She's a residency girl, in a residency world...

Hello from the Springs ⛰️

Hello my most darlingest of darling newsletter subscribers! Before we dive in, a quick note that I am recovering from a very late (5:30 a.m.) night the day I traveled to residency, and a full Friday of activities running on 90 minutes of sleep…I’m writing this on Saturday after sleeping for nine hours, but the loopiness may persist.

Onward!

I’m in Colorado Springs for my fourth VCFA Writing for Children & Young Adults residency, and it’s already (two days in) an utter dream. This newsletter format will be different than usual because who’s got the brain power for my usual sections today, so settle in, grab a coffee or whatever, and get ready for me to ramble.

I wrote the above section this morning and now it’s Saturday evening and you know what? Turns out I need a structure. Onward & upward!

From the heart 💗

I was talking to some friends at dinner just now, and I shared my favorite definition of myself as an extrovert, which is that I’m like an energy vampire. I never feel that more acutely than I do at residency.

No matter how physically tired I am, no matter how much my brain has whirred and workshopped and wondered, I find energy and joy in the people around me. I adore sitting around a dinner table having a deep conversation about writing, about life, about the systems we exist in. But I also love shooting the shit and cracking jokes and making people laugh. There’s nothing like making people laugh to energize me.

Before residency, I had a moment of panic where I was like, “Oh my god, I think I’ve lost my funny. I’m not laughing very much!”

Turns out that’s because I wasn’t around people, so I wasn’t making jokes. Yeah, funny how that works, am I right?

There’s a lot of things that residency reminds me about myself. It reminds me that I’m a social creature, for sure, but it also reminds me that I love learning. I love the different ways people’s brains think, the ways our synapses fire off in alternate directions, so we can listen to the same lecture and get ideas for totally different projects. I love that we can listen to the same reading and be inspired to write our own, vastly divergent, stories.

Residency also reminds me that there is beauty everywhere. There is beauty in the people around me. There is beauty in the mountains surrounding us. There is beauty in singing along to “Hamilton” on early morning drives to campus. There is beauty in humanity. There is beauty.

We’re back to no structure. YOLO, amirite?

I’ve been working on this newsletter for nearly 36 hours and I still don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m happy, but I also find myself sometimes running away from my friends to hide and cry because I feel like too much. I feel like I’m around too often, like I talk too loud, like I don’t give people a chance to miss me because I’m just always, perennially, annoyingly there.

Maybe that’s something I’ve learned through residency that I need to work on in my own time. Maybe I need to get better at trusting others to love me the way they say they do.

Maybe I should focus more on writing and less on this. Who knows. This is a writing program, yes, but it’s also about fostering who you are as a human. Art is nothing without humanity behind it (*cough cough* AI art you are nothing) and to make the best, most impactful art for the world, we have to be able to human as well. We have to be safe and healthy, fed and watered, loved and cherished. And to love and cherish ourselves as well. That’s what I’m going to work on going forward: my creative thesis, sure, but also the radical act of self-acceptance.

We’ll see how that goes…

Goodbye

This felt so chaotic. I’m so sorry. But also, I kinda love the way it turned out, and in the spirit of accepting myself…we’re gonna roll with it.