heyyy i'm back :)

I’m never not one to be brutally honest. So I don’t expect this time will be any different. I wanted this blog to be a place of excruciating truth, in order to shout into the void or maybe just relate to someone from the other side of a screen. To confront and be confronted with my reality, as dramatic as it sounds.

After graduating college in the middle of a pandemic, I entered a weird “between” period that seemed to have started ages ago but never really officially begun at any point, and there was absolutely no definite end. I left Chicago and moved into my mom’s cottage on Lake Michigan—it was going to be my mamma mia summer— I kept telling people. I had been hired for a job, not five minutes away by car, that was going to be a cute little farm/orchard/souvenir type deal. I was so excited!

Right?

For sure.

Absolutely.

I guess.

Once I left Chicago and moved to middle-of-nowhere Michigan, I spiraled. I left all of my closest and dearest friends to live somewhere where I didn’t know a single person, to work a job that ended up being pretty tough physical labor for long hours and cheap pay. It was early May when I moved, so it was very chilly and gray at the lake. I was in a ~40-50 degree kitchen making jams and jellies for eight hours, while wearing jeans, two pairs of socks, two t-shirts, a sweatshirt, and a beanie. When I wasn’t bent over a jam stove, I was in the front kitchen and I had to strip the many layers to enter the non-air conditioned bakery. Like I mentioned, it was early May, but the front kitchen was sweltering from the moment one of the ovens was turned on.

I truly don’t know how the folks who worked there did it, but I applaud them because somehow, that draining work was what broke me, apparently. (And they all stayed so kind through the entire week and a half I worked there.)

The intense isolation got to me. I am an extrovert, usually in most senses of the word, and I was in the middle of corn. Like literal corn fields. I did have the one coworker, who I was constantly paired with to work, although very sweet, the only thing we could find to talk about was Pixar movies.

Eventually, I found myself unable to leave my couch to make food after work. One morning, I was unable to leave bed to get ready for work. I had slipped into a deep depression in the midst of my summer fantasy.

I went through some pretty significant mental health treatment and met some really amazing people. I debated sharing this, but when I have spoken candidly in the past, it has helped destroy the stigma for some of my friends. Here’s to hoping you’ll understand.

But to be real with you, that’s sorta why this blog hit the back burner for a while. Even though it was just a baby when I put it down, I’m back (hopefully for a good while) to share thoughts that are just so super obviously necessary to share with the world.

I moved back to my hometown. I’m working at a dry cleaners that I used to work at a few summers ago. It’s an easy job. Not many people go to the dry cleaners. It’s really not great pay but it’s easier than the farm/market I was supposed to be working at, so I really can’t complain. I’m able to roller skate fairly frequently. I don’t get to the beach as much as I was planning on this summer.

I miss creating. I miss being around other artists, who were also constantly creating. I hope that by re-entering this blog, I’ll be able to access something that feels inspiring to create. This blog is going to be anything I want it to be as I explore and experience life. Hold on with me through all of it. :)

Unlike the unkown-feigned excitement from earlier in the year, I am experiencing genuine excitement through this act. I am a theatre maker through and through, in the sense that I have an insane impulse to create and share with my audience. This blog is no different from a version of theatre, as in the way all art exposed to the public, I’m sure I can argue, is.

Subscribe to bear witness :P