hazy light & thankfulness

Something about foggy mornings filled with gray light always seems to pull me out of myself, in the best way possible. Still not sure exactly why. Maybe it’s the way everything seems to stand still and you’re more cognizant of all the little sights, smells, and sounds around you that might normally get lost in the chaos of a typical American day. Or maybe it’s the atmosphere around you that seems to whisper that it’s finally okay to let all your muscles relax and just breathe and be for once, taking a moment to slow down in our world that’s normally always running at a million miles an hour. Whatever it is, these slow, tranquil mornings always seem to return a little more of the perspective I’ve been missing throughout the rest of the week. And maybe we all need a little more of that.

just wanting to live

Sometimes you just reach a breaking point. It’s not that you don’t care anymore or even that it’s not important anymore, but sometimes you just grow weary of the constant tension, the constant sensation of being “always on.” Because why wouldn’t that be exhausting? That’s sort of how I feel right now when it comes to Christian LGBTQ things and LGBTQ things in general, the dialogues, the conversations, the controversies, the debates, the activism, all of it. I feel burned out if I’m being completely honest.

when you run out of plans

At any given point in life, there’s bound to be quite a bit going on (or maybe that’s just my life, but I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not the case). And I suppose “quite a bit going on” can be taken to mean a myriad of things, but rightfully so. It could be difficult things. It could be wonderful things you’ve been waiting for. Or it could just be things in general that aren’t necessarily good or bad, just things that happen that add another dimension to your daily existence, for better or worse.

Honestly, I was almost hoping that my life would go the route of becoming one of those boring adult lives where nothing really happens over the course of several months and you just go to work, go home, occasionally see friends, and everything remains stable for the foreseeable future. But that hasn’t really happened yet. For the time being, it seems like there’s still a number of random events and “life things” cropping up at every twist and turn, and that’s been a struggle as of late. At the same time, something I’ve been seeing is that with so many new things around every corner, old songs have started taking on new meanings for me.

Being Gay at Bethel: Revisited

Here’s a piece I wrote back in the spring about some good changes and things I see happening back at my alma mater (that sounds weird to say…).

Bethel is one of my favorite places, and I’m thankful for the ways God is moving there, especially in the sense that LGBTQ students are starting to feel safer and that the atmosphere is shifting for the better. Hopefully, this is just the beginning.

do you remember? // short story

The past couple days and rest of this week have been and are continuing to be pretty busy, which has been an additional struggle on top of the creative one for this 14 day writing challenge I’ve been putting myself through, trying to write something or publish something every day. I purposefully timed out this writing challenge to end just about the same time as I’m leaving for a trip, since I’m not sure if I’ll have the time to continue publishing work while I’m gone, but hopefully this writing challenge will give me the creative boost I need to at least be storyboarding and brainstorming while I’m gone.

 

In order to keep myself in the fiction mindset, I’ve been outlining and storyboarding a bunch related to an older ongoing project that I’m still hoping to finish at some point in time, but I’ve also been going back to older pieces that I’ve written a while ago when fiction came a little easier to me, looking at the style, voice, and some of the themes I was working with to see what I can continue to channel into my current work and what I’ve grown out of.

 

The piece below is one I recently went back to as I’ve been trying to rediscover and tap into my fiction energy. Originally published in my university’s literary magazine three years ago, this piece deals with several darker themes, something that I’ve oddly always been drawn to in fiction, which is perhaps why I love dystopian and noir works so much. On top of that, it’s still one of the better pieces I think I’ve written, perhaps because it’s partially inspired by real life, though I do see myself having grown out of some of the more dramatic elements as I skim through it a few years later. If you were wondering what kind of fiction I skewed towards writing three or four years ago, this piece would be a prime example, haha.