Ideal blogging conditions:
Evening. Solitude. Headphones+tunes. An unpleasant and not entirely overwhelming task at hand. And here we are. :)

A story I'd like to tell: a friend of mine is a wonderful poet. She started writing seriously about the same time I did, but unlike me, she kept writing seriously through an MA and an MFA and a lot of applying to a lot of programs. And now she's on her way to law school.
And I think it's safe to say, even if she's reading this (hey there eg), that she isn't or wasn't, like, the kind of off-hand stereotype of a poet at all. Like, she's all business. Like she came to poetry via editing. Law school is an incredible fit and she'll be wonderful at it and if you would've asked me, when I first knew her, where she'd be right now I'd choose law school over poetry any day.
And both parts of her are important, and the one enlightens and brightens and adds interest to the other I think, in a really satisfying way.

The reason I'm telling you this story (which kind of isn't mine to tell) is because I've been feeling the tug of the inexorable lately and this story really brought that tug to light. I feel like on my way to getting where I want to go right now, in feeling out the way, my (our, now) path is swerving back to my beginnings.
And where a year or two or five ago I would've resisted this, I would've, maybe, applied for graduate school instead of sticking with teaching, for instance, or even moved to Salt Lake for a year instead of going on a BYU study abroad, I'm seeing something really sustaining and beautiful and firm and true about circling back, about shedding some of the layers--no, that's not it--because I don't regret the roundabout way I took--but, having the experience I do and having developed the perspective I have, I feel really ready to take on the roots of me. To start to embrace the life I was presented with 10 years ago and start living that life.

The end.