Hard to believe how much time has passed since my last post. It’s hard to sum up a year.
In no particular order, I have:
1. Undertaken a terrace gardening project
2. Learned to play a simultaneous harmony and melody on the keyboard (hmmm…sort of)
3. Seen a pair of mating lions in Zimbabwe
4. Hiked the Eastern Coast of Mallorca (GR 221)
5. Attended a wedding in Old Lyme, Connecticut
6. Attended a funeral in Amherst, Massachusetts
7. Watched my boyfriend pet a very friendly horse in Sardinia (see photo. Que guapo!)
8. Caught several sizable catfish in the Okavango Delta
9. Taken two advanced fiction writing classes through Gotham Writers Workshop
10. Read and graded approximately 2,000 pages worth of student work
There we go. Good enough.
I have been writing, quite a lot actually, over the past year (see related post here). But my focus has been on fiction. And I found out something important and obvious:
Writing fiction is tremendously hard.
At the beginning, I found I really couldn’t balance any attempt at creative short stories with thoughtful, self-depreciating blog posts. When I was writing stories, my characters would all come out with the adorable, sarcastic tone I reserve for writing about my personal life. When I tried to write here, the tone turned floating and invented. I had to take some time to clarify the two different objectives in my head.
Also, the problem of there only being 24 hours in a day came into play rather regularly.
But, with spring inching into the air in Madrid and several major work deadlines recently behind me, I’m bustling with unrealistic expectations for myself once again and itching to share the obscure, relatively uninteresting details of my life with large groups of strangers!
To sum up a year is one thing. To move on is another.
It feels good to be back.
If you’re still reading, the title of this post “Call Me Home” is the name of a wonderful novel by Megan Kruse. Highly recommend. Also, thanks to Scott Webb for the banner photo.