Making home, making stories, making a life
This week I have one of my brothers staying with me. He's helping me around the house, I'm listening to him talk. We're both in transition, figuring things out in slow motion as big changes are needed in both our worlds. Last night he told me he doesn't know where to read my writing, as he doesn't have a Facebook or Twitter. I was like, well, I'm never posting stuff on Facebook. But I've been writing a lot and I post it on my Twitter usually, because that's where the writing community I'm part of hangs out.
I've been published a bunch this month, which is both nice because I'm still freelancing and hunting for full-time work after a couple of near-misses with two different dream jobs this spring and summer. The school job, I think I've talked about, and that's both frustrating and also not too surprising. Come out as trans during the pandemic, hoping for a full time professor job at a community college that's whitewhitewhite and very conservative, where I'm the only openly queer faculty member or staff member--it should not have been a long shot but it was promised to be a shoe-in and then just as quickly turned into "we're going in another direction."
The other job... I'm not ready to talk about it yet, but let me tell you that I underestimated myself until July and August this year, when an opportunity made me realize that I have all the skills necessary to run a literary non-profit and educational programming and that felt really exciting. Thank you to everyone who was excited with me for that. I wish that future had been realized. But I learned so much.
So I've been freelancing and crawling out of a depression hole that ate up most of October. My house here is 100+ years old and has no heat or insulation, so it's gotten cold at night and I'm playing games synchronizing space heaters with my daily routines and hoping I don't trip a breaker again. I gave my landlord notice that I'm leaving--it's just too cold, and my friends from my MFA all moved away and I've been too isolated here.
My friend ("straight friend," if you're following me on Twitter) from homeschooling advocacy work and my former life in DC is buying a house in NoVA and asked me to move in with her and go in on the house renovation project with her and build a little community out of this big old house build in 1968. It's gorgeous, and I'm excited for this change. We're planning a big garden and low-waste remodeling and maybe hosting a writing retreat out of one of the spare bedrooms.
This change does bring with it some big challenges, namely that I need to rehome two of my cats before we move in together because her divorce cat is a lot like Penny and two cranky old ladies like them can terrorize each other but don't need to terrorize the babies. So I'm talking through options--I want to find Lav and Saikal spots where I can dote on them and visit. The move will happen in staggered stages though, so there's not as much rush as there might be. I'm moving in December, she's joining a month or two later.
In talking through ideas and daydreaming about decor and kitchens, I made a joke on Twitter that I wished I could swap out my bright red KitchenAid mixer for a green one, trading with another divorcee who also wants a fresh start. This turned into a viral conversation--people were finding mixer swaps in the comments, telling stories of wedding gifts collecting dust, compromises regretted. I wrote about it for Curbed, and that was cute and fun. I still have my beloved red mixer though, but maybe I'll paint it. We're going green for the kitchen.
I also wrote an explainer about polyamory for Health dot com, and a tribute to time being fake and going to my grandmother's Silver Sneakers aerobics class at the YMCA in high school for Sari Botton's new magazine, Oldster.
The last big piece that I wrote was a love letter to the activists in places I've lived who are fighting for a better future for queers in the face of climate change, for Them. This one kicked up so many feelings for me, as I'm doing my little hikes and day trips here in SW Virginia with the thought in the back of my head that each outing might be my last one to this or that spot, since I'm moving. I've loved living here and I also resisted putting down roots here, and I regret that last in some ways, but not in others. I plan to write about this more at some point.
Kitchen Table Cult is still going, the podcast that I co-host with Kieryn Darkwater. We've had some really incredible guests lately: Meg Conley came on to talk about LulaRich, Melissa Gira Grant talked to us about myths about sex trafficking, and Talia Lavin joined us to talk about her series of reported pieces about spanking. None of these are light episodes, but we try to keep it trauma-informed and angry and tender.
More updates to come, but one last thing:
The Coalition for Responsible Home Education (the non-profit for homeschooled kid-centered advocacy that I'm on the board of) is doing their annual fundraiser and we're 10k short of our goal to have enough to hire a full-time Executive Director for next year. Here's our November newsletter update, which can tell you more about the work we've been doing this last month. Here's a piece I co-wrote for Teen Vogue about why our work is so vital, and here's our donation page. We have a matching donor who will match donations up to 5k, so the reach now is that last 5k to get us over the line for this year. Thank you. <3
xo,
e