Ever write a year long blog post? I started this essay on January 5th, 2025 and was determined to finish it today, December 5th, 2025 in my home office with Garbanzo on my lap. I timestamped each section of this essay from when it was written. I really gotta just post these things when I write them.

The Original Click: January 2025

January 5, 2025
The Wren’s Nest | Ruston, WA
3:33pm

The Click

I heard that when you turn twenty-five, something in your brain finally clicks and you can no longer blame your frontal lobe’s development for poor logic and reasoning. I have never looked into this, personally, and just always assumed that it was some nonsense that justified setting an age limit to renting a car in the United States. But as my friends hit the milestone, one by one, they all independently shared with me an eerie experience of unique clarity coming over them. Clarity in their values, their purpose, their career, their wants, hopes, and dreams. All coming into view clearer than ever before.

I always thought that I was someone who was particularly hyper-aware of myself. If asked, up until now, I would tell you that I had a handle on knowing myself—my interests, my values, the hobbies that I do for fun. But after September 14, 2024, my outlook on life felt more certain than it ever had before. I can’t tell you if it is because something happened to my frontal lobe or if the Lexapro is at a dose that is finally working [as we learned in March, the Lexapro was most definitely not working], but I can tell you wholeheartedly that something is fundamentally different. In my brain. In my body. In my soul. It really did feel like a click in my brain, and I have been trying to find the words to describe it for weeks now, with no luck. I’ve just been describing it as The Click. In trying to get this feeling down, process it in writing, I am noticing a tightness in my chest that usually comes when I start to feel overwhelmed. Where do I even begin? So here is my attempt to at least get it in writing for now. Just to start.

The Break

In October 2024, I enrolled in the final semester of my master’s program. Due to a scheduling error earlier in the year, I had to register for double the amount of coursework to graduate “on time,” meaning meeting my arbitrary goal of graduating with a master’s degree before turning 25. This was honestly a very bad idea in hindsight. Totaling 40 hours of schoolwork on top of my 40 hours of working a full time government job. Which, at that point, had become so emotionally draining that I was literally having nightmares and stress-dreams about my workload. I was hired in a new role at a state agency that was supposed to coordinate the agency’s effort to dismantle racist government systems and public service (you know, the same government that is built on generations of racism, oppression, and bullshit) and strategically rebuild sustainable, equitable, and anti-racist processes all while not being given the power or ownership over said systems, and being the youngest colleague to a bunch of really old white people who have worked for the state for longer than I have been alive and really didn’t like the idea of change.

This may not come as a surprise but after about six months in this new role, I felt deeply kindred with Sisyphus. Between work, school, and also trying to navigate life with an autoimmune diagnosis and a new mental health medication, I was quite literally coming apart at the seams. The only way I would be able to finish grad school successfully (read: alive) would be if I did what was unthinkable to me: I told my coworkers happy Halloween, merry fucking Christmas, happy New Year, and submitted for two months of leave. For the first time since I was seventeen years old, I would have a break longer than 10 days from working full time, 40 hours a week. I cannot overstate how fundamental these two months off were in preparing me for The Click and I am so grateful for having had the time. Can you imagine if I had taken two full months off work without trying to finish out a master’s thesis? I would probably be unstoppable. Maybe I would have written a book by now. Or started a commune. The magic of being able to pause and look inward is something I will never take for granted again.

The Impact of Staying Put

The first thing that tipped me off that The Click happened was when I realized that I no longer wanted to move houses.

When we bought our first home in 2020, it wasn’t exactly everything we were looking for. We wanted to live closer to Tacoma but could only afford looking further south, closer to where I grew up. I wanted more windows for my plants, more space for my art projects, more space for my books and reading, more space for a garden. I wanted space to host, space to have friends and family spend the night, space to share. It felt easy to outgrow it within the first year of living here. We wanted more. I wanted more, immediately. A bigger yard. More trees (the fuckers that lived here before us removed all the trees from our tiny little quarter-acre-west-facing-property. It gets hot as hell in here in the summer.) I spent days looking on and off at large properties, far away, that were surrounded by trees and plenty of land. Jake wanted property with a creek that ran through it and a house with a wraparound porch. I wanted somewhere that had an upstairs where we could set up a library and my typewriters.

I wanted land big enough to grow enough food for the year for us. To have space to build a house for my mom and for my dad to live in, rent-and-worry-free. Maybe in the woods, down a long road where my neighbor’s house isn’t directly across from mine so that we can’t make eye contact from our living room windows and he can’t scowl at me anymore. Maybe its on the Washington coast, salt-caked, walking distance from a lighthouse, the sounds of tumultuous waves lulling us to sleep every night. Somewhere where people knew us, and we knew the people. Somewhere that we would grow food for our neighbors and they would bring us flowers at the farmers market. Somewhere that friends would visit and stay for long periods of time and make art with us. Somewhere that could become a hub for community. For family. I so deeply yearned after this serene fantasy of owning an old farmhouse with eclectic décor, plenty of rooms for our hobbies, dark hardwood floors, and far enough away from the world to truly feel like a homestead.

All the while, in real life, I slowly worked on home renovation projects at our current house. Nothing huge, because it didn’t make sense to invest in a house I planned on selling in just a few short years– as soon as my graduate degree was done, we would be outta here. I only worked on projects that made the quality of life better—a beautiful firepit seating area outside in our huge yard, a covered deck to relax on in the spring and summer, a front yard with a wildflower meadow and trees instead of perfectly trimmed grass, a chicken coop with five hens that all have names, personalities, and favorite foods. Over time, we crafted a home more eclectic than the one we moved into in ways that brought us pleasure, enjoyment, and contentedness with the space in which we lived.

All the same while, back in my fantasy-brain, my plan was to use this house as a way-station. After I got my master’s degree, we would find our real house and go move there. This was just what we could afford at the time. You know, just our literal life savings of ten years of work combined between the two of us, nothing huge totally doable to do again in just a few short years. When I say it like that, it makes me chuckle. Gotta give myself grace, I didn’t know any better. I really thought we would be outta here in five years tops. Even though there was a part of me that knew we weren’t going to be able to move so soon, I still lived and acted with the pressure of knowing I was on a timeline to upgrade soon.

I started my master’s program in January 2023 and submitted my last assignment just a few weeks ago [as of this writing, January 2025]. This was supposed to be time! Time to look for a new house! For our homestead/commune/land in the middle of nowhere! True, I have a better job now. True, Jake does too. We are making more money than we have ever made, together, and have finally been able to catch up on massive debts amassed from simply trying to survive all the years prior. But somewhere along the way, I noticed myself looking around and coming to terms with the fact that we are likely here to stay for the foreseeable future. I am not sure exactly when it happened, but an invisible weight felt like it was suddenly lifted from my chest and the urge to achieve the next big thing disappeared. This is really important—because it was not just that I had come to terms with reality and acknowledge I really can’t keep living in a fake future but that I, in fact, exist in the present, but as someone who has constantly lived accomplishment to accomplishment, this meant having to life a life that isn’t designed to meet a goal, a life that doesn’t follow that clear trajectory, a life that isn’t set up and based on milestones and checkpoints.

Devastating, isn’t it? The Click didn’t give me clarity on a path forward, of course it didn’t. It burned my map, buried the ashes in a mud pit, handed me a machete and said “good fucking luck, kid. Get to the other side.”

The “What now?” question has, admittedly, haunted me (and several of my therapists) over the years. I realized that I kept moving that “big goal” and kept designing my life around getting to it—getting my bachelor’s degrees before I turned 20, moving into my own apartment, getting a better job, moving into a house, getting an even better job, getting married, going to grad school, and, and, and, and—with every single milestone the need to plan for the next one overshadowed the actual joy or pride from meeting my self-prescribed goals. It was always about planning to get to the next thing. Always thinking in future tense.

Early on in our relationship, Jake used to joke that I was better at getting us places and he was better at being there. As time has gone on, this has proven truer and truer and now I reflect on it sadly because I deserved to be present, too. For years, I just couldn’t enjoy what I had worked for because the urge to produce more, consume more, and own more defined my worth and the value of my life. All this time I thought I was living a life honoring my values, but it is clear that the decisions I made and the way I spent my time came from an urge that was not my own. The things I had been seeking to achieve were not things that brought me pleasure, they brought me material gain and made me a more productive member of society. Hooray. Why do I still feel empty?

What gratitude I feel for being able to finally pause, turn inward, and reflect. I cannot imagine what being stuck in that pit of never-doing-enough would have done to my body, mind, and soul. I listened to a podcast recently about the politics of pleasure that imagines what society would look like if we prioritized pleasure over everything else. One of the ideas they shared to practice a life that prioritizes pleasure stuck with me—instead of expanding, complicate. Instead of seeking to consume more, to grow more, to make more money, to have more, instead complicate what you already have. Dig deep into what you already have and find ways to complicate it—make it more interesting. See how you can manipulate it to meet your needs and find pleasure in the creation of something new without having to spend money, work harder, and participate in over-consumption trends.

This was the first Click. Of course, complicate what I already have.

Things Keep Clicking: July 2025

July 26, 2025
Café Nero | Ladbroke Grove London, UK
12:17pm

Today is our last full day overseas. Not going to lie, London kinda blows. It is too noisy, I am so overstimulated all the time, it is too fast, too busy, too much concrete, too much everything. After spending two weeks all up and down Scotland, I really miss the sheep. I will say, it is nice being in a city for the sake of pedestrian accessibility– walking everywhere has been fantastic, sans the fact that this was our first international trip and our backpacks likely weigh 50 pounds.

I thought I would do more writing on this trip, but I really did not want to force it. To celebrate the completion of my graduate degree, we flew to the United Kingdom so that I could walk across the stage and properly graduate in a fancy little hood and cape with the other master’s graduates at Sussex University in Brighton. I did not care much to explore around the cities, so we used this trip as an excuse to do a quiet, magnificent, nature-filled road trip across Scotland to the Isle of Skye. I’ll throw a picture in here for now, but really, someone please hold me to this: I HAVE to write about Scotland. My God, Subhanallah, genuinely some of the most stunning views and experiences I have ever had!

I hope that when I get home, I can find time to write about how wonderful this experience has been [still haven’t yet, oops]. In flipping through my journals from this year, I saw the one I wrote in January about “The Click” and realized, this year things just keep fucking clicking. Things change and have changed and keep changing so much. My interests, my values, my passions, it keeps being refined. I keep getting closer and closer to figuring it out, or at least enjoying the process of figuring it out.

By that I mean, for the first time in my life I want to take seriously things that will not directly benefit my career growth and economic security. Like. I want to actually take my music education seriously– I started guitar lessons a full year ago and still can’t play a single song all the way through. Granted, I never took music in school so this literally feels like learning a foreign language, but it’s fun. I want to want to get good.

I secretly want to become competent enough to make my own music. I’ve secretly always dreamed of whispering my poems over droning guitars and post-punky synths to make soundscapes that mirror how those poems felt to write. I secretly have always wanted to learn how to play drums. Once, when I was eight years old, my sister and I priced out all of our toys at a garage sale to earn enough to buy ourselves a real drum set. I never stop thinking about how much I suck at keeping rhythm and would fail, miserably at the drums, but god, I still want to learn so badly. I want to get good enough to learn how to play Arabic music, to pick up Arabic instruments and somatically understand microtones. Play the Qanun, the Darbuka, get an electric Oud and throw some reverb over playing Fairuz. I want so badly to become familiar in my body with the rhythms that make up my childhood memories of Oum Kalthoum. I want to write about this, seriously, and feel the spark again to simply create and play for creation and play’s sake. Why the fuck not? I am dreaming in eastern-soundscapes over heavy metal breakdowns. I am dreaming of publishing books about it. I am dreaming of really weird guitar pedals and actually knowing how to use them.

Why
the fuck
not?

That’s a clear indicator that things are still Clicking. Six months ago, I could give you a dozen reasons why not. A year ago, probably a hundred reasons why not. Two years ago, I’d probably roll my eyes at the idea of playing music because what a cringey dream to have when you suck at something and you simply do not have the time or patience necessary to not-suck because you’ve got more important things to do, like apply for jobs, worry about your family, and make grocery lists.

When I get home from London, I will have an extra week off before going back to work to decompress. I desperately want to paint.

I want to paint the bed & breakfast we lived in and send a picture of it to the wonderful innkeeper who we befriended. I want to paint the baby Murres that washed up on the beach at Dunnottar Castle and forever immortalize that stinging, beautiful way they were wrapped in kelp like burial shrouds. I want to do it on that wood panel that’s been sitting in my office, empty, void of the “great idea” I have been saving it for. I want to ask my tattoo-artist-turned-best-bud to shave the sides of my head the next time we hang out. I want to make that zine I have been thinking about for months and I want to make it the week I come back. Take it to the library and scan it, print a bunch of color copies, make a bunch of zines, and send it to friends [it wasn’t the week I got back, and the original idea turned into something else completely, but you can find this zine here]. I want to get to know the new friends I have made in community organizing better and apply for the climate workshop they sent me just to see what happens [seriously, shoutout to Joy for convincing me to apply for that climate cohort. I got in and wow, the experience was invaluable and I am so grateful for the friends I made.] I want to send people my art. I want to spend so much more time doing art.

I want to learn how to play Cape Perpetua by Drab Majesty on guitar because I had it on loop over and over again for hours on the plane ride here. I want to get better at making things. By that I mean I want to start making things. Getting them out of my head and into the material world. I want to do. That feels like the biggest Click so far. I have wanted for so long to know how to do. And now, instead, I just want to do.

I Did Not Think Things Would Click More, but Guess What? They Did: December 2025

December 5, 2025
My Office | Spanaway, WA
9:35am

This is Present-Me writing now. December 2025-Me. This section heading kind of feels like a Fall Out Boy song title, doesn’t it? I used to love those long, drawn out, hyphenated, multi-part, emo song titles. Some favorites worth showcasing that I can still somehow remember every single lyric to:

• “There’s a Good Reason These Tables Are Numbered Honey, You Just Haven’t Thought of It Yet” Panic! At the Disco
  • (I definitely thought it was “You Just Haven’t Figured it out Yet,” so this is wild)
• “You Be The Anchor That Keeps My Feet On the Ground, I’ll Be The Wings That Keep Your Heart In The Clouds” Mayday Parade
• “I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me” Fall Out Boy
• “Everything Is Connected and Everything Matters (a Temporary Solution to a Permanent Problem)” Empire! Empire!

This is relevant for a few reasons: first, I think it’s fun. I still listen to a lot of the same music I listened to in middle and high school. It brings me joy and evokes a safe kind of playfulness in a way that not many other things can. Second, because look at my journal titles, all the way back to 2017 on this website. Look at the titles of old poems I have written, examples including:

• Late Nights Usually Mean I am Awake and Alone
• Writing a Love Letter to the Plot of Land that Holds You
• Unforeseen Consequences of Saying Your Name in My Sleep

Or look at some of the actual titles of academic essays I wrote and submitted:

• Democratic Antics & Transportation Technology Traps: How the God Trick has Convinced American Policymakers out of High-Speed Rail
• Revealing Prophetic Patterns in Aquaculture Innovation: Analyzing the Future of Fish Farming Technologies in Washington State

Why am I talking about prophecies in an essay about growing fish on land? Because I am a poet, goddammit. Well, no. It’s actually just because I thought it sounded good at the time. But is that any different from writing poetry? Long titles feel like a special little inside joke between me and the writing. You can throw in a little irreverence in there, give a dry piece some personality. I love it. A compliment to poems that don’t really need a title.

The Click here is a smaller one. Just a realization that the playfulness, the creativity, the “me”, somehow made its way through years of autopilot, years of strangling into boxes that never fit, years of masking, years of complete disassociation. Some little bits made their way through. And it has been such a pleasure getting to greet them when I notice.

I suspect there was a lot that went into all The Clicks, but ultimately understanding that I have shifted from know to do has to be one of the biggest contributions. Diving into the doing for the first time in my life, when all I have known is the “knowing.” Realizing that knowledge, alone, will never be enough to save me. Realizing that I will not be judged on what I knew, but what I did with what I knew. You know?

I have drilled so many incorrect holes in my ceiling to install the light fixture that has been sitting in my office for months because I knew I would fuck it up but, guess what? I have light now. And it looks perfectly fine. I finished the built in bookshelves I started to build and they look fucking great [from a distance] but now I have bookshelves that are magical and gothic as fuck! I built the brand new, bigger chicken coop with my partner that I have been too scared to pick a design for and spent months researching. Yeah, we broke a few screws but, guess what? The chickens don’t care. I finally finished the first of dozens of unpublished zines and spent forever trying to figure out how to get a digital version of it to look decent. I went to a writing conference and actually called myself a writer, despite having no idea what the fuck I was doing there. I have been painting, again. I have been writing, a lot.

I am surprised it has taken me so long to really embody and understand how important the do really is. That it will always be better to do imperfectly, slowly, messily, clumsily. That those tiny, tiny bits of doing are more valuable than having complete knowledge of something. That’s always been the anxiety– always wanting to know enough before doing. That’s been my whole life. Being able to acknowledge and let go of that, even just a little, is astounding to me. I am really proud of myself for getting here.

I started this year knowing something was going to change. I felt it right at the end of last year and spent all of 2025 in a constant state of unrest. None of it felt comfortable and it was strange not knowing when or if it would eventually settle. I suppose the last Click of this year is that it won’t ever settle. There won’t be a single moment of clarity to look forward to, but there will be clarity in each present moment. I feel more creative than I have in a very long time. I feel well, present, alive, and enriched with community connections. This year genuinely does not feel like it has flown by. I feel like I have lived enough lives to fill out a family tree in this year, alone. I have been reincarnated twelve times into a dozen different versions of myself, each more brilliant than the last, more excited to be alive.

I now see that I live somewhere where people know me, and I know them. I have made friends in my neighborhood, a pastor, a mechanic, a grandmother. They bring me fresh grown fruit and history books and I give them fresh eggs and wildflowers from my garden. I live somewhere that I recognize people at the farmers market and I trade fresh eggs for carrot tops for my chickens, pears for flowers, coffee for bread. I live somewhere that friends come and stay late into the night making art with me, painting my hallways and doors and trim with swirls of color that would definitely need to be covered someday if I were to sell this house. I live somewhere that I have turned into a hub for community, where I have hosted more strangers for dinner this year than I have in the last five. Where I have made new friends, connected over music and religion and art and food. I live somewhere that is becoming a kind of woods– I have planted dozens of trees, and keep planting new ones when the little ones die. I have planted meadows and ripped out lawn, I am designing rain tank systems with the county and planning native foods to be sown and grown.

I am doing. And I am doing it here, and now.

I turned 26 in September, but I still echo January-Me: IDK if it’s the frontal lobe thing or what but god damn. Things keep clicking and I can’t imagine they will be stopping anytime soon.