Making Space

I don't act on it often enough - but I believe to my bones in making space for the people who are making space for people.

Here's one of them right here. Her name is Shayla Lee Raquel, and for the last three years, she has moved heaven and red Oklahoma earth to raise up a first-class writing community in her backyard. She runs the Yukon Writers' Society, which just hosted the FABULOUS Writers Olympics. She travels down to DFW on the regular, donating her time and expertise to make events like WORDfest possible. She has been the fiercest pro-bono advocate an indie author could ever have (including nailing a VERY pointed set of theses to the Oklahoma Book Festival's double-standard front door). And anyone who has ever taken a turn with the organizer's hat knows how completely a good cause will tornado its way through your own personal life and projects. 

But today at last, it is Shayla's turn for the spotlight. Cinderella finally gets to go to the ball - not because a fairy godmother waved a wand and apparated a Pumpkin Miata for the occasion, but because she hitched up her homespun dress, laced up her trainers and walked her own self to the party.

It is terribly important to me to make sure that people like Shayla get more than a warm, fuzzy feeling for their efforts - that they are materially and powerfully thanked for the hundreds of hours they've given to making space for the rest of us. And if you would like to sign your name to that effort, this is where you can go to give her your congratulations, read up on her work, and gift a copy to the person in your life that her words were meant for.

A Sultry 'Bootoir' Moment

Everybody has been telling me for the better part of two years now that I should start wearing boots.
The WORD squad, knowing too well what happens to *any* task I am entrusted with, took matters into their own insufferably wonderful hands.

So here is my first-ever 'bootoir' photo, captioned thusly: if you are lucky enough to know Marsha Hubbell, Kathryn McClatchy, Daniel Wells, David Douglas, Sarah Hamilton, Amanda Arista, or god help you, William Humble, then you know one-seventh of the joy, passion, generosity, patience, hard work, and unrelenting refusal to quit that knocks me acock on a near-daily basis. I expect working with these folks for the past two years has been perfect practice for donning a pair of Ropers, actually - cuz they have seen me through ten thousand miles, in every kind of weather, and they just won't quit.

Thank you for everything, posse. They fit like a dream.

Sock-Sacks and Happiness

Okay, so after Writers in The Field, I have a new thesis statement: we have too many huge, giant, apocalyptic nigh-unsolvable problems in this country, and not enough small ones.

On Saturday, for example, my main problem was not dropping the cookies (that LB Clark and Erin McGowan brought all the way up from Galveston!) while a hundred of us were running through the mud to escape the tornado warning.

On Sunday, my main problem was not owning a second pair of shoes. (As it turns out, grocery sacks make fair-to-middling sock-condoms.)

Today, my main problem is that I can't quite figure out how to get up off this couch.
And all of these are small, satisfying, and completely surmountable challenges.

I didn't have to worry about getting Kathryn McClatchy up off the floor of the ticket booth during the tornading, because Marsha Hubbell is a PTA Green Beret. Didn't have to figure out how to feed everyone after the food truck fell in a ditch, cuz Alex and Allison Campolo delivered pizza through flooded roads like Evel Knievel jumping the Snake River Canyon (in a Lexus, no less). Didn't have to know how to get the food truck *out* of the ditch, because as far as I can tell, Shane Richmond just Force-lifted it up like an X-wing from the Dagobah swamp. Didn't have to stop and thumb-type every late-breaking announcement, because Kathryn and Sarah and Amanda blew up the hashtags harder than a questionably-colored dress. Hell, I didn't even have time to wonder about getting the margarita machines in during the storm, because Brandon Burgess is the all-weather swashbuckling Jimmy Buffett this country needs.

My point is: all of these very short, specific, twenty-minute micro-crises are now 100% handled. Mostly because we had exactly the right people on point to handle them.

But also - you know, in a world where everything we need magically appears on a shelf or in a box at our front door (even as we wither in constant, paralyzing, existential fear), it was so good to remember what small, short, tangible challenges feel like. And now that I'm back home, clean and dry in my climate-controlled condo-box, I am jonesing for my next fix. Can these shoes go the dryer after I hose them off? I don't know, but I can't wait to find out!

Tilting at Tomorrow

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a parallel universe. I get so wrapped up in making flyers, planning activities, visiting and traveling and trying to keep up with myself - and after a long, happy day of hard work and hobbit-wrangling, it's a shock to log on and read about a profoundly broken world.

I worry sometimes that I'm too fortunate and insulated - that all of what I'm doing basically amounts to building castles in the sky while Rome burns. I hope that's not true. More than anything, I want what I'm doing to matter. I expect we all do.

But here's what I know for a certain fact: there is going to be a tomorrow in which the all-consuming crises of today don't feature. Our current problems will pass away, just as surely as the Cold War and the 1918 flu did before them, and new ones will grow in their place.

And when tomorrow gets here, I want to make sure that we still remember how to co-exist. I want to make sure that clickbaiting and fearmongering and runaway intellectual inbreeding don't deprive us of our friends and neighbors. We're in the middle of a hard and essential fight right now, but there's something completely unlike it already waiting in the wings... and whatever that is, we absolutely can't afford to meet it at half-strength.

I hope you registered to vote today, if you weren't already signed up. I hope you have been using every good means at your disposal to weigh in on the big decisions, and take ownership of the small ones.

But I also hope we remember the last vital stranger who helped us - on the side of the road, in the hospital, a thousand miles from home - and how little their political views mattered when we really, desperately needed them. And I am going to join my fellow big-hearted eventroverts in continuing to raise up little tentpole-spaces for good people to meet face-first and practice helping each other out... because that's the best way I know to ensure we still have a common ground left to come back to after today's fight is finished.

And because I just god damn love wearing a fancy name tag and buying tax-deductible donuts.

Failing and Flailing

Real question: is computer ADHD a thing? Because I feel like a really pretty almost-together person in real life, and then as soon as I open up my laptop to do some work, everything turns into a giant digital shitblizzard.

What was I supposed to be doing? Which of these emails do I answer first? (Which of these inboxes do I even look at first?) Oh damn it, that interview was due a week ago... and there are all these texts... and I forgot to reply to that nice message because Facebook Messenger already marked it as read (I HATE that). And maybe I should just make like I never even got those last ten emails, because they're a month old already and I feel so guilty.

I hate it, y'all. I hate doing bad. I hate feeling bad. Somebody please tell me how to stop failing at pixels. Or at least tell me I'm not the only one.

Because Blood Is Thicker than Hilton Water

Question of the day: who here already knew that David Douglas was a miracle-working shoemaker-elf, and what are you leaving out for him at night?

Seriously, y'all. He is singlehandedly holding up half a dozen different writers organizations over here, and I am just so bowled over and thankful for him on the daily. And for Shane Richmond and William Humble and Kathryn McClatchy and Sarah Hamilton and ALL of the WORD crew, who have been BUSTING IT for weeks now to help us get Writers in the Field off the ground.

And for you guys. Man, I can't think you enough for all that good love you gave us yesterday, right when we really needed it. We blew our ticket sales target *totally* out of the water, and for the first time since, like, May, I am waking up with a cut in my strut and a glide in my stride, cuz I don't just have to believe we are doing good work - I can SEE it.

Big, big love, y'all, and endless gratitude from all sides. I know what we're doing isn't the most important thing in the world, but you sure are lighting up our little corner of it. Thank you for being our ice-cold cucumber-jalapeño water of life: we don't have to know how or why you happened to us to be strangely proud that you did.

Why's That Dog In Here?

You know, I have been incredibly fortunate to belong to a number of volunteer programs over the past few years. One of the things we don't talk about too much is where our society's volunteer base comes from.

Sometimes volunteers come from fortunate circumstances: active retirees, students on summer break, and stay-at-home parents whose kids are in school.

But sometimes a salaried working person becomes a volunteer when their life-plan is drastically, permanently altered. That's Kathryn McClatchy to a T. She is an absolute champion for us at WORD (I was literally crying on the phone to her yesterday as she patiently scooped things off my agenda-plate until I could function again.) And we probably wouldn't have her if she were still working twelve-hour days as a teacher - if a series of strokes hadn't forced her to completely re-learn how to read, and walk, and bang out her life plan all over again.

But she's out there every day, working like the dickens to contribute wherever and however she can - to her church, to the Writers Guild of Texas, to WORD, and I don't even know what-all else. Her latest contribution is a book called "Why's That Dog In Here?", all about the wild, hilarious, infuriating and unforgettable reality of life with a service dog. She is determined to put it out into the world the right way, so that everyone can benefit from the rocky road she's travelled - and for that, she needs some extra backing.

So. If you've enjoyed anything I've done, please know that it is only possible because of people like Kathryn. And if you can lay down a few extra dollars to help her passion and positivity ripple even farther out into the world, you will be doing a powerful service to a person who serves powerfully. The volunteers of the world don't get paid, by definition - but they deserve all of the enthusiastic support and appreciation we can give them. Are you in?

America the Bountiful

Y'all, I'm sorry I've been so neglectful with replies and comments and all. I'm averaging seventy/eighty hours a week so far this year, and feel like a fat pile of tired lying beached on a heap of broken promises.

I tell you what, though. I wouldn't be half this knackered if I hadn't gotten so dang addicted to going and doing in every random corner of the country. We have so many wonderful places and people here, from the homemade truck nuts of Texas to the gluten-free toasters of Oregon to the ukulele-enhanced worship services of Ohio and the feral beach-chickens of Hawaii. 

It probably shouldn't be surprising that we have such trouble feeling like one united nation sometimes. And silly as it sounds, I really feel like we would treat each other so much more kindly, if only everyone had the luxury of visiting their thousand-mile neighbors on the regular.

But don't despair, guys. I'm gonna make those mega-millions any day now, and when I do, I'm handing everyone a fat check so that you can quit all that awful day-jobbing business and come romance the open road too. And we will love this country whole again, from sea to shining sea.

Writers in the Field, Weigh In!

Man, y'all. I've been Oregone for two weeks, Idahoed with the best of the best, and got myself a sweet summer Montan to boot. Now I am home again, and there is no place like couch. Thanks, y'all, for putting me up and holding the fort!

If I can ask one more favor: Texish writer-buddies, will you weigh in and tell us what you want to see at Writers in the Field: Chapter Two this year? We need to know which Hogwarts professors to invite and what carnival marvels you want to see.

Survey is here!

The Parable of the Peach

All right, y'all - here's your moral motivator for the day.

We took the cats in for their annual indignities, which always requires gassing Peaches down in a Tupperware box. As if that weren't enough, her paws are too dark for the heart monitor clip to read accurately - so they got creative and hooked it up to her nub instead.

The Parable of the Peach thus teaches us two lessons:

1. Use your damage to your advantage - every chance you get

and 2. Be grateful for any day that doesn't involve having a jumper cable clamped to your ass!