On the road again...again.

So it's that time of year again where my partner and I throw a dart at a map and decide where we are going to spend the next few months.

This year, we turned up with:Thank you for the image, James Phelps and Wikimedia!

If only it were that romantic. The story is a long and painfully stressful one, but it looks like we're moving to Arizona. As luck would have it, we found a nice spot to settle down just north of the Grand Canyon while he continues to work on his thesis, and I slave away in the outdoors.

All right, so I've never been to a desert. I don't know how wonderful it's going to be, but the fact that the ONLY rooms for rent were in an obscure artist colony about an hour away from anything that resembles a city (and I use that term loosely, since that "city" didn't have anything for rent).

Life-changing moves aside, I haven't written a word in weeks. I don't have my computer during the week at work, and I tried hand-writing a story but the agony of cramping fingers was not worth the drivel I was producing.

So to re-motivate me, I've been listening to writing podcasts, looking at pretty cover art, and hoping one day to find the inspiration to write something that will deserve such hunky heroes and pretty font with my name on it!

Apologies

My last post may have seemed a bit loopy. Blame it on the M word and an iron deficiency.

Soul-Searching in the Woods

Goodness, the last couple of weeks have flown by!

Spending five days a week, effectively alone and surrounded by nothing but trees, is not as inspirational for my writing as I had hoped. Nope, I'm no Thoreau after all.

Not to say it hasn't been fun! But I am very grateful to be home with the sweetie today before I head back into my self-imposed isolation tomorrow.

All right, it's not really isolation. I'm working with the public, while at the same time being able to enjoy the region's natural resources. I've been blessed with the opportunity to get up close and personal with an endangered gopher tortoise, watch a mother fox dig a burrow, glimpse a rare indigo snake slithering across a trail in front of me.

This has been a very spiritual experience for me. Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I've been an atheist for the last eight years, after being raised Catholic. (And teaching Cathechism as an angsty mall-goth girl in high school! I still giggle thinking about me in church with blue hair, black lipstick and studded belts, teaching second graders about to make their Communion.) The more time I spend alone though, the more I am breaking down those walls that I've built that say there is NOTHING beyond what we experience on the physical plane. Though this may not turn out as I ever expected it to.

I have more self-reflection to do over the next few months. I have plenty of free time to do it, and with such a beautiful background!