Sometimes, when I’m feeling frustrated or in a funk, I remind myself that I’m living the life that eight-year-old me dreamed about. I don’t have to live with my parents. I have a loving partner and a nice home where I feel safe. I have cute little dogs who love me. I work at a library. Eight-year-old me would be GOOPED.

And now, I have a book coming out. All that binder paper I scribbled on, all those filled notebooks, all the stories written in the margins of my college notes, all the abandoned word documents, all the google docs, all the ao3 posts. It wasn’t a waste of time! I never thought it was, really, I always just treated it like a hobby. It was something I did for fun, to relax, to process, to feel creatively fueled. My goal was never to become a ~writer~ because I already was a writer. My goal never was to be published because that wasn’t something I was willing to actively pursue. Queries and agents and rejections was never worth it to me. But the universe worked it out for me, somehow. Again, eight-year-old me would be jazzed.

I started at a new work site this week. I went from the biggest, busiest, craziest, most mismanaged library branch to a small, neighborhood branch that is beloved by staff and community alike. I made this choice because I wanted to be able to do the same job that I love but not work so hard. Work smarter, not harder, etc. I don’t know that I’ll stay here forever, because I also hate to get bored, but I’m treating it like it’s the olden times and I’m a hysterical lady being sent to the seaside to recover. Six months or a year at this little branch to recover from seven years in the wild, raging west. Here for a good time, not for a long time.

But maybe I’ll love it. Maybe a sleepier pace will give me room to breathe and allow me to spend more time on creative endeavors instead of always triaging a crisis.

That big, beautiful downtown library was impressive and new but it tends to chew people up and spit them out and I was starting to feel a little bit chewed. The library I am at now was built in 1948 and is little and old-fashioned, but the craziest thing that happened here today was that a bird flew in through a window and took a while to find its way back out. And when it did, everyone in the building cheered and clapped.

You know who would have absolutely loved that? Eight-year-old me.