Don't Leave Yourself Behind

I have a piece out in The Atlantic today! For me, this is a huge milestone and also a very important piece, so give it a read.

A chocolate cake with red jello balls on top.

It’s the day before NaNo and all through the house… I’m throwing around drafts and outlines trying to get settled in.

As usual, my writing mind is exhilarated by the constraint and the mad fury that is writing 50,000 words in a single month. I’ve been working on a lot of shorter projects and have tried to build my discipline with research, writing, pitching, etc. But I am drawn to staying in a character’s head for a longer period of time, testing worldview and characteristics for pages and pages rather than paragraphs – even if much of it gets chopped later on.

Armed with a few earlier draft pages, I’ll be growing my story during quick timed exercises. I tend to work better with an overly formulaic structure that pushes me to think creatively within it. I also tend to work better under the cover of night with a bright screen in my face. We’ll see how annoyed my family members become with the cranky, somewhat sleep-deprived version of me that will undoubtedly show up by the end of the month.

I turned 24 this past week. It was a silly sort of day. Here in Dhaka, my family doesn’t really do birthdays. A cake was delivered; a biryani was cooked; several truly terrible jokes about age were told. In the evening, I started a new small notebook and wrote down a birthday intention for the upcoming year. This year: don’t leave yourself behind.

I spent a lot of age 23 in boom-bust cycles. I moved three and a half times – across NYC, across the country, across the ocean. I changed jobs four to five times. I attended births, organized events, grew a magazine, survived yet another long winter… And although I did a lot of great healing work for myself during that time, I also felt like a large part of it was spent worrying.

The challenges of living abroad are simply different challenges. I still worry, of course. But I am blessed to have more time and energy to invest in myself and my own work. Though I don’t have the expectation of returning to the US an entirely changed woman (I will certainly still be a workaholic and a chronic list-maker), I hope that I can return with the skills to hold space for myself no matter how intense the world around me.

With that in mind, let's take a deep breath and start novel-ing!

A Paper Cut, A Korean Spa, and Aspen, CO: Speaking & Publications of Late

I've just flown in from Aspen (and boy are my arms tired! #throwbackjokes). This week has been a flurry of activity - from getting a piece published on Refinery29 to speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival, I and my words have taken me all over. So this week I'm giving you a recap so that I can get around to talking about my recent US travels and then maybe, just maybe, write something new! Stay tuned.

I spoke at the 2015 Aspen Ideas Festival on a panel called "Millennials Losing Faith" with Casper ter Kuile, Naomi Schaefer Riley, Jane Shaw, and Mark Oppenheimer as moderator. My position is that Millennials are often spiritual but unaffiliated with organized faith for a variety of reasons, one major one being that traditionally marginalized groups (LGBTQI folks is one we talked about most) are not welcomed in these spaces. I talked about the importance of creating our own spaces within organized faith and making a distinction between 'bucking traditions' and not finding value in faith communities. Check out the video of the full session above! We also got a nice little write up in The Atlantic.

I also was asked to write a post for the Aspen Ideas Festival blog. I ended up interviewing myself! Read my thoughts on doula work, social justice, and art as spiritual ritual.

Refinery29 asked me to write a piece based on a Tweet I had about vulnerability and body self-consciousness at a Korean spa, so you can get into my head about that experience here.

And if you haven't gotten enough of me talking, I did an interview with Paper Cuts on ClockTower Radio alongside Elvis B., Sadie Barnett, and host Christopher Kardambikis. I read a potentially bloody, potentially hilarious segment of a perzine called By Their Proper Names.

And a final zine-y thing, my former boss and Feminist Zine Fest co-conspirator Jenna Freedman just wrote an awesome roundup of black zines for Bitch Magazine that shouts out the controversy at the BZF. Stick around for the rest of her series!