All the ways to love

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Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay

Being that it’s Valentine’s Day and President’s Day in the same weekend, I had a number of topics in mind for what to blog about this week. I’d like to document my experiences during these dark times for the U.S., but I also need some distraction, because I’m overwhelmed and feeling helpless by the onslaught of terrifying news on social media and TV. So I’m going to focus on love, seeing as it was Valentine’s Day yesterday.

It’s a corporate holiday, but aren’t they all? What I want to discuss is something I wish I had understood in my young adulthood and that young people don’t hear enough about. Since realizing I was on the asexual spectrum this has become clearer to me. People talk about how fantastic romantic love is, and it is great, when you have found your person who makes you feel seen and you’re in love even when it’s not always like the fairy tales. But there are different types of love and attraction that are just as important for our well-being and happiness. These other kinds of love don’t always make it into a fairy tale and are never considered a Happily Ever After ending by the romance novel universe, but platonic love is just as important as romantic love, I’d argue.

That’s the difference between sexual, romantic and platonic attraction.

Sexual attraction is when you think someone is hot and you’re aroused by their physical appearance. Romantic attraction is when you get those warm fuzzy feelings, usually after you get to know someone and what they like. The standard crush. And platonic attraction is when you love your friends, but you’re not in love with your friends.

The old idea was that your spouse or life partner had to embody all these qualities and fulfill all these needs. They fulfill your sexual, romantic and platonic needs. They’re your best friend, they provide companionship, they sweep you off your feet and give you flowers, they’re sexy in the bedroom.

But platonic love is just as important as the other two. Partners come and go. People get divorced. People pass away. But friends can be like family and will always be there for you, filling needs that your romantic partner often shouldn’t fill. When they’re gone, and you haven’t nurtured those connections, then all you have is yourself, and starting over and forming new connections is hard.

Friends can make an existing relationship better, though. They mean you have your own life, your own hobbies and interests. You have people you can confide in and hang out with, and you don’t emotionally invest everything in your partner, or become emotionally codependent on them. It’s important to be a couple too, but a good support network helps reduce feelings of jealousy and insecurity. It makes your relationship more stable and gives it a good foundation.

Like those people who say men and women can’t be friends without sexual attraction getting in the way, as if a.) bisexual people don’t exist, b.) there aren’t multiple forms of attraction, and c.) men are incorrigible horndogs who can’t keep it in their pants. Recognizing that there are different types of love acknowledges that friendships are important to a healthy romance. Even for men. Especially for men. I think this stereotype contributes to the so-called male loneliness epidemic. When men get together with male friends it’s often shallow, subject-based interaction, and they put all their emotional energy into their romantic relationship. But it’s okay to open up to your friends too. Patriarchal society views it as emasculating. Men and mascs need friends too.

When you go to a wedding, after all, it is about the bride and the groom, sure. But it is also a merging of all the people in your life who will support you through your journey of love. Your parents and family attend and all your closest friends. The best weddings that have the most promise for a lasting union recognize this above all else. You’re marrying their family and friends and the ceremony is bringing you as a couple into their lives officially. You’ve been a part of their lives already, but it’s a formal recognition of the blending of your tribes.

For a long time I didn’t understand marriage, thought it was state and religious intervention in personal lives and how could you even be certain that you wanted to commit the rest of your life to someone, let alone five years from now; but I have been to enough weddings by now that I can grok that side of it. It is not just about the love of the couple but the love of their family and friends supporting them creating a new family.

Especially in times like this, friends are more important than ever. This time I haven’t been able to reach across the aisle and be friends with people who have different political beliefs than me, because they want queer and trans people to have no civil rights. Some of them want us dead; they want gender-affirming care for all ages banned and engage in violent hate crimes. Or to pretend that we are straight and cis. I can’t be friends to people with beliefs like that. So my friendships these days are usually with like-minded people, but staying isolated is a fast way to feed apathy and let fascism win.

These days with people leaving churches, not going to bowling alleys and not joining fraternal organizations, and our community happening digitally, our sense of community is fracturing. But finding community and building coalitions is how we can resist and show our love for our country, which is under threat right now. Maybe it’s not as attention-grabbing as a huge protest that gets global media attention, but it’s the little acts of love that will create change. Having a support network is a radical act of self care.

Love of all kinds is its own kind of revolution.

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The dangers of idolizing creators

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Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

I’ve always felt detached and somewhat monstrous whenever a famous person dies and there is an outpouring of collective grief for them, and I feel nothing, even if I respected or admired the famous person. I couldn’t join in with the tears and the heartfelt proclamations of knowing that creator’s work intimately as if they were my friend, family or lover, even if we’d never met once. Parasocial relationships made no sense to me. This person was a human, and fallible, and I didn’t know them. I could grieve someone I’d actually met and had a mutual relationship with, but somebody whose art I admired? I’ll feel sad that they won’t get to create any more great art, sure, but I won’t be distraught, like my world just ended.

I’ve been in and out of fan conventions and fan culture for years, but I could never bring myself to become that emotionally invested in someone else, not when my admiration for them was as much about the fictional character they embodied as the real person. Perhaps it is the curious, questioning journalist in me who doubts authority, or the part of me that worked as a courtroom clerk for five years. It’s never the people you expect who commit the most heinous crimes. It’s not the drug-addled houseless person on the street corner in and out of jail for petty theft; it’s the church pastor, the loving husband and community leader who wears a lamb’s clothing over his wolf’s heart.

I read the article that came out with more detailed investigative reporting about the sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman by a series of much younger women (note – the article is paywalled and it could be disturbing to people with a history of sexual assault because it gets graphically detailed in the nature of the incidents). Gaiman issued a statement on his blog denying the allegations and alleging that the relationships were consensual. I followed the allegations for months as they emerged, disturbed at what they implied about one of my favorite creators, whom I’d interacted with even on social media and been thrilled to get the fan attention.

Now, that thrill I felt brings me shame. I have two of the Sandman comics and I didn’t care for them at the time, but I didn’t dare denigrate his work back then because of how much Gaiman was hero-worshipped, and if I say that now it sounds like I changed my mind because of the allegations.

I didn’t just look at the fact that they were age gap relationships (which can be perfectly consensual, even with a twenty-something) or the he-said she-said stuff; the pattern of facts and similarities in witness accounts was deeply disturbing to me. These were young people in vulnerable positions who had been abandoned by their birth families, babysitters for him, fans who looked up to him. Because his progressive politics and supposed feminism made their way into his books, people thought that was how his inner life was and raised him up on a pedestal. But the pattern of sexual encounters shows how much he denigrated and hated women. They can’t all be lying in the same way, in some orchestrated conspiracy. And that’s not how BDSM culture works.

Early on he blamed it on his autism, but this is one of my struggles with the term “enthusiastic consent.” He didn’t say in his statement in his blog that he thought he had enthusiastic consent, he just thought they were in the same page in their relationships and the more monstrous details alleged were false, and he had work to do on himself. I prefer the term “affirmative consent.” It takes into account circumstances outside of an emphatic yes, like vulnerable status and balance of power. And everybody has a different benchmark for what constitutes enthusiasm, which is especially difficult to understand for autistic and/or asexual people.

Those details will come out in the criminal investigations, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty, but the pattern of facts that have emerged so far is still disturbing.

This is not the same as canceling people for a racist tweet they posted when they were 22, or interpersonal dramas like consensual affairs that bleed over into the public sphere. Those are messier in how to approach the art made by someone you just don’t like or ethically disagree with.

For incidents like these, similar to J.K. Rowling’s history of using her platform to become a gender-critical activist and well-known transphobe, or Marion Zimmer Bradley’s abuse of her daughter, I can’t support their work or even look at their books without a strong flare of revulsion. I won’t buy them, I’ll tell people who promote them how I really feel about them, and I won’t financially contribute to their current livelihoods. Sexual and child abuse is a hard line in the sand for me.

I believe women. I believe these women. In his statement Gaiman continued to show a lack of respect toward women and he didn’t even apologize. Just denials. No changed behavior. No reflection. No therapeutic intervention. No remorse.

No, I can’t separate the art from the artist. Those books will be getting recycled with no remorse or hesitation on my part.

Other people who are problematic in other ways, ways that are unethical but not necessarily criminal, or in step with their time but ugly in ours, are more difficult for me to decide how to navigate their creations. It depends a lot on what they meant to me and how I interface with them. I know no one is perfect. Everyone has flaws.

Even criminals deserve redemption, to an extent. We talk about rehabilitation and reducing recidivism and then we don’t support programs like poetry and fiction publications to help inmates gain work experience and have a therapeutic creative outlet; we save our judgments for the crime they committed. On that one I am ethically murky on. But I also think it is a personal choice.

Maybe some people can forgive Gaiman, don’t believe the allegations, or dismiss them because he’s always been so nice, so good to fans. A bit of hero worship sneaks in.

I have very few heroes anymore for this reason. People always end up disappointing me, especially those in positions of power, fame and authority. It’s astonishing how much, how widespread power corrupts, especially to people with unhealed wounds, like a childhood rife with abuse of their own. How deep Me Too had spread.

Gaiman is just one in a long line of famous creators who have abused their fandom’s faith in them. That’s what hurts the most and why I can never look at his books without bitterness and a feeling of betrayal.

That’s my own personal process, and I hold no judgment over anyone who comes to a different process. I might respect you less if you continue to defend people like that. But we all have to decide on our own if we can separate the art from the artist.

At the time much of his work spoke to me. I also struggle with loneliness and was bullied in my childhood so I related to his characters of outcasts and misfits finding belonging. It’s important to process what that means to me and then move on.

It depends on the artist, the distance I have from them, and the nature of the allegations, the pattern of facts. But some artists are so integrated into their work and impart so much of their pain and trauma into their work, and that is why we feel we have an intimate connection with them, on top of the parasocial relationships of their social media personas. We forge them into our own idols, our own friends, our own family, because they understand us, they are the same as us.

But they are just people too. They aren’t us. They aren’t our friends.

People cheat, lie, steal, rape, and think they’re above accountability for it all. You can’t expect everyone will act in a self-interested manner, that’s a right-wing viewpoint, not a progressive one. But it happens. That’s why we have a criminal justice system, as flawed as it is.

I really do believe most people are good people, and desperate circumstances or generational trauma drives them to commit unthinkable acts. We turn people into monsters in the mirror image of the idol. People are just people. Messed up, flawed people who can do despicable things.

But that’s also why I’ll mourn the Neil Gaiman I thought I knew, the one I once respected and looked up to. I mourn the loss of my innocence in my belief in him, the violation of my trust in the public square. And I’ll not hesitate to throw his books in the trash.

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On imposing writing routines and rituals

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I didn’t write much in 2024, and when I did, it was terribly inconsistent and unsatisfying. I haven’t finished a project that’s edited enough to publish in the last three years, other than short stories. I’ve barely even started ideas I’ve had swirling around my head for years, that are ways of processing my emotions and problems through fiction, that I hope to query one day. In 2025, I need a writing routine or ritual. I need to develop a writing habit again. Writing, much like building strength in your muscles, needs regular exercise and discipline. I don’t work well doing short bursts of productivity every six months. They leave me feeling hungover and uneasy.

Trouble is, I’ve never been great at routines and schedules; it’s either write daily or nothing at all. And 1,000 words every 3-6 weeks won’t get anything done in a year. The thought of imposing a routine seems scary and intimidating for my neurodivergent personality, but I also am more productive when I have more structure, as well as assignments and deadlines that I can track.

I started looking around at the writing routines and rituals of famous writers to give me some inspiration.

Some writers, like Salman Rushdie, write in the morning. “I give it the first energy of the day. When I get up, I go to my office and start writing. I’m still in my pajamas. I haven’t even brushed my teeth. I just go straight to it. I feel that there’s a little package of creative energy that’s somehow been nourished by sleep and I don’t want to waste that. I’ll work for an hour or two until I feel like I’ve got something going. Then I can get washed and dressed,” he said. Daniel Gilbert also writes in the morning: “A good writing day starts at 4 AM. By 11 AM the rest of the world is fully awake and so the day goes downhill from there.” Indeed, there is a writing community that started on Twitter called #5amwritersclub. Problem being, I’ve never been very good at getting up before 6 a.m., a habit I am trying to change.

Joan Didion is a night owl. “I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day. I can’t do it late in the afternoon because I’m too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. So I spend this hour taking things out and putting other things in. Then I start the next day by redoing all of what I did the day before, following these evening notes. When I’m really working I don’t like to go out or have anybody to dinner, because then I lose the hour. If I don’t have the hour, and start the next day with just some bad pages and nowhere to go, I’m in low spirits. Another thing I need to do, when I’m near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it. That’s one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it. In Sacramento nobody cares if I appear or not. I can just get up and start typing.”

Haruki Murakami combines a morning writing session with exerting physical activity in the afternoon.

“When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m.

“I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.

“But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.”

And there’s Kurt Vonnegut – must be nice not to have to fit writing around working full time. “I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten. I do pushups and sit ups all the time, and feel as though I am getting lean and sinewy, but maybe not.” T.S. Eliot, who had a day job as an office clerk, wrote at night.

Other writers are night owls. According to an article in Slate: “Franz Kafka sat down at his desk at 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. and worked until 1, 2, or 3 a.m. Thomas Wolfe typically began writing around midnight, ‘priming himself with awesome quantities of tea and coffee,’ one biographer noted. Bob Dylan has said, ‘Most of the time I work at night.’ Michael Chabon writes from 10 p.m. until 3 a.m., five nights a week.”

Stephen King writes 10 pages a day without fail, even on holidays.

For Susan Sontag, the medium is important. “I write with a felt-tip pen, or sometimes a pencil, on yellow or white legal pads, that fetish of American writers. I like the slowness of writing by hand. Then I type it up and scrawl all over that. And keep on retyping it, each time making corrections both by hand and directly on the typewriter, until I don’t see how to make it any better. Up to five years ago, that was it. Since then there is a computer in my life. After the second or third draft it goes into the computer, so I don’t retype the whole manuscript anymore, but continue to revise by hand on a succession of hard-copy drafts from the computer.

I write in spurts. I write when I have to because the pressure builds up and I feel enough confidence that something has matured in my head and I can write it down. But once something is really under way, I don’t want to do anything else. I don’t go out, much of the time I forget to eat, I sleep very little. It’s a very undisciplined way of working and makes me not very prolific. But I’m too interested in many other things.”

Will Self uses props as a ritual to trigger a creative state. “”Rituals. Smoking—pipes, cigars, special brands, accessories, the whole bollocks. Coffee, tea, strange infusions—I have a stove on my desk. Fetishising typewriters, pens, etc.”

Others get very comfortable with their props. Mason Currey interviewing Patricia Hightower: ““Sitting on her bed surrounded by cigarettes, ashtray, matches, a mug of coffee, a doughnut, and an accompanying saucer of sugar. She had to avoid any sense of discipline and make the act of writing as pleasurable as possible.”

Having gained too much weight in the last two years, that kind of dietary indulgence sounds unsustainable for me.

Emily Dickinson, meanwhile, combined the meditation of daily chores with writing: “Though she usually composed at night, Dickinson sometimes jotted down lines during the day, while gardening or doing chores, wearing a simple white dress with pockets for her pencils and scraps of paper. A younger cousin recalled her reciting the ‘most emphatic things in the pantry’ while skimming the milk,” according to The New Yorker.

Other writers have weirder rituals to trigger their creativity for their writing sessions. Songwriter Young and Sick: “If I can, I get on my bicycle and ride to the beach and back while listening to a podcast or audiobook. If I can’t do that, then I usually walk to 7-Eleven and buy a Kombucha and a protein bar.”

E.B. White prefers to write in silence. He told the Paris Review, another good source for the routines of notable writers: “I never listen to music when I’m working. I haven’t that kind of attentiveness, and I wouldn’t like it at all. On the other hand, I’m able to work fairly well among ordinary distractions. My house has a living room that is at the core of everything that goes on: it is a passageway to the cellar, to the kitchen, to the closet where the phone lives. There’s a lot of traffic. But it’s a bright, cheerful room, and I often use it as a room to write in, despite the carnival that is going on all around me.

In consequence, the members of my household never pay the slightest attention to my being a writing man — they make all the noise and fuss they want to. If I get sick of it, I have places I can go. A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

So, I don’t know that any of these are practical for my situation, working full time with an 8-5 day job even though I work from home; but key takeaways are to stick to a schedule, to have a ritual like a warm drink while you write, have a dedicated writing space, keep a journal, get some exercise, decide whether morning or night is best for your brain, and evaluate which environmental conditions you work best under.

I may try writing for three to four days a week and see which works better for me, morning or evening, and give at least that habit a go. I used to hold myself accountable by tracking my word count, but I may try just an hour a day and seeing how that goes. Consistency is the key thing that is missing for me.

It’s time to get all these ideas out of my head and onto the page for once.

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Reflections on the start of Dry January

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I’m trying another monthly challenge at the start of the year, despite my terrible track record with monthly challenges. Usually by the second Friday of any challenge, I’m done, I’ve quit, I’ve had enough, if I even make it that far. But like buying fresh notebooks and intending to journal, I keep trying things like this, hoping this time I succeed and magically change my life. The challenge I am trying at the start of the new year is Dry January.

I’ve tried this before at various times. There are various iterations that have popped up, like Sober October. Some months I just challenge myself to go a whole month because I don’t do well with group efforts; see, my failed attempts at National Novel Writing Month. I’ve been successful at other times; a couple years ago I gave up drinking for a few months. I find I have a hard time projecting out for the whole month and replacing it with something else instead of small changes, or I keep comparing myself to other people. Either other people say it’s too hard for them and give up and I agree with them, or I feel the pressure of other people who seem to do these challenges easily. And I don’t like the communal sharing of my efforts in the day to day in public forums, because that opens you up to judgment, comparison and criticism – and nobody judges a vice more than alcohol use, both addicts and drinkers alike. I’m blogging about it now to hold myself accountable to a goal and to hopefully inspire people who struggle similarly. The biggest difference this year is that I don’t think it’ll magically change my life. I just want to make small changes and to be more aware of my daily habits.

Alcohol is a tough one. It’s hard to give up. For some it’s an addiction and a dependence, and a month’s sobriety will be impossible without interventions like AA meetings, medical intervention and counseling. Because of alcohol withdrawal syndrome, quitting cold turkey without medical assistance can be fatal for some. Popular culture acts like these month-long stints are just a matter of willpower and mindset. But changing your habits isn’t as easy as turning on and off a switch. Alcohol use and sobriety each are not one size fits all. We come to it with our own cultural and generational baggage, as well as our own personal lifestyle issues.

I don’t know whether I’ll keep up with this challenge. When I’ve tried it in the past I haven’t made it a week. I think I let the peer pressure get to me or I talk myself out of it or I bargain with myself to only drink on weekends and it fast becomes my usual habit. But I needed a hard reset for my health habits this year and alcohol is the first thing that needs to go. So I am giving Dry January a real go this time.

Even if I don’t last longer than a week, it’s been an interesting experiment even in just a few days, in reflecting on alcohol’s place in society. Alcohol is ubiquitous and drinkers often go on the defensive with self-deprecating humor, anticipating the judgment and moralizing that comes with the addiction assumption, the flagrancy of the vice. Like people who gleefully fling around curse words to see the mortified looks on the faces of whiny Karens. People get so weird about Dry January. They either mock it or use it to assess their own drinking habits, checking in to see if they’re normal or healthy, revealing that maybe they drink more heavily than most people and could use even a day off. I think taking time off drinking is useful and healthy for everyone. Even if it’s just a day, or a week. Sobriety isn’t for everyone, but sober-curiosity is becoming more of a thing as we evaluate our addictions to all kinds of unhealthy habits once lauded as cool by older generations Gen X and beyond, including screen time and doomscrolling.

Not that I blame them. Not everybody who drinks has a problem, but society and the addiction model treats people as such at times. And let’s face it, drinking culture is fun. Maybe not for everyone; not everyone likes the taste of alcohol or its effects, or thinks drinking is boring, but that’s not the larger cultural norm. It’s fun to try new craft beers and wines from small farms; it’s fun to get a buzz going; it’s fun to drink a glass of champagne for New Year’s, and to get the social lubricant flowing at a party when you’re shy, to have a glass of wine during the intermission at a theater, or to celebrate a big milestone. Drinking is commonplace in movies and TV shows when people are having fun or going on dates. It’s hard to be sober at things like weddings and parties and bars, when you’re seen as rude if you don’t partake, or you have to explain your entire history with alcohol to alleviate the rudeness – and people always ask. Or if you even talk about it, and wanting to change your drinking habits publicly, you’re instantly stigmatized as having A Problem. People talk about their depression and anxiety more openly now, but drinking issues are still shamed and swept under the rug, only to be shared with friends or confidential meetings. Not everyone who drinks has a problem. But if you talk about it, you must have A Problem.

It’s that ubiquity in society that usually made me give up these challenges in the past. I like all those things. I like the taste. I like celebrating with alcohol. I like relaxing after a stressful day at work with a glass of red wine. I like trying new microbrews. I didn’t want to give all that up. I like trying new liquor stores and getting ingredients for margaritas, or ordering fancy cocktails at swanky bars. It seemed too much of a sacrifice to forgo all of that. And was it really that much of a problem? If I was just mindful with it?

But it’s easy of an average evening to be mindless, to not count, and then the next morning you have a hangover, and then you’re cloudy and feeling low on energy all day. Being buzzed gives you a creative, social energy, until the edge of the creativity is dulled and it becomes a brain fog, and you lose track.

So I’ve decided that I want to see what a whole month will be like. I’m not setting myself up for failure by saying I’m going to replace my drinking habit with going to the gym every night and training to run a half-marathon, because I know that’s not going to happen because that’s not how habits work for me. It’s the internal pressure and I never hold myself accountable. Or I track it so carefully that it becomes too much of a homework assignment, I get overwhelmed and I give up. I want to be more mindful with my evenings and find alternative ways for stress relief and relaxing. I want to just sit with myself of an evening without a drink in hand, and see how different I am in terms of energy levels at the end of the month. If it helps my sleep issues. I partly drink to satiate my nervous neurodivergent energy but that compounds the benefits of drinking, as well.

I’ll miss the taste, and I’ll miss the festive escape of drinking. But I also want that hard reset. It’s about time I made some changes. Rethinking my drinking habits is a good first step. Even if I don’t succeed for the whole month, or even if I give up next Friday, it’s made me more mindful already, more conscious, and that’s an important vehicle for changing habits.

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Year in Review and Setting Goals for 2025

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It’s been a difficult year for me personally, but that’s a rather long and depressing story. I have however made the best of it in the end. I finally have a job that I don’t take home with me in terms of stress, so that has allowed me to finally live my life this year and take care of myself a little better.

We took some amazing trips. In January we flew to St. Petersburg, Florida for a college friend’s wedding for a week. We also went to Orlando and Disney World. The way back was fraught with winter travel delays, but it was an amazing trip seeing old friends and enjoying the sun and food. In June we went down to Northern California for a friend’s birthday party.

Over Labor Day weekend we spent a few days over at the coast at Rockaway Beach, where we visited the Tillamook Air Museum and rode a vintage train from Garibaldi to Rockaway Beach that only runs certain times of year. In October we went to San Diego, where we took a memorable trip on a tallship replica in the bay, to museums in Los Angeles, and to Disneyland. It was a good trip to take before the weather turned cold and rainy.

The main thing I have focused on this year is crafting projects. I found it a good way to relax and get creative, force myself to be patient enough to follow instructions and finish projects that I can be proud of. I have dabbled in sketching, guitar practice and knitting, but my main projects this year have been sewing and woodworking. Over eight months between a community college class and a community membership woodshop, I finished making a nightstand. I have also been into sewing, which I have learned throughout various times in my life but never got good at, and finished making a skirt.

I’m not sure how much I’ll continue on in woodworking in 2025, as I found furniture making boring in the end and I started to lose interest, and it got expensive to rent shop time and buy materials. I still have a bunch of plywood in my house that I would like to make into a bookcase though, and if I do it again I would like to try my hand at turning small things like rings, bowls and pencils.

I hope to focus on sewing and knitting next year as those are projects that I can do at home and I already have a lot of the supplies and skills for. I hope to make a blouse, a dress and learn some menswear.

In books, I’ve read 109 books so far this year, and I still have a few days left to read one or two more to complete my challenge. I had a goal of reading 100 this year so I am proud of myself. My genres this year have focused on fantasy, horror, litfic and translated literature, featuring BIPOC authors and women, and I read some really great books this year. I stopped book blogging, though I still keep up with Goodreads and have started reviewing Netgalley ARCs again. I found book blogging too much pressure and it stopped being fun for me trying to build an audience. I’d rather blog about the writing life.

In writing, I wrote 71,333 words in my achillean Omegaverse web serial, which I post to Wattpad. I took a break for several months this year because thinking about romance just depressed me, or I might have finished it. I’m on track to finish it in the next few months however. If I don’t let my current hiatus grow any longer. It currently has 555 views, which is more than I ever expected for such a niche genre – the whole reason why I published it for free as a serial, because I didn’t think it would sell. I purchased a pre-made cover from Rocking Book Covers that I think really helped promote it.

In exercise I’d say I’ve done pretty lousy. I can make it to the gym a few times a week for six months and then I am back to once every six weeks. I haven’t been able to establish much of a routine and waking up early has been difficult. All in all, nothing to write home about, which is probably contributing to my mental state.

Goals for Next Year

I don’t really do resolutions per se but I do like to set goals in several areas.

HEALTH

My main goal for 2025 is to get healthy, lose some weight, drink less and get into an exercise routine. I hope to go to the gym three times a week, swim in the mornings, and get some exercise at lunch and on weekends, like going for a walk or doing a yoga session at home. I hope to eat more vegetables, fewer comfort carbs and watch my portions. I always plan too much variety of exercise so I hope to just start small at first. Three times a week doing something. I also got into cooking in the last few months and I hope to cook more.

WRITING

I plan to finish my Omegaverse serial, finally. I am nearly there. I anticipate ending it at 90-120K words. I also plan to write and submit a few short stories to horror markets and to write and query a contemporary Gothic sapphic horror novel.

ART

I hope to focus on sewing this year and finish a couple of blouses, an apron and a dress, or at least work through all the patterns I bought in the pattern sale on the Simplicity website a few months ago. I hope to build a bookcase with the remainder of my plywood. I want to take guitar classes and get better at playing guitar and keep sketching daily. I also hope to do more than just one photo shoot a year. I only did one this year and I’d love to shoot more. Even if it’s just street photography. I’ve noticed that there’s a call for Oregon-themed photography so I may focus on that as well.

COMMUNITY

One of my struggles this year is the social isolation of working from home. I hope to attend UU church services more regularly and leave my house more often and not just to go to the office once a week. Gym and taking classes will be good for that. Reconnecting with my old friends via Facetime, texting and phone calls has helped this year too. I’ve found I have cut back a lot on social media and even texting, and this phone averse introvert finds phone calls more valuable and satisfying than endless long text chains. I want to plan some trips with my partner and go on more date nights. I hope to go to Life of Pi, Hamilton and the Portland Opera’s production of The Shining next year as well – Broadway shows and symphony concerts were another source of joy that kept me busy this year. I’ve been to Hadestown, Wicked and the Nutcracker ballet. I’ve also gotten hooked on going to the cinema again. I recently saw the film version of Wicked and Nosferatu on Christmas Day.

READING

I hope to read 100 books again in 2025, and not only ARCS. I aim to read more contemporary and literary fiction and bigger, more intellectually challenging books.

That’s about it. I have very little hope for the state of the world but at the very least I can work on myself. I want to stop dreaming big and couch rotting instead, and actually pursue some of my goals and dreams. I am always too hard on myself, though. This year, looking back at what I actually have done in light of difficult circumstances, I’m pretty proud of how far I have come. Next year will be even better – it just has to be.

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5 Things I’m Grateful For

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Image by Sven Förter from Pixabay

I almost didn’t blog this week because I’ve been feeling mopey, but every time I hop on social media these days I am motivated to blog more. There’s always someone trying to pick a fight with me, misinterpreting my positions because I don’t see things in a black and white way, or I see people harshly criticizing something someone loves, or hateful, bigoted comments in spaces that are meant to be inclusive of marginalized voices. Maybe I’m extra sensitive to it because I’m mopey, or there’s just a rise in anger and hate and a lack of shame toward meanness. Blogging into the void is much better than surrounding myself with all that negativity.

One practice I always like during the Thanksgiving season is the practice of gratitude. It’s something I should be better about year round, because it can be helpful in reframing your narrative and rewiring your brain chemistry. But it can be difficult to do when the world seems hopeless, or you’re struggling with depression or other personal issues. In those cases it can easily seem like there is nothing to be grateful for. Expressing thanks is not the same thing as toxic positivity, but it can be toxic depending on how you do it.

When I feel like the world is too heavy and there are no glimpses of light around, I find it helps to slow down and think of very specific things I appreciate about my life.

I try not to pressure myself and it’s okay if there are only very small things that I’m thankful for. When you start noticing the small things, you start thinking about larger things. And then you start to think less about how stuck you feel and how hopeless everything seems. But it’s a process of intention and mindfulness and it doesn’t happen overnight.

First, I’m grateful for my partner’s ability to make me laugh and his cooking. He has a goofy personality full of dad jokes and even when things are bleak he can always make me smile. Cooking is his love language and he’s always trying out new recipes and cuisines, and he’s very creative with it. He used to own a restaurant so it’s like having my own personal chef. I’m grateful for his food and his imagination.

Second, I’m grateful for my home office setup. Working from home means I don’t have to deal with the stress of a commute or office politics, and I have more time to focus on writing and practicing guitar. But I have lived in many places in the past where this would not have been a comfort. In my current living situation, I have a home office where I can close the door and have my own space. It also doubles as a sewing room. I just have to remember to keep it tidy and organized after each craft project, something I’m not always great at. I keep my music stand out so I remember to get my guitar practice in.

Third, I’m thankful for creativity. Although I get frustrated sometimes with how long it takes to learn things and I have too many hobbies and unfinished projects, I find working on my crafts gives me something positive and tactile to do with my hands and focuses my energy on something that has an end result that I produced. When I’m patient at following directions and follow through on each step of finishing a project, it gives me an enormous sense of pride and accomplishment to see stuff that I made come together.

Fourth, I’m grateful to live close to my parents. I didn’t always feel this way; I escaped my suburban hometown to go to college across the country in Florida, and I lived in Japan for a year teaching English. I used to want to travel the world and get paid to do it. But my parents are in their 80s now and it’s nice that I can easily see them in a weekend. As they have more health issues and are getting older, I am grateful for the time we have together.

Fifth, I’m thankful for books. Lately I feel like reading is all I ever do and I probably do it to the exception of exercise and finishing my other hobbies, but it challenges my worldview, makes me laugh and makes me believe in love again. I like escaping into worlds different than my own and seeing how fictional characters deal with challenges that are similar to those I face, the universal human condition.

Once I got started I thought I would feel stuck for ideas, but I kept thinking about positive things the more I started considering gratitudes. A sense of peace washed over me, even if just for a moment. I keep meaning to journal more and this would be a good prompt for journaling, as long as it doesn’t become rote and you aren’t saying the same general things over and over again.

One additional gratitude, while I am on a roll. I am grateful to those of you who still read and follow my blog through its various iterations, and to those of you who leave positive and supportive comments and likes. Having readers and an audience is why I write and I appreciate all of you. Happy holidays. Take some time to slow down for yourself and be mindful on this busy holiday season.

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My favorite and not-so-favorite romance tropes

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Image from Pixabay

Last year I read a ton more romance than I usually read because I was trying to get exposure to the market, having decided I enjoyed writing the genre. This year I am a little more selective because I’m generally very picky about the kinds of romances I enjoy and usually don’t like reading romance. I see horror as a comfort genre, so knowing how the story is supposed to end often makes the story boring for me. It has to have a lot of tension in other ways, or a blend with other genres to keep me interested.

That said when I find a romance I love, I go feral for it. I tend to prefer queer romances because I like seeing unconventional happy endings and characters I can relate to, as well as nontraditional gender roles.

One of the mainstays of the romance genre that I discovered is tropes. I used to get snotty about tropes and wonder why anyone would only read for tropes; it seemed like such a restrictive way to read, like you were reading the same story over and over again with different characters. I’m an eclectic reader because I don’t like to have any expectations when I start a book, as I like to be surprised and challenged. However, since falling more in love with romance and figuring out my likes and dislikes, I now see the utility of tropes as a marketing tool to find the audience who will love your book. You’re not necessarily building the story around those tropes but tropes are a reader expectation and it’s what you do with them that counts. Every genre has tropes, when you think about it, even literary fiction. You don’t always know how the story will end, but let’s name a few common tropes – family secrets, multigenerational trauma, crumbling Gothic manors, perhaps? Ring a bell?

Anyway, I don’t really have favorite or hated tropes because I believe any writer can convince me to like a trope if they execute it well. I normally stay away from certain tropes I know I usually don’t care for, such as accidental and secret pregnancy stories, because I have a pregnancy phobia in real life. Even thinking about pregnancy gives me dysphoria, while romance is supposed to be a comforting escape to a happy world. And yet? I am writing a story about an accidental pregnancy in the form of my Omegaverse web serial, so never say never.

Without further ado, here are some tropes I enjoy and some I don’t.

Forbidden or taboo love – I’m a big fan of dark romance and characters being problematic toward each other. Hey, what I enjoy in fiction, I don’t condone in real life, right? Depending on the context and what the taboo is; I do have my limits, I don’t like to read about abuse being romanticized, like characters controlling every aspect of the love interest’s life and finances (ew, can’t suspend my disbelief there, but those books just aren’t for me, doesn’t mean they’re not for anyone). I love the tension and conflict of taboo love and hard-fought happily ever after endings (HEAs in romance parlance).

Age gaps – I’m in an age gap relationship and I am attracted to people who are older than me, so this one is a no-brainer! I tend to be attracted to tropes that relate to my real life situations and problems. Age gaps get a lot of criticism and judgment in real life and I love seeing people making them work in fiction, respecting each other as people, growing in trust and heat, while navigating the age gap and societal expectations. Similar to the taboo relationships bit, I think, it’s a way to add conflict and tension that makes the story more interesting to me.

Friends to lovers and enemies to lovers – I love both of these tropes for similar reasons. When they’re done poorly they can really suck, and seem like a switch has gotten flipped without any buildup or seducing the reader. When they are done well though, ooh, they make me kick up my heels and giggle… the tension of friends who don’t want to destroy the friendship but are pining for each other secretly, but everyone knows about it and they are oblivious, or enemies perplexed by the strange sexual tension between them even though they hate each other. Keeps the story fun.

Slow burn – I love stories where the two characters are oblivious about how much they are obsessed with each other and take to the 70 percent mark to even have their first kiss or admit their true feelings, but you can just feel the sexual tension dripping off the page. I do not like clean fiction, that’s not the same thing. I also read smutty stories when I’m in the right mood for heat. It’s not a judgment on people who like smut, and it’s not prudish to like slow burns. I tend to get bored when couples fuck in the first few chapters and there are no barriers to their relationship but it’s just a sweet happy bubble of smut. Give me tension that I can cut with a knife. I can read sex in any genre or just watch porn.

And my least favorite tropes include:

Instalove – I’m on the asexual spectrum, grayace to be precise, so quite frankly this trope doesn’t make logical sense to me even though I know and accept that it’s fairly common in real life. They’re just characters I cannot relate to because attraction usually takes an emotional connection for me to form or it rarely happens. I find it hard to connect to instalove and it still has to carry a lot of tension and conflict for me to appreciate its execution. However! A microtrope version of this that I love is when characters open the book with a steamy one-night-stand, and then circumstances force them together but they can’t be together romantically. Ooh the tension.

Just one bed – I usually find this a very cheesy trope and it’s rarely executed in a way that doesn’t make me roll my eyes. “Oh look, romantic interest! There’s just one bed! Whatever shall we do?” Oh please.

Second chance romance – I have trouble suspending disbelief for this one because in real life people rarely get back together with people they broke up with. I know, it does happen in real life, probably more than I think. But unless they have changed drastically and worked hard to rebuild the trust broken between them, I have a hard time finding second chances all that believable.

There’s loads of other tropes out there that I could talk about, but those are the ones that immediately spring to mind.

A trope isn’t a dirty word and writing or reading to tropes doesn’t make your story formulaic, necessarily. Tropes have their function. It’s what you do with them that makes them interesting.

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Things to look forward to

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Image by Steve Bidmead from Pixabay

One of my self care tools for staying inspired to create in difficult times is so simple that it is often overlooked or sometimes even mocked. Wait for it. Stay with me here: Rest. I used to be a big proponent of the idea of writing every day, as it worked for me at one time and because I’m a believer in exercising your creative muscle just like going to the gym. Sometimes you just need 15 minutes a day to stay consistent. But even the most dogged gym rats take rest days.

The tricky part is not feeling guilty for taking a rest and looking forward to it instead, minding the moment. Feeling guilty poisons the benefit of rest.

It becomes even more important in stressful periods in your life or times like the current when politics leaves me with very little hope. I’ve been focusing on giving myself things to look forward to instead of things I can’t control or change. Things to break myself out of my routine and predictability, to jolt me out of my inner monologue and overthinking. The importance of mindfulness to your creative practice – which sometimes means not writing.

I went through a whole year where I didn’t take a vacation, working a stressful job where I felt I could do nothing but work to keep up with it. I felt the stress in my body, and I vowed never to work that hard again. Maybe for some people, they feel like their work is their calling and they get bored when they take a break. But it’s still work. Your body will tell you to stop if you don’t voluntarily take a break. Writing is much the same way, even when it’s a hobby or a side hustle.

These days, I make sure to devote at least three days a week to my writing, and I try not to beat myself up if I don’t make all those days. The work will still be waiting for me. I’m not waiting until I’m in the right headspace, because if you wait for that you’ll wait forever and that novel you dream of will remain locked in your head for no one else to read but you. And not even you, since you haven’t even written it down.

To get in the right headspace requires, in my experience, taking care of yourself. Giving yourself weekends. Taking vacations. Expanding your perspective through travel. When I recently took a vacation to Southern California, even though I didn’t exactly go anywhere exotic or far away, I was surprised at the contrast between how I live and how people down there live. The difference in human density is vast. It made a big difference in traffic patterns and lifestyle habits. I found myself stunned by the sheer number of humans, such a mass of them that a cottage industry thrives down there to test emissions so smog doesn’t clog the skies. Even so, it was so hazy down there that my eyes were sore. It was an amazing trip and I saw some amazing things, but it changed my perspective seeing how other people lived in a way that’s very different from Oregon. Just having that window into a different slice of life was intriguing.

But you don’t even have to travel to see your own world with different eyes. My current special interest that I have gotten into in order to have something to look forward to is theater. I am going to see Hadestown tomorrow and I’m looking forward to the music. I saw Wicked a few weeks ago and was so hooked on it that I immediately looked around for other Broadway shows in the area. I’m going to see the Nutcracker in December, a ballet I haven’t seen since I was a kid, when I saw it every winter with my family. I’m already looking at a mini-trip to take during the holidays. Perhaps Seattle to see the Kraken play live, since I have also gotten really into hockey recently. Something to watch other than the news, something to look forward to, and it’s more interesting when you understand it, like a cross between basketball and soccer except on ice.

Having these experiences also changes the way I write. It enlarges my world in a way that I can’t get by reading books or watching TV. Meeting people, talking to people, getting out of my comfort zone, seeing other creative mediums on the stage. Seeing other methods of storytelling helps inform your own. Having special interests. Trying your eggs a different way. Ordering something other than your usual at your favorite restaurant. Having an iced coffee instead of your regular drink.

Rest is an important part of the creative process. And for me, sometimes rest is finding everyday adventures to challenge myself and help me to see the world differently than I expect. Sometimes in ways that make me hopeful for the future. And this inspires me to keep creating. But rest will be different for everybody, just like the creative process is different for everyone. Sometimes rest means chilling in front of a comfort show on TV, playing a favorite video game, or having a cup of tea on a rainy day.

Whatever your version of rest or adventure is, it will find its way onto the page one day.

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Creating in times of political chaos

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Image by Melk Hagelslag from Pixabay

I’ve been struggling this last week with the stress and grief of politics seeping into my creative and personal life. It is no secret that I am a Harris/Walz supporter, so the loss in this U.S. election has left me reeling, angry and disillusioned. I thought the election would be close and I was ready to be surprised if they won, but it was depressing to me how much of the popular vote Trump won. Not only because it was a political loss for decency and progressivism, but because it means fear of hate-fueled violence, and loss of rights and freedom for me as a queer person and a femme.

If you supported the other side and you are bewildered by the hate and rage shown to you by the other side, please allow us time to process and grieve, and give us a little empathy, even if that word is foreign to you. I showed grace in 2016 and even was friends with MAGA supporters, but this time around, I’ve been too weighed down by the hate and division they spew against queer, trans people and women online and off, and I’m all out of grace. Civility is the best I can manage; an olive branch of friendship has been torched under rhetoric that leads to physical violence against people like me.

If you voted for him it is a clear sign of disrespect to your queer neighbors and the sisters and daughters in your life. If you can’t understand that, you might want to take another look at the media you are consuming. You hear a very different depiction of reality than those of us who watch MSNBC and CNN and still read the newspaper. I don’t hope to maintain bridges across the aisle any longer. It’s too much pain, grief and a profound sense of betrayal, so for that reason, my act of self-care is to hold onto my rage and form community with like-minded folks with whom I can feel a sense of safety, belonging and true respect, respect in actions and not just words or bracelets.

This time has echoes of 2020, when I started blogging to document life in the pandemic and it became an outlet to vent my rage. I hope to use other emotional outlets because I don’t like the person I become when I’m angry all the time and chronically online, scolding people who will never change and who only want to trigger upset reactions so that they can mock you. I don’t get paid enough billable hours to engage with people who view our grief as entertainment.

I learned several lessons from creating when the outside world seems too much to bear, though. In times like these appreciating small moments and taking the time to exercise mindfulness can be very important. Watching the sunset, enjoying a nice hot cup of tea, or going on a walk outside in nature, all simple activities that bring us into our present surroundings. I don’t mind my world becoming even smaller; as mostly working from home, it’s already become small.

I cannot allow myself to fall into a pattern of stress eating and stress drinking to cope. Likewise, too, I want to find community in offline outlets and not just vent my rage online nonstop. I’ve cut back on my media intake and have switched out MSNBC and CNN with independent news outlets, NPR and The Economist. I can no longer tolerate breathless coverage of Trump’s every twitch and hand gesture when I can’t stand anything about that man and can’t understand how anyone can see strength looking at him, or even excuse his vile, hateful rhetoric as things won’t be that bad, it’s just his stage persona. His stage persona is awful enough.

But I do want to stay informed, so I’m more selective about the news sources I consume and the time I spend with them.

I’ve decided to start journaling again and not just blogging, and a lot of my venting will be done with my partner and friends. Journaling, as long as you don’t bathe in negativity, is a good outlet for venting, better than attracting the interest of trolls who just want to feast on your pain. Online, too, I’m going to be harsh with the block and mute features, and no longer engage in debates with people unwilling to understand my point of view. Perhaps this means I am now living in an echo chamber, but the feeling of betrayal by these people makes me want to not understand their point of view beyond what I read in literature and the news.

I hope to take one small action locally and nationally at least every month. I’ve thought about applying for a local board or commission like the planning commission, but I don’t think I have the emotional capacity to commit to local politics. I’ve also thought about volunteering in other capacities, however, such as with the local parks department, monitoring streams. I’ve long meant to reduce my social isolation imposed by working from home, and this is a good kick to get out of the house more, though I’m acclimated to staying at home. I already go to a Unitarian church and a community woodshop, and perhaps that’s enough.

I also find creative outlets to be a good way to process heavy emotions. Sometimes executive dysfunction will chain me to the couch, just reading my books or watching dumb tv, and that’s okay; above all else I need to show grace to myself even if I cannot yet show it to the other side. I have started learning my guitar again, another pandemic hobby that I have brought back, and I find the practice of plucking strings and learning chords to be quite soothing. My craft projects, also, like sewing, drawing and knitting, involve all my focus on the project at hand and use my hands. My mind can’t wander to the heaviness of the news while concentrating on a row of stitches.

Finally, just having a routine and structure is very important to me. I didn’t write all week but I could barely function through processing my feelings of grief and betrayal. I really believed in the Harris/Walz campaign and I thought other people found their message inspiring as well. How wrong I was. It will take time to recover from that disappointment and anyone who mocks me for that does not deserve my empathy. Empathy must be earned.

I hope to get back on my writing routine next week as well. Having a long weekend this weekend, even if it is to honor fallen military, will help bring me peace. I feel more motivated and inspired than ever to keep writing my stories of queer love and magic. Art is the first thing anti-democratic governments try to silence and censor, and writing these stories is an act of quiet rebellion. I’ll keep reading, promoting and writing queer fiction of all kinds as my resistance.

The Democrats failed to recognize the extent of the backlash to DEI policies and practices of inclusion, as well as economic concerns, but the fight is not over yet. Self care is more important than ever now. We have lost but we are not defeated. It will take time, maybe a generation, even. But things only stay the same when good people give up hope, stay silent and do nothing.

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An epic sail from San Diego

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My blog is late this time not because of procrastination or any big publishing news (I have to actually finish writing a book for anything like that) but because I’ve been on vacation in Southern California for the last week with my partner. We had an epic time going to San Diego, LA and Disneyland for one week, flight departing and arriving from Saturday to Saturday. I’ve never been the kind of writer who writes while on vacation; I like to actually have a vacation even though I love to write, so I left my laptop at home. We did quite a lot, too much to enumerate here, and I really enjoyed the museums and food in LA as well as the San Diego Zoo. But perhaps the absolute highlight of the trip was our sail on a replica of the historic tallship the Californian out of the Maritime Museum of San Diego.

I found this excursion on a whim when I was looking up highlights of things to do in San Diego. I thought seeing San Diego from the sea would make for a fun perspective, and my partner used to race sailboats in San Francisco Bay so I thought it would be nostalgic for him. I know nothing about sailing myself, apart from a failed attempt at sailing lessons when I went to school at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, my freshman year. The campus was on the shores of the Boca Ciega Bay with its own marina. But my inability to sense the direction of the wind resulted in many frustrating capsizes of the Laser I tried to sail with my roommate and I never tried again. I love the idea of sailing, though, and always wished I lived near the opportunity to try again.

I generally love slow, analog things like that. I prefer kayaking to Jet skis. We took a historic train ride on our trip to Rockaway Beach this summer and thrilled at the sight of a functioning steam train. I’ve gone rafting before and prefer that to motor boats. You’re more in touch with nature and the sounds and smells of the ocean all around you; it’s a more immersive experience.

I originally wanted to take the San Salvadoran, which is a replica of a 16th-century galleon, but my partner said the Californian would be more fun. We took an Uber to downtown San Diego to save on the hassle of finding parking for a day, as the sail was set for four hours. I was apprehensive about the price, but it seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity and admission to the maritime museum was included with the tickets. After thinking about it for some time, amid all the lists of overwhelming things to do that I found, I decided we couldn’t miss this chance. The whole trip was kind of a spontaneous one; I hadn’t had a proper vacation in two years due to a stressful job change and health issues, and I wanted to go someplace warm and had never been to most of Southern California.

We wandered around the historic ships that made up the maritime museum, a living museum where you could walk around the massive Star of India, the oldest still active sailing ship in the world. It was impressive to see how people really lived and worked and how dependent they were on the whims of the weather and navigational technology of the time.

Our sail on board the Californian embarked at 10 in the morning. We were given a safety briefing by the captain and the ship was crewed by about 14 volunteers, so I felt better about the price knowing it was a nonprofit and I had helped fund the maintenance of this very cool historic replica. There were only six other passengers and it was a participatory event, so we got to pull ropes to raise and lower sails along with the volunteers as the bosun called out orders and the huge sails snapped in the rising wind.

The four hours went by fast as I absorbed the sea and the experience of being aboard a working, living piece of history, and the weather was absolutely perfect. I didn’t expect to get much wind in a place like San Diego, but it turned out to be an ideal day in that regard as well. Even the captain said it turned into one of the best days of the year to sail. We motored out until we got to open sea and then the wind started to pick up. At one point we were going 8-10 knots and leaning halfway into the water, the boat’s hull straining against the waves like it knew it was meant to cut through the water like a bird.

I sat on wooden seats on the deck and watched the volunteer crew passionate about making this little old ship go, shouting to each other and encouraging new recruits to learn the ropes, so to speak. I made sure to drink bottled water, wear sunscreen and indulged in a pretzel snack from belowdeck. Sometimes it was a lot of sitting down and watching the ocean and the other sailboats enjoying the day. We came close to seeing dolphins but mostly saw lots of sea lions cavorting in the water and leaping onto buoys to laze in the crisp sun, fighting over limited territory.

It was absolutely thrilling being a part of history and imagining what it must have been like to really have sailed on this tallship back in the days when it was a working ship plying the waters of another time. Sailing this ship is totally different than the sailboats my partner used to race; he said he didn’t know a lot of the terms or parts of a tallship like this. The Californian is a replica built in 1984 in the form of the Revenue Cutter C.W. Lawrence, which patrolled the coast as a law enforcement ship and collected the precursor to taxes from the busy coastal waters at the time.

Far more engaging than any history textbook or museum display, on this tallship I could feel the spray of the ocean as it cut into the bow and hear the crew as they shouted instructions to each other to shape the wind with the old-school sails. One of the oldest analog technologies.

As I said, I know nothing about sailing so I probably got all my nautical terms wrong, but I described my experience as best as I could from an amateur enthusiast’s perspective. If I lived down there that is a volunteer experience I would enjoy. Volunteers come out every Sunday to sail this piece of living history for half a day, most had no sailing experience and some drove down an hour each way. In San Diego traffic that’s on joke. It takes a lot of dedication and heart to volunteer on a boat like that. I had enormous respect for the hard working crew.

You can learn more about the Californian here. If you’re ever in San Diego on a Sunday and find yourself downtown, it’s an experience you won’t forget. I certainly will remember it fondly for a long time.

Now I am back home and getting back into my routines again, and already dreaming of a revenue cutter slicing through wind-whipped waves. Later that week we went out to the Cabrillo National Monument and looked down at where we had been sailing, the beautiful blue waters spread out below us in a bird’s-eye view, and we saw the Californian motoring back to dock, its sails down, no wind that day, and it reminded me of how lucky we were to experience it like it was meant to be seen. If I close my eyes I can find myself still leaning against the hull, watching the open waters beyond the boat, ducking to avoid the boom when the wind picked up, and marveling at the age of sail as the sun warmed my face.

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