It hasn’t quite been six years, but as I continue to languish and ponder about about my future endeavors and the things I want to do and the things I am expected to do in the capitalist hellscape, I have been thinking a lot about my time at VONA.

VONA (Voices of Our Nations) is a arts foundation that in their words “nurtures writers of color.” They host an annual summer workshop, and I had the fortune of attending their 2020 Online program, because as you can imagine an in-person event during that time would be ill conceived.

This was a time where I was trying to actively shed my poetry and fiction tendencies (an ill advised attempt, but sometimes you have to try the discard and draw approach) and had used samples from my work with (the now 2025 Hugo Award Winning fanzine) Black Nerd Problems to secure my spot in their Nonfiction workshop with instructor Valerie Boyd.

It was a week long intensive. I was the only “guy” (I had not quite pieced together my nonbinary-ness at that particular time) in the cohort, but it was an incredible week that started with the strangest activity.

Write about yourself based on the contents of the fridge.

I’d have to dig up my notes to find the exact inspiration for the exercise, but it was something done off the cuff and it ended up informing a lot of how the rest of the week went. The piece I wrote #Lucky is one I am still fond of. It would be many, many years before I attempted to write the poem version of that (see 08/30). I’ve been thinking about the fact that I’m constantly reinventing work in different genre. It’s a fascinating game, like how a body of text changes with a different font.

Six years later, I have collected all of the different titles for writer, although I think my wheel house is squarely within nonfiction, critique, and poetry. I think the attempt at distance was a poor attempt at preservation, when the reality is I have use for the form and the form has use for me.

I’ve been enjoying my time heralding Sip & Scribe for SLICE. I hope to do that for many years to come.

But, I have also been struggling this past month. With tech. With personal endeavors. With fatigue matriculating into malcontent.

I didn’t know what to write this week. But then I looked at the sign right above laptop.

Valerie Boyd passed away in 2022. I had thanked for her for helping me grow as a writer, but I doubt I properly articulated how much her words helped me nor how the mantra of “We don’t make shit up” has been a beacon.

I think a lot of 2026 for me has been meditating on “what is truth?” Maybe in an existential way. Maybe in the more practical way of reality slowly fraying because of generative AI. Maybe in the way that I live and being open and honest with myself.

I don’t know. It’s been a weird month and the month’s still not even over, so who know how I’ll feel once June actually ends and July marks my ascent into the mid-mid 30s that is 35.

But that’s a next week Mikkel problem.