Early & Alone #43: Somehow It's November?!

It's been too long. Everything seemed overwhelming in May, when I stopped writing. It wasn't intentional at first, but the longer I went without writing one of these, the harder it seemed to get back into it. And what could I say that would be of value anyway? A global pandemic, police brutality, a national reckoning with racial injustice, and crumbling democracy...yeah, it was all a little too much for me to try and process. 

I'm still working on it. And I know no one expects me to make sense of any of it. So I hope to get back to sending out these missives more regularly again. For now, I just wanted to let you know that I'm still here, still clinging to hope wherever I can. 

As many of you know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I've participated before, both in the official challenge of writing 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days and in more modified versions, and I thought it would provide a handy vehicle for me to challenge myself to write more regularly. So for November it's my goal to write a short cultural essay every day. The rules are only that the essays are inspired by some piece of culture I've recently consumed, ranging everywhere from movies to books to TV to tweets to poems to articles to architecture. They're going to be brief and rough, as the whole idea is to force myself to just spend a little time each day writing, to work that muscle without worrying too much about an end product or wisdom or perfection or whatever. I'd love if you read some of them! You can find the first one, about The Haunting of Bly Manor here: https://jillgallagher.medium.com/culture-diary-the-haunting-of-bly-manor-ffcd3533cf34 

The rest will live on my Medium page as well: https://jillgallagher.medium.com/

I'm sending you all strength and some measure of peace in the face of great anxiety this week. I hope we're all better at this time next week, and if not, that we're planning on how to overcome.