekends feel too booked and busy, and July dates are filling themselves in. Pressure to travel, to hike, to see all my friends, in the three (or rather, two-point-five) months of PNW sunshine. I dream of living somewhere with perpetual summers, but my heart shatters at the thought of leaving all my friends behind.

There is something about the fleeting nature of summer that makes it more sacred, pushes us to scramble and make plans and soak up all the sun. I am someone who craves things that are fleeting. I like to claim I have commitment issues, despite being in a 10+ year relationship and many equally if not longer friendships. But it’s not that I have trouble committing — it’s that I have trouble accepting that anything is permanent. That anything could last, is going to last a long time. In the back of my mind, there lives a gremlin that whispers, time’s almost up. My mind is convinced that I am always on the precipice of some great, unforeseen trauma. The over-a-decade of therapy I’ve been in tells me that this is no gremlin, but instead, my inner child, who just wants to protect me (child, gremlin…what’s the difference, really?). We’re working on our relationship, me and her.

When I think of the word fleeting, I think of my dogs. We go into relationships with dogs knowing that their lives are, presumably, going to be shorter than ours. That we will walk beside them to the end, that we will witness the arc of their lives. They teach me to be so present. To soak up all the love they have to offer. I know for many people, this kind of love, a love that you know will end in them leaving first, is terrifying. Yet I find a sort of comfort in it — in the knowledge that I will be with my dogs for the rest of their lives, and then I will grieve them for the rest of mine. With people, I have no way of knowing who will go first. Will I be condemned to grieving my lovers, my friends? Or will they grieve me?

I know that in part, experiencing complex grief at a young age put these incessant thoughts in my brain, in combination with genetic predisposition to anxiety. Early in life, I metabolized the fact that everything can be taken away. Ripped away, brutally. I live in constant fear of the Next Big Trauma happening. And it doesn’t help that said trauma was somewhat reinforced for me, when I experienced another complex loss while in college and fell into a pit of Everyone Dies In The End despair. So I recognize that I do this, that I crave things that are fleeting, and I break my body with anxiety about everyone I’ve ever loved dying and leaving. I convince myself that actually, all my relationships are fleeting. Like summer.

But what do I do with that cycle? It’s one thing to name my problems, to intellectualize them, but just naming them isn’t doing anything — in fact, it’s distancing myself from the problem, putting it in a neat tidy box and saying There! I dealt with my trauma!

Right.

Over the past few years I’ve been doing a lot of healing work. Trauma writing, therapeutic hypnosis, tarot readings, I even tried Reiki, all to varying degrees of success (see: helpful, somewhat helpful, anxiety inducing, and I’m still not sure). Emerging from this period of retrospection, I know that telling myself things will be okay is not helpful. Because I know that they aren’t always okay. I know that terrible things can happen. But I also don’t want that knowledge, that deep-seated truth, to control me. Because it’s not the whole truth. Beautiful things can also happen. There will be things that rock me, that break me, and there will be things that build me up, for the rest of my life. I cannot prepare for one or the other. None of it is personal. It just is what it is what it is. Turtles, all the way down. (A philosophy that sometimes terrifies me, and sometimes comforts me).

Enjoy this snippet of a poem I wrote after a traumatizing nosebleed!

blood! on my tarot cards 

waterfallgushingspraying from my face

first nose bleed in years! happy allergy season!

dripdropping on the high priestess

her silver dress turns red and 

i think i like it better that way 

she is wisdom she is spirit she is divine feminine

drenched in my blood; how fitting!

My last post was on January 20, 2025. The threat of my job being defunded looms over me every day, as someone who works in higher ed. Existential fear has taken up a permanent residence in my gut. I am increasingly grateful for my chosen community; in my nightly journal entries, that’s what I keep coming back to. My people. My dogs.

If you’ve spent any time with me within the last few months, you’ve probably heard me harp on about my upcoming Saturn Return (and you’re probably sick of me talking about it! But hey, astrology is a better coping mechanism than like, hard drugs, okay?). Saturn enters Aries in the end of May, and like many of my fellow ‘96 babies, we will be entering our Saturn Return then, a cycle that happens every ~28 years and often coincides with mid-life crises or major changes. I’ve been listening to a lot of Chani Nicholas to understand global events through the lens of astrology. I can only imagine what 13-year-old Erin would say about that; I used to outwardly roll my eyes at astrology, despite identifying with every single aspect of being a Virgo.

I feel little changes creeping up inside of me (my Saturn is only at 6 degrees of Aries, so maybe I feel it early?). Past Life by Maggie Rogers keeps coming to the forefront of my mind, a song I clutched during the transitional period between graduating from college and becoming a Real Adult. If you may recall from my last update, I took a social media sabbatical in January. Since then, I’ve been on and off the internet, but within recent weeks, I’ve come to the realization that the internet is a breeding ground for my anxiety.

This realization comes with a strong sense of grief for me — my therapist told me recently that I sound like an old soul, going on about the “good old days” of social media, when random influencers and ads weren’t shoved in my face, when people just posted their shitty edited pictures on Instagram and Tumblr. I’ve built communities I’m proud of on social media. Camp Half-Pod’s Instagram used to be one of my favorite places to interact with people, and still remains my favorite account to be on. But my brain is tired from the constant barrage of noise and opinions, which has even seeped into my podcast account where I only follow bookish influencers and other Percy Jackson podcasters. If only there was a way to turn ads off.

The internet used to help me enjoy things. Now it ruins them for me. HBO’s The Last of Us is one of my favorite stories ever told right now. I played both games (I almost exclusively play cozy games, so that’s how you know I’m obsessed with the story). But oh my GOD, people’s opinions on the cast make me want to gorge my eyes out. Let me enjoy my comfort media in PEACE! And by comfort media, I mean extremely traumatizing story.

Many recent conversations and themes of my life have revolved around social media and how toxic it is. I read an article about Digital Dementia, and found myself identifying with way too many of the symptoms. Coupled with my ADHD, I constantly feel distracted, like I’m forgetting things, little pieces of my mind falling away like chunks of brain confetti. So, for the millionth time in my life, I’ve been trying not to be online as much. My past breaks from the internet have left me itching, but this time, I honestly feel…free? I’ve been muddling through a sort-of friendship breakup, and removing myself from ways to see the person has been helpful for my own processing. And as much as I love my friends and community, I don’t need to constantly see what they’re doing, scroll through their highlight reels of pictures. I’d rather see them in person or over FaceTime, have them show me their pictures or send them to me. Maybe I’m finally becoming the mysterious luddite I’ve always envied. (here is where I give a big shoutout to my cousin Han’s newsletter, “Log Off!”, because I still get my dose of pop culture and online-ness from them, and they’re amazing).

Becoming more offline is a recent effort of mine. As is being more direct. My partner pointed out that almost everything I say is passive. So every time I catch myself being passive, I’ve been trying to correct course and rephrase. I feel like I’m working on a ton of different things right now. I’m getting back into journaling. I’m taking a break from my writing group, because the pressure to churn out a piece every few weeks for people to critique was getting to me. I’m getting into running (but not for more than like 10 minutes at a time). I’ve been COOKING (this is a big deal. I am a hot mess in the kitchen. One of my dogs, Wally, literally runs and hides any time I cook, because I always drop things). I’m becoming a hat person (to hide my roots until I bite the bullet and get my hair done…recession indicator, perhaps?).

That’s my update for now. Perhaps next time you hear from me I’ll be in my Saturn Return and will be even more annoying about it! Instead of sharing writing, as the writing I’ve been doing is mostly personal journal entries, I want to share a list of what I’m currently consuming media-wise, because stories and content are what I live for, TBH.

BOOKS:

• I reread all of the Hunger Games. Please hit me up if you want to discuss the ways the media horribly misunderstood the Peeta vs. Gale dynamic and how instead of being love interests they actually represent two different responses to oppression and violence and ultimately Katniss chooses Peeta because she chooses peace! But Gale is not a bad guy (nor is he a good guy) and I stand by that, he just represents a more violent form of rebellion !!!! ALSO, I think the reason Gale gets so much hate is because way more of us are Gales than Peetas. A lot more of us would choose revenge and anger over peace (or maybe that’s just me???).

• I’m reading Lord of the Flies for the first time? I wanted something about a plane crash to cope with being kind of disappointed with the most recent season of Yellowjackets

• The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings left me thinking a lot afterwards

TV:

• The last stretch of months has been great for my specific interests in television

• Severance, like the rest of the world

• White Lotus — season 3 was actually my favorite so far. I usually get bored during White Lotus episodes but I didn’t during this season!

• THE LAST OF US!!! As mentioned earlier, I think the internet’s opinions on it are wild. I think we as a society need to learn to distinguish between “bad writing” and just not liking what happens. Like, the story can still be good, and you can hate what happens. Bring back critical analysis and long form literature, please

• Lowkey I did not like the latest season of Yellowjackets. I got so lost during the adult plotline. This was one of my favorite shows last year, so that was kind of sad. The last episode slapped though

GAMES:

• Just The Last of Us part 2. I knew a handful of spoilers but the ending of that game left me devastated. I love when my media devastates me!

• Wait, I lied. Also The Sims. I’m still working on The Solar System challenge I mentioned last time. I’m almost done with it…

PODCASTS:

• We’re Here To Help has been my favorite podcast of last year and this year. I am slightly ashamed that my favorite podcast is two white men with a podcast, but I die laughing every episode.

• Down To Astro by CHANI. Yes, the astrology hyper fixation runs deep.

• The Last of Us HBO recap podcast…. again. The hyper fixation runs deep.

That’s all for now! See you next time <3

In the wake of the U.S. election, my stories suddenly feel… I’m not sure if I can come up with the correct word for it. If there is a correct word for it. Dismissed? Small? Unimportant? A secret fourth answer? I write most of my personal narrative pieces about gender based violence and medical violence against women. Issues that according to the American public, people do not believe nor care about. And my fiction work has felt so inconsequential, my silly little stories about teens going through it. I don’t mean that to be demeaning to myself (okay, maybe a little bit… my relationship with fiction is toxic), but as an artist, sometimes it feels like, what’s the point of it all? The world is burning. Who will be left to read, to write, to imagine?

Incredibly nihilistic, I know. Art is what we live for, blahblahblah. Art gives live meaning. Even if I’m not creating much, I am consuming a LOT, and it’s helping me cope. (But still, let me have my wallowing! I’m on my period!).

I have been off of my personal social media since January 1st. It’s my own version of dry January. So, if you’ve sent me a message or meme, sorry I haven’t responded! If you really need to contact me, text me. Or DM me on Camp Half-Pod’s Instagram. I plan to log back on in February, though not sure if I’ll be on there much after checking all the notifications. Who knows. I’m proud that I’ve lasted longer than Selena Gomez’s imfamous 14 hour break. Or TikTok’s.

What made me decide that? To be honest, the end-of-year photo dumps finally got to me, a tradition I have often participated in myself. It just felt so strange, to be celebrating a new year, while watching this country descend into fascism. Not to say that anyone that celebrates the new year is complacent — actually, finding joy and excitement in the face of fear is the most beautiful form of human rebellion. But I am not there, yet.

I have not been filling my Instagram-less time with anything all that worthwhile. I’m partway through the Solar System challenge on The Sims, which may be an even more complicated on than the 100 Baby Challenge, which I did during the first year of the pandemic. I’ve been reading. I started listening to ACOTAR and if you want to hear my thoughts please text me (I cannot stand the main character, or any of the men!!! I also don’t understand half the plot!!!). I’ve been more motivated to actually text people to hangout, since I’m not seeing their every move on Instagram stories. I’ve been sitting around on the couch with my dogs a lot.

I’m not going to include writing on this one, because I don’t want to share anything I’ve been working on lately. It’s been so long since I’ve done one of these, so if you are still subscribed, thank you <3. And please send me a text. Or a call. I want to connect more offline!

As an offering, here are some dog pictures from the last month.

I don’t really like to talk about my projects until they’re fully formed. They feel sacred, in the early months. And unstable — as if the moment I speak them aloud, they’ll fall apart, I’ll lose hold of them. So that’s probably all I’ll say about the content of my fiction project. It’s not-fully-formed, it’s messy, and it’s occupying the majority of my thoughts. My google history has been alarming as of late (I’m learning a lot about how people drown… CIA Agent, please don’t come for me, I’m a writer!). I’m working out plot points and characters. I’m about 20,000 words in, which is always when I hit a slump. The excitement of world-building and establishing characters wears off, and I feel overwhelmed by how much I have to do to get to the end.

So send me all the good writing vibes and if anyone wants to try and help me work out plot points, I’ll do my best to explain the mess in my head.

I have no idea if this project will go anywhere. And I think I’m okay with that — I want to be writing for me. I want to feel the same sense of excitement and accomplishment that I used to feel with writing, before I ever published, before publishing was something I even thought about.

Around the same time this idea for a fiction novel popped up for me, about a month ago, I started working on a pretty intense piece of my on-going personal essay writing. I got the idea in the shower (where all good ideas begin), and immediately turned the water off, put pajamas on, and sat with sopping wet hair hunched over my laptop. I wrote the piece in about 2 hours. Purged it from myself. It was probably one of the more intense pieces I’ve written in a long time.

I couldn’t sleep all night afterwards. I did a little too much research on serial killers, and was up late filled with rage about gender-based violence (just girly things!!!). I went way too deep.

I’ve heard stories from memoir writers who go to deep into their trauma, end up with an aversion to writing that can last years, or months. I was really scared I’d done that to myself. But then, this fiction idea came to me.

Perhaps the fiction idea popped up as a way to buffer the more intense personal writing. I’ve found solace in my fictional characters. I mean, I’m not exactly writing fluff (anyone who has ever read my fiction knows I love to kill off characters), but it feels much safer to explore intense themes through the lens of fictional characters.

Life has been really chaotic, lately. Not necessarily in a good or bad way. I’m writing a lot. I’m working a lot. I’m podcasting again. My partner got a surgery, and I spent a few weeks caring for him. Yet somehow, I’m doing okay? I think? I’m enjoying the moments of autumn sunshine, going on hikes, drinking a lot of tea, reading books on my commute to work, and making fun Pinterest boards for my new characters. I’m still having trouble sleeping and eating but I’m trying my best and I’m filling my life with things that bring me joy, in some capacity. I’m figuring it out.

We’ll see how I feel about it all in another month.

sporadic snippet

content warning for serial killers. I grew in an area that was once an infamous 1970s serial killer’s hunting grounds. somehow, I found myself writing about that. this is a very short snippet because any more is too deep for publicly posting on main without getting paid!

“There are bones scattered everywhere,” girls used to whisper. “People still find them. From his… victims.”

In the forested parks we would dig, in search of treasure. Or bones. Buried rubies or young girl femurs. Gold doubloons or curled fingers, once covered in nail polish. Sparkling diamonds or dirt-crusted teeth. X marks the spot. 

“Why would their bones be separated?” I asked. I already knew the answer, deep down. In my own bones. 

“Because he spread them out. Obviously.”

Bones sprinkled like ashes. Like confetti. Like uncooked rice at a wedding. Hidden amongst the secluded trails near my hometown. I wondered if I would find one, unearth the remnants of another missing girl.

The stories of the serial killer blended truth with fantasy, with legends. The truth, I learned later, was worse. 

writing “advice”

When I was deep in the publishing and writing community online, I remember reading all about the two types of plotting a novel: Planning and Pants-ing. Planning being people who outline chapters and everything, and Pants-ing being people who just wing it.

I always identified very strongly as a Planner. Outlines were my best friend.

Though lately, I’ve found that my tendency towards planning sometimes hinders my best work. I get too wrapped up in the overall plot and following an outline that I don’t listen to my inner voice and characters as deeply. So I’m sort of… neither a Planner or a Pants-er now. I still have outlines (I am a Virgo), but they’re really chaotic and full of question marks. I’ve been approaching each chapter individually, and going where the characters take me. I use the outline more as an overall guide for the characters and for the major plot points in the book.

All of that to say, if you’re figuring out your writing style, don’t box yourself into being one way. When you find something that works for you, chances are, a few years later it won’t work any more. That’s okay! If there’s one thing I keep going back to over and over again, it’s that there’s no correct way to be a writer. Every writer I’ve met has such a different journey. Most writing advice online is B.S… maybe even including this. Just do what works for you to get the book written. That’s the hardest part. At least for me; I actually enjoy editing (once again…I am a Virgo!).

The last time I went abroad, my partner and I went to Iceland for a delayed honeymoon. Iceland was magical, though the time itself was fraught, seeing as our beloved elderly dog was deeply sick and had some health scares while we were gone. We haven’t traveled abroad since then, two years ago, and this summer, finally made the plunge.

I didn’t grow up traveling abroad. We went on trips within the U.S., so when I studied abroad my junior year of college, I became obsessed with traveling the world. With seeing all I could possibly see in this little life. I’ve since visited 15 countries, and counting. After I graduated college, I took my partner to Europe with me, his first time outside of the country. So, for my 28th birthday, we decided to go to Spain.

I could write a novel about all the things that went wrong on this trip. It was almost comical. Our flight was delayed and rebooked so many times that we got stranded in London overnight (a city we weren’t even supposed to fly through, with our original flights). I got really sick, and we lost multiple days in Madrid due to said delays and illness. We accidentally scratched our rental car, which cost us a fortune. Our dolphin tour was cancelled, because of choppy sea, though thankfully, we were able to rebook for the following day. Also, our dogs somehow got fleas while we were gone. And our car battery died when we finally got home to our car at 11PM…

My own personal series of unfortunate events. Minor inconveniences. Yet also, I had a wonderful, lovely time. I got to eat the best oranges at an orange grove in Soller. Jump into the Balearic Sea. Eat breakfast looking at the ocean. See aqueducts and ancient architecture.

It was an adventure. Certainly not a vacation, though I can’t recall the last time I took a proper, relaxing vacation. Despite all my fears surrounding travel, I very much prefer an adventure. It invigorates me. Already, I am dreaming of where to go next. And hopefully next time, any travel bumps in the road will feel like a piece of cake in comparison.

So, in terms of writing… I really thought my next newsletter was going to be a repeat of “i’m not writing anything, i’m trying not to feel like a failure, and subsequently failing at that.” But, some good news — I AM WRITING! I’ve been working really, really hard to not get bogged down by large projects and the pressure of finding an overall narrative for my work. The last few pieces I’ve been working on have been more fun, lower stakes, looking at specific moments and memories and making stories of them. (I’ve also been writing fanfiction, LOL). But who cares! I’m just happy to be making words I’m proud of, regardless of who reads them.

I think having an adventure in Spain really did reinvigorate me to write. I’m still struggling a lot with my identity as a writer, but am trying to bring back the spark, the fun, into writing.

sporadic snippet

my sister was born blue
tangled in an umbilical cord necklace
she twisted herself to near suffocation
an instinctive bid for control she learned
within my mother’s body;
she sucked in air with a violent surge
turned pink and sticky and cried

I used to pinch her cheeks
they were so round and full and
I wanted to pop them, like balloons
squeeze until I approached the threshold
of pain, toeing the line between affectionate
and cruel;
even as a child there was a thrill
in seeing that my very own hands
could cause pain

my mother made me pinch myself softly,
as punishment, see how that hurts?
don’t do that to her,
she’s a baby. I squeezed
my fingers together on my own arm
a sharp sting, I learned
we should not hurt others;
we should hurt ourselves

writing “advice”

Something that I’ve been turning to a lot is anonymity. I used to crave the recognition and glory that accompanies writing in this day and age. The attention. But after going through publication, and the pressure that follows, I’ve found power in anonymity. Most of the work I’ve published in the last few years that is under my own name, I haven’t widely promoted. And, not to talk about fanfiction on main, but having a nice little following on my fanfiction account that has absolutely no traceability to my name IRL is fantastic. To have people comment nice and sweet things about my writing that don’t know anything about me. It’s invigorating. And I will 100% take my fanfiction username to my grave — the anonymity is sacred to me (also, I’m embarrassed by how much fluff I write).

So, my advice is, if you’re comfortable sharing your writing, it’s okay to do it anonymously. It might even feel better to do it that way. I know that there’s this fantasy we’re fed about becoming a famous writer with a following and name recognition, but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Being just another username on AO3, or a random tumblr account, or an unnamed poetry account on Instagram, can be so powerful and great for confidence boosting and learning.

To be completely honest, I’ve been having a really hard time with writing lately. I openly cried during workshop in my writing group last week. Grief has crashed into me like a freight train; a unique kind of grief, a grief for the way I used to write, the way I used to create. Writing used to be such a core tenant of my identity. Now, it is something I drag behind me. Nauseates me when people ask how writing is going. I used to dream of publishing. Now I am published, and it has been four years since my last publication, and I am a dry reservoir of words.

I find myself wondering what my life would look like if I had been encouraged to pursue what made me excited — never once did I consider studying writing at school. Writing was always something I did for fun, on my own. Most of my creative projects of my youth were like that; I used to spend summers making videos with friends. We shared them with our parents, had makeshift movie premieres. But nobody ever told me to pursue it; instead, I was pushed towards a capitalistic need for something practical, reliable. Something that would get me a job. I watched my sister pursue film in school with envy; I never felt like that was something I could do. Never felt like I was good enough at anything creative to dedicate my time to it.

And now, I feel stretched, stuck. I work a full time job (one that I actually do enjoy) and can’t afford to quit it and fully dedicate myself to writing, yet it feels as though my writing will never “take off” at this rate. I barely write anymore, exhausted at the end of each day. Publishing did not feel like crossing the finish line I’d made up in my mind. Instead, it was like I reached the precipice of the finish line, only for the goal to be moved away from me a hundred yards. I’m still dragging myself to some ever-moving target.

This summer, I have not been writing much. Instead, I have been consuming.

Consuming media, that is. And fresh air. My relationship with consuming food is fraught, to put it lightly. My summer reading list has been shorter, than usual, but I have found solace in stories on TV, or video games, or simply existing. Because I’m not super up for writing the longest letter of all time, here is a list of some of the things I’ve been consuming this summer:

• The sun. I’m like a plant. Solar-powered.

• Gracie Abrams’s most recent album, “The Secret of Us”

• “Here to Help” podcast. Jake Johnson simply IS Nick Miller.

• House of the Dragon. I’m back in my Game of Thrones era.

• Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan, which I actually really loved. A fantastic return to my beloved Percy Jackson.

• Lakes. I’ve jumped into a few lakes this summer and it’s made me feel so ALIVE.

• Currently listening to Julia Fox’s memoir, Down the Drain, which is actually really good.

• Chappell Roan, of course. We’re all having a Chappell Roan summer.

• The Olympics. Suddenly I am a patriot. A sports girlie. If you put on women’s volleyball or gymnastics while I’m in the room, I will scream like a man watching football.

sporadic snippet

ok! time to share what little writing i have been doing! this one is on theme for consumption!

girl dinner

handful of trader joe’s cheddar rockets and 
               an apple,
frozen spanakopita that doesn’t heat through;
               soggy cold middle that i nibble at, 
orange juice,
every single thing anyone said to me in middle school,
kit-kat bar,
bagel with cream cheese 
             (light cream cheese), 
chocolate peanut butter protein bar,
my mother's birth-ravaged belly, that she hides
a few slices of cheese that make my stomach hurt,
apple juice
             (watered down),
youtube videos made by some family that
i actually kind of hate watching,
sour patch watermelon,
a smoothie

I don’t really feel like giving writing advice today! But if you take away anything from this, and you’re stuck with your writing, I hope you consume things. Become feral with your consumption. Consume things you love. Let them inspire you.

What have you been consuming? Comment below. <3

xoxo, gossip Erin

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I wasn’t trying to become a Capitol-Y YouTuber, by any means – I averaged around 100 views, with a few exceptions that catapulted into the thousands by some luck of the algorithm – I was simply so excited about writing and sharing my process. I wasn’t trying to get an agent, or a platform, or become a Book Influencer (which really wasn’t much of a thing back then). I was genuinely excited about writing and connecting with other writers. 

I’m not sure what happened to that version of myself. After swallowing my strange feelings, I watched a few of the videos, and they weren’t bad – I actually had some good advice in there, advice that I certainly don’t follow today. Yet, discomfort plagued me while listening to my own voice back, watching myself and feeling so incredibly disconnected from her. A past version of myself talking about the beauty of journaling and creativity, while current me contemplates tearing her journal into pieces and never writing ever again at least once a week. 

That’s something quite strange about writing in this day and age – the digital footprint of our creativity. Emerging writers are expected to have Instagram followings, TikTok accounts, some sort of platform that publishers can extort. When I published, my publisher asked that I make my Instagram public, that I create posts about my work (I did, however, draw the line at TikTok. Maybe my book would have blown up if I’d opted to succumb to quirky marketing videos; I just couldn’t bring myself to do it). I didn’t want to make my life a commodity, yet it felt like a requirement for the field. 

My Instagram is back to private, I no longer post on my poetry Instagram or my YouTube, and most of my more recent writing is either sitting in my google drive or published in/on submission for literary magazines. Yet, that version of my work, of my creative process, is always and forever online. 

I can delete it. Obviously. Yet when I hover over the delete button, I hesitate. A small part of me longs to commune with my past self. Hold a séance over her buried limbs. Resurrect, dissect, and then bury all over again. 

Would she be proud of me? I did what she wanted. I published. But then I disappeared. 

I love to watch videos of myself as a child, caught on 90s camcorder. Singing, twirling around, trying to take the camera from my parents and document my surroundings myself. Tiny, squeaky narration. Perhaps one day, I’ll feel similarly nostalgic towards my YouTube writing era videos. For now, I’ll sit within the mixture of cringe and longing. 

sporadic snippet

Admittedly, I have not been producing much lately in terms of new writing. This is a snippet from a piece I wrote early this year. It’s actually one of my favorite things I’ve written this year. Granted, this is just a small sliver of it, barely touches the meat of the piece, but I felt quite proud of the plentiful yet not too-on-the-nose allusions and imagery in this one. This is taken from the opening scene of a piece titled, “birds on the beach.”

It was the summer that dead seagulls dotted the shore of the beach. 

Their bodies were bloated and sick, some decorated with dark red, fleshy holes where bugs burrowed to feast. Their feathered wings were crumpled up and covered in sand, damp from the ocean spray. We passed them as we walked along the shore, one, two, three, four. 

“Why are there so many dead birds?” I asked. We kept counting. We got upwards of twenty, in a small stretch of beach we walked. We were careful with our steps, avoiding the bird carcasses in the wet sand. 

“Maybe they’re all diseased,” my sister suggested. “Bird flu strikes again!” 

I crinkled my nose, suddenly afraid to breathe in the fresh beach air. What if they actually were sick? What if I could get sick? 

“It’s like a horror movie,” my boyfriend said. He leaned down to look at one of the birds. I tugged on his sleeve to pull him back. “Don’t get so close!” 

“Could be aliens,” suggested my sister’s friend. Her curly hair flew into her face, and she spit a few strands out of her mouth. “Experimenting on the birds of the Oregon coast.”

A chill ran down my spine. I looked out at the lighthouse in the distance. The sky was gray and cloudy, but I knew where to look for the sliver of a tall, white and red-striped building, the dark rock upon which it stood. 

“I’ve always thought that lighthouse looked haunted,” I said. They squinted at it in the distance. 

Cannon Beach was usually my happy place. Our yearly trip was often my reprieve from life. But instead of calming me, the rush of waves unnerved me. The sand between my toes felt too crunchy, too coarse, and the laughs of my sister and her friend were too loud, too sharp. My vision swam in indistinct shapes, splotches of color. Gray sky, gray-blue water, deep green seaweed. 

I walked along the shore and felt like my brain was in a knot. I passed another dead bird. 

Later that evening, my parents met us back at the beach house we were renting that year, after their own walk on the beach. 

All four of us turned to them. “Did you see all the dead birds?”

writing “advice”

Find a writing a group. Easier said than done. This can even just be one friend that also writes, with whom you can lament, or regale, the process. This can look however you want it to look — it doesn’t need to be a formal group. It can be someone you message with on discord. A friend that you get coffee with. Or a group of writers that workshop one another’s pieces. Writing is lonely. Even though I have a writing group that I cherish, I feel incredibly lonely in the process. I feel lonely in a lot of areas of my life. But when I get together with that group, and hear others speak of similar struggles, I know that at least when it comes to writing, I am not alone.

I love Spring. I always forget, each year, how much I love it. Dear friends birthdays (love my Taureses and Geminis!), the anniversary of when my partner and I first fell in love, prolonged sunshiney days. An emergence from the dark pacific northwest winters that I still have yet to find any affection for. The return of iced lattes.

Also, I am currently plagued by seasonal allergies. That part, I don’t love so much.

Early May was spent writing a lot. Late May was spent writing not at all. I blame the change in weather (an unusually sunny early May, a typical PNW rain-soaked late May). Sometimes, I wonder how much longer I can last in the grey.

Because I decided I wanted to share a snippet of writing each newsletter, here is a small bit from a piece I’ve been working on. Mostly because I love alliteration (I did grow up on A Series of Unfortunate Events!), I’ve titled this portion the Sporadic Snippet. Originally, I deemed it the Sunday Snippet, but again, committing to sending this out every Sunday filled me with fear. Despite being a person with a lot of commitments, when it comes to my writing, I am chalked full with commitment issues.

Sporadic Snippet

this is taken from a writing prompt suggested in my writing class — “write about a time you were in kahoots with someone”

Sunshine yellow in a plastic grocery store bag. 
              A handful of mottled dandelions, sacred currency to second graders. 
The bag sat on the soccer field between two opposing groups of girls. 

I told you guys, I said, we didn’t steal them. They’ve been here the whole time. 

Victory flowed through my veins. We’d been wrongly accused of stealing their wrought-over bag of dandelions, with which they intended to make secret potions. We found it untouched on the soccer field. A girl named Megan with blonde hair and dark eyebrows glared at me. Another girl, also named Megan, with braces and dark curls, moved to grab the bag. 

Something inside of me spurred. A gut reaction to an unjust accusation. 
              I lunged forwards and grabbed the plastic in my hands, held it to my chest. 

Now we’re stealing them, I said, handed the bag off to a friend of mine, who waved it over her head in glee. We sprinted away towards a large oak tree, drew a circle around it with a stick. 
              This is our safe zone, we declared. You can’t come in here. 

The other girls chose a stump on the other side of the field, angrily drew their circle in the dirt. 
              So began the first war ever fought over dandelions. 

My fingernails stained yellow. We chased one another across the field. It was a game, but it was a war, and eventually, we won. Keep the bag, they said. Threw stones at us while the recess teachers weren’t looking. It doesn’t matter. 

One of the Megans was crying. We saw her on the stump, left behind by her comrades. We left the bag of dandelions at her feet. An offering. 

erin’s writing tip

I promised I’d end these with a writing tip. I have yet to come up with a fun, alliterative title for this section of the newsletter. I’m a poster child for imposter syndrome, so naturally, I don’t feel qualified to give said tips. But sometimes the best advice comes from people who don’t think they know what they’re doing. My first tip, and this may seem trite and contradictory, is to stop googling writing advice. Honestly. I think reading dozens of articles and books on writing advice has done more harm than good for me. There’s so much information out there, and much of it is contradictory. Self publish, don’t self publish. Plan your novels, wing it. None of us know what we’re doing.

So, instead of googling writing advice and pouring over dozens of blogs, TikToks, and books looking for an answer, sit down and come up with your own advice. Pretend you’re an esteemed writer (you very well might be!). Grab a journal and a pen and a cup of something warm. Write out your top three pieces of advice that you’d give to someone who is just starting writing. Even if you feel like you’re the person who needs advice the most, you’re the person just starting writing, pretend for a moment. Pretend you know all the things in the world when it comes to creating. I think you might surprise yourself. There are things you know about your creative process, deep down, that nobody else in the world can tell you. Your process is unique to you. No “do’s and don’t’s of writing” TikTok can take that from you.

(note: if you are not a writer but some other kind of creator, apply the same prompt to your chosen form of creativity)

If you follow the tip above, I’d love to hear what advice you come up with for yourself. The breadth of processes among writers always astounds me. I love how unique we all are, and grate against the notion that there is a Right and Wrong way to write. So please, share your tips with me directly or in the comments with the buttons below. Perhaps if I receive enough, I’ll put them all together and share them out.

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Thanks for joining along, and I’ll chat with you next time!

“I miss your poetry on Instagram.” 

“I loved your article, the one from a few years ago.”

“Will you publish another book?”

I used to share my work with a vigor that only fresh college graduate could – open wound words screaming into the void of the internet. A poetry account on Instagram that people screenshotted and posted to Pinterest. A small YouTube account that for some reason still gets comments from writers. Multiple blogs. Articles that I shared widely on my personal social media accounts. And in 2020, my debut novel, Laurel Everywhere. 

After that, silence. 

I started sharing because I needed to, because I craved validation. I still do. I think that may be one of the many tenets of the human condition; we want to share our stories, and hear back whispers of me too or sometimes, I’m sorry. But then I stopped sharing because my lungs ached from screaming into the void. From twisting myself into uncomfortable shapes in the hopes of getting an agent, a publishing deal, a viral video. 

Sitting in front of a blank Word document became grueling. I could not start a new story, a new piece, without thinking about how I would pitch it to a publication. Without wondering what people would think. I had to stop writing on my computer, for a while, took to drafting pieces in the safety of my journal. I told nobody about this, aside from my partner and my therapist. I felt as though all my friends, family, readers would be disappointed. Time kept passing. I had nothing to show, except mad scribbles in unlined journals.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been writing, more than I give myself credit for. It’s just looked different than it has in the past, when I used to churn out thousands of words a day and complete manuscripts in months. I’ve been a part of an incredible writing group, one of the few spaces in which I’ve been sharing recent work. I have published a number of personal essays over the last few years of “silence,” though I have not advertised them widely because frankly, they’re deeply vulnerable, and I’m jaded when it comes to sharing about my body. Back in late 2018, I published a piece on Huffington Post that went viral. I wrote about my experience with pain, with a reproductive health condition. People came out of the woodwork with words of support, of connection, seeking advice. They found me on my personal Instagram, my personal Facebook, my personal email. It was overwhelming, and beautiful, and heartbreaking that so many people had similar experiences to me, and hadn’t known there was a name for it. 

But I also lost a friend over that piece. A friendship that perhaps was on its way out already. Someone who I considered a close friend that had been in my life since middle school cut off contact with me because they thought the article was “too explicit.” I was hurt. I saw that sharing myself deeply led to loss. I tried to focus instead on my upcoming book deal, an offer I received in 2019.

Publishing was nothing like I’d imagined, due to the fact that I had a 2020 publication date, and, well, that year was anything but normal. I had a great experience, overall, but none of it felt real. There were no parties, no major celebrations. The book launch party took place on Zoom, and afterwards, I sipped a glass of champagne by myself. 

I thought that once I published a book, I’d feel like a writer. It’s been nearly four years. The word still feels uncomfortable, like an itchy sweater on my skin. Writer. Just typing it makes me want to vomit. I am a writer, though. Even if that sentence makes me cringe behind the laptop screen. 

So, what have I actually been up to? What’s the answer to the godforsaken question – what are you working on next?

Creativity has found new forms in my life, over the last few years. I started podcasting three years ago, and much of my creative energy went towards that (listen to Camp Half-Pod on all podcast platforms!). I joined a writing group a year ago, in which I’ve been slowly but surely crafting personal essays that could become a full collection, or memoir. I wrote a manuscript for a fiction book in 2021, though have not touched it since. I am attempting to place value on all forms of creativity, regardless of the output, of the accolades. I am creating. That’s what matters. Or at least, that’s what I keep reminding myself. Occasionally, I convince myself to believe it.

That creativity, for me, runs dry when external pressure builds. Many things in my life have fallen victim to this – my poetry after my account grew, my fiction writing after publishing, my personal writing after going viral, my podcast after our following grew. When creating becomes work, when others expectations and thoughts grow loud, how do we hear our own inner voice? I’m a person who cares deeply about what others think, for better or worse. How can I make sharing my art fun, yet still attempt to value my time fiscally? 

I hope that this substack can be an avenue for repairing my relationship with sharing. I am still working on submitting to publications, to fellowships, to residencies, and seeking ways to be financially supported for sharing my work. And, I want to reconnect with the vigor with which I shared work of my early twenties, at the heart of which was a longing for connection. This newsletter of sorts is for anyone who has ever been invested in my writing journey – friends, family, readers of any of my work, podcast listeners. And anyone else who has stumbled upon this. 

Here, I will share occasional thought pieces, as well as at the end of each month, I plan to share a reflective “newsletter” in which I discuss where I’m at in my creative process, share a small snippet from an essay or piece I’m working on, and include a “writing tip” for any fellow writers or creatives out there. These tips will in no way be prescriptive; rather, they are things that I have learned along the way, that have worked for me, that I wish somebody had told me about sooner. I hope this will hold me accountable and also rekindle my relationship with sharing my work and creating community via writing, an often isolated pursuit. 

Also, it’s a way for me to answer the dreaded “what are you working on next?” question. The next time someone asks me, I’ll tell them to subscribe. 

Thanks for joining along, and you’ll be hearing from me at the end of the month!

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