I made an impulse decision yesterday. I’m going to blame rereading The Raven Cycle. Or maybe it was just that I looked out at the weeks ahead of me, most people taking off for long weekends as summer closes, and restlessly wanted to join in. For a little while, I looked at Airbnb’s and almost booked one out on the Texas coast, figuring I could write for a couple of nights away from Austin and see the water. Or maybe it was just how knocked off my routine I got this week, feeling low grade ill and more uncomfortable in my skin than I’ve been in a while.
Okay, I really think it’s the reread though. I quoted one of the books when I wrote my Team as Family post a couple of months ago. There are some friendships, some connections, that feed you like none other could. I was starving for so long, that now that I’m hungry (okay, sorry leaning into the food metaphor) I don’t want to wait.
So I bought tickets to go to Boston for a long weekend. Visiting Lin and Cara for a weekend — when I probably wouldn’t have seen them until next May for their wedding, or optimistically in the spring for camping — feels like a gift, a surprise. I forget sometimes, for the things that matter, that I can give those to myself.
I wanted to see my friends, I had the means to do it, I’m going. There didn’t have to be a production. We didn’t have to coordinate a big vacation. I literally just want to go hang out and laugh and maybe cuddle a little and pet their cat, Nasa. But with them, I am irrevocably myself.
I am not living in a pretend state by any means, but there are only so many friends who know how much I’d like it if they wrote a kneecapping scene again (seriously, Lin, you should work that into a future story, so good). And selfishly, I’m going the weekend after my draft deadline — a reward to myself and an opportunity to get feedback in person (if they have time to read it) and cry about how I’ll never be as good of a writer as Maggie Stiefvater.
It’s been nearly three years since I’ve been to Boston, so in a way, it’ll be a homecoming for me as well. It was an impulse decision, but a good one.
With Love,
Natalie