The first post.

Welcome to this corner of the internet I’m carving out for my self, my thoughts, my experiences, my relationships, my worries, my wonder, my world.

We’ll have to be patient with me; public, 10-toes-down self-expression feels as uncomfortable as it does important. My self-judgement is turning up the volume as I write these words, and it’s going to take time for me to be able to hear myself think.

This work is important to me for many reasons.

1. I have had words and stories and ideas in me since I was a kid. They’ve always been inside me, swirling around and glittering in a way that brimmed with potential, but never quite seemed to gather itself into material form. My refrain (core belief?) was that one day I’d get all that goodness out into the open, breathing air and drinking water and growing big and tall like a tree. One day my words and my inner world will provide shade and a gathering place for myself and my people. But always, surprising no one but myself, I would determine that this moment was not the right moment. Alas, I convinced myself, my quivering glittery pastel-colored potential preferred to remain potent and undefined. I was, after all, Very Busy^TM with other life activities like “coming of age”, “adulting”, and “figuring things out”.
2. It is time. Myriad factors have come together to deliver unto me the undeniable conclusion that ain’t no time like the present. And getting started is the hardest part (until you’re underway. Then I imagine that continuing is the hardest part). I’m leaning into being a human who does hard things. I have way too much living left to do to try to do it without seeing what the hell is inside me (and holding that stuff- those words and stories and ideas- with love and curiosity. Because all of that stuff that is going to come out? That stuff is me.
3. Some key words and related tags that I would like to sprinkle on this first post, for fortification (in no particular order):
   • unmasking
   • liberation
   • epistemology
   • dialogue
   • essay (essaier)
   • art
   • erotic
   • somatic
   • integration
   • intertextual
   • lineage
   • ancestors
   • community
   • earth
   • affirmation
   • power
   • courage
   • value
   • mutual

Amen.