Hello friends and happy (almost) end of the month! Seriously, where did January go? I have a feeling 2018 is going to go by in a flash. Even though it still feels like the first week of the year to me, I have had an exciting first month of the year.
I started the month in Queens, playing Codename and making my very indulgent friends pose like we were from Charlie’s Angels (pictured above). I’ve been writing more than I have in years, and really falling back in love with what it means to create a story – trying to spend more gratitude for how I get to spend my days.
This month, I read War Cross by Marie Lu, Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart, Harry a History by Melissa Anelli (a fascinating account of the Harry Potter online fan movements from when the books books were coming out), and a whole lot of romance. If you haven’t read Joanna Schupe yet and you are looking for something equal parts swoony and steamy, have at it.
I went to my favorite bookstore, Books of Wonder, to see the amazing Anna Meriano launch her debut middle grade book Love, Sugar, Magic. Anna was a year above me at New School and always so kind! I also got to see Puffs, the Harry Potter musical told for the perspective of the Hufflepuffs, and the goddess of musical theater Bernadette Peters in Hello Dolly.
I’ve taught and tutored amazingly creative and utterly hilarious young writers after school, who are blowing my mind with stories about mermaids and lonely turtles and WW1 soldiers and girls who live alone in the woods. I planned the curriculum for my new New School class on research methods and visual culture. I also learned what “visual culture” means, and yesterday in my first class I lectured on the history of the selfie.
This month I wrote one of the pieces I’m most proud of for Book Riot: 8 Fat Positive Books to help with Self-Loving Resolutions. I also spent a week looking through love poems for this list.
This month, I also spent a week bogged down with a bad head cold. I cried and raged against the constant stream of #metoo stories coming out through the media – trying to process the pain experienced by friends, strangers, and myself. Feeling lucky. Feeling angry. Feeling so so sad.
We got through a year with you-know-who as president. But last week, I gathered with the family of friends who travelled to DC with me last year to march through Manhattan – well stand in Manhattan with signs because there were so many people. I talked to a young girl who was celebrating her sixth birthday at the march and a 70 year old woman who moved to NYC from Missouri in 1965. I felt hope.
So all in all, a very full mostly good month. And if you want to share, I’d love to hear about your January in the comments. xoxo.
