Hello dear readers, after a summer of side quests and, judging by my drafts folder, trashing perfectly good posts, I am here to try and blog again.

This summer we went north, to Prescott and Sedona and Flagstaff*. We went south, to Tucson**. Getting back to exploring the state has been really wonderful. Flagstaff is familiar territory, but I hadn’t visited Sedona or Tucson in years, and I had never been to Prescott. How silly is that? We’ve lived in Phoenix for so long, it’s barely two hours away, and yet I’d never been.

Smoler Bean’s first summer was a rough one for road trips: it was the start of the pandemic, we never went anywhere, and being put in his car seat filled him with a deep, unquenchable rage. One time it took us four hours to make the two hour trek to Flagstaff because he was just that inconsolable. I’m so grateful he has finally gotten accustomed to car rides, and will sit happily, sleeping or playing, until we can get him out.

We saw an ocean. We got sick. Repeatedly. Thanks, Smol Humans.

I finished the Boxy Superlite Top pattern (release coming soon!) with the help of my lovely testers, and took photos with the help of my lovely friend.

Oh and I wrote a novel.

Well. Technically it’s a novella I’d written seventeen years ago. I chose a week with three deadlines in it to fish the draft out of the dregs of my Documents folder and suddenly I found myself completely sucked in, doubling the word count and adding subplots.

I am not entirely sure what to say about it. Writing is hands down my most embarrassing hobby. I enjoy the process, and it has become the thing I do to quiet my brain when I am stuck in odd moments of the day, unable to knit or read. It is astonishingly effective at quieting down the worryworryworry part of my brain. But I am having a hard time letting go of the need to make it something good. It’s an intentionally silly YA novel written on my phone, it’s not meant to be Great Literature. But I’m still self-conscious that it is not.

Sharing my writing with friends (slowly, with SO MANY caveats as to why they’re signing themselves up for) seems to be helping my get over my perfectionism. Slowly. Lol.

What new hobbies are you exploring, and how do you let go and enjoy the process?

*Ancestral homelands of the Hopitutskwa, Pueblos, Western Apache, Yavapai Apache, and Hohokam (Source: native-land.ca)

**Ancestral homelands of the O’odham Jewed, Sobaipuri, Tohono O’odham, and Hohokam (Source: native-land.ca)