Iowa City is still covered in snow and chilly, but I’m treating myself to a sublime morning of warm coffee and writing at my own back desk—my writing desk at home. Strangely, I did very little of this during Thanksgiving week (in which I had some time off from teaching and a little less time working at Prairie Lights). I spent good time with friends and with my partner, which are also important things, but as I talked through some stuff with my therapist this week, I realized that my inner Libra scales feel a bit off-balance. I need a little more time alone, which is time I use to actively write or process what I’m writing.
I also reached a personal milestone this morning: A month into my memoir rewrite for the revise-and-resubmit offer I mentioned previously, I’ve finished a brand new first chapter, which I’m tentatively calling “Waiting Room.” This is some of the hardest work I’ve done yet because it felt incredibly vulnerable…without giving anything substantial away, I’ll just say that I decided to lay out exactly why I left everything in my life behind to start over in Beijing in 2018, and I uncovered some pretty deep trauma I haven’t touched in years. Turns out there was more I was running away from than just an abusive marriage…like many of these stories, the hurt didn’t start there.
I’m a little concerned that this current first chapter might be too heavy for readers, but I’m going to keep going for now and not look at it again until Draft 5 is completely done. If it’s good enough for an agent to accept, then she can help me lighten the mood, so to speak. I do think, despite the heaviness, that this is some of my best writing. And I gave this new first chapter a kick-ass ending that says Yeah, she’s gonna be alright.
Before I started today’s morning session, I read the feature article of the current Poets and Writers magazine (November/December 2025), which is a lovely piece by Brian Gresko about local poet Donika Kelly and her new collection, The Natural Order of Things. (Still lots of signed copies at PL, btw!) I must confess that I haven’t read this collection yet, but reading Gresko (as well as seeing Kelly read from her new book back in October, which I wrote about here) has convinced me that I need to buy the book during my PL shift tonight. I was especially moved by how Gresko sums up the message of The Natural Order of Things:
In a time when escapist fantasies dominate the fiction charts, The Natural Order of Things is not a book written outside of the world but one that engages with it and that dares to ask: Trauma has happened and is happening before our eyes, and healing might not be a place but a never-ending, nonlinear journey, so, then, why laugh? Why make art? Why make love? With this collection Kelly says to the reader, Come close, listen, let me tell you why, and let me tell you too why we fight, why we write, why and how we have survived and will keep surviving.
The answer? in a word: joy.
I mean, come on. How could I not feel inspired after reading that? This piece got me to the end of a very difficult chunk of my own writing, and I’m so grateful that to be a writer (and/or a poet) means to buoy each other up and support each other through our own creative nourishment. It doesn’t matter how commercially successful you are; any creative can inspire another creative. That’s a special thing.
I’m trying to look for the special things and hold on to them. Even though I think I’m making progress with my ongoing depression + anhedonia by reconnecting to myself as a writer, going to weekly therapy sessions, and going to the gym at least twice a week, I can still feel its teeth sunk in me. Most recently, I’ve been struggling to identify what exactly brings me joy now, in the present (rather than thinking of what could make me happy later), and I’ve also felt an inability to feel content for more than say, five seconds at a time. This in turn spurns my inner critic, which says things like, You’re so privileged already! What could you possibly be unhappy about?!
I’m sure you’re familiar with this kind of voice.
By the end of this week, I’ve reached one plausible conclusion: I’m currently envious of my single friends. I had to laugh at myself (gently, with love) when I admitted this out loud in yesterday’s therapy session, because when I was single I said that I envied my partnered friends. For me, the grass is always greener elsewhere.
It just looks easier to be anyone other yourself sometimes, right?
Image description: A photo of the highest point in The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas outside of Arlee, Montana…my partner and I visited this sacred place on our way to Glacier National Park in May of 2024, right after I finished my MFA in Missoula.
My partner and I had an argument this past weekend…I won’t say about what, but it was one of the bigger ones we’ve had, and in the heat of it my mind summed up a worse-case scenario. I can joke about this now because I joked about it with him afterward, but I actually looked at studio apartments on Craigslist during a lull in our day-long dispute. There was a cute one available August 1rst (the default date for pretty much every rental in Iowa City) in an old apartment building I’ve been curious about for years, and in my mind, I was already moving in, deciding where to put the future. It just looked so easy to be alone again. This was mostly my self-sabotage talking, so I didn’t put too much stock into the idea. (Several of my Prairie Lights colleagues live alone and have for years, so that must be where it came from.) We reconciled.
Anyway, this is where my head’s at by the end of this week. I’m trying my best to be gentle and patient with myself and to take note of what I’m able to accomplish despite my “defects of character,” as we say in twelve-step recovery. I write, I talk to friends, I touch grass (well, snow, for now), and I make an effort to be present. And as some of my fellow partnered friends have reminded me: Conflict is normal in a healthy relationship, and the fact that I’m willing to stand up for myself in a dispute means I’m not the doormat I used to be.
“Would you have been able to articulate your feelings this well five years ago?” my therapist asked at the end of this week’s session.
“No, definitely not,” I said.
“There you go. You’re learning. That counts for something.”
Want and Envy will always be present in my life, but I think I’m learning to listen to them less. In the meantime, I sit here and try to know myself a little better, one day at a time.
Back Desk Questions:
What brings you joy these days as a creative?
What’s been your milestone(s) for this week?
How do you stay present with yourself and resist a constant desire for something different from what you already have?