What a fucking decade.
It has been equal parts horrible and equal parts glorious for me. A lot of things came to a violent end: my older brother, my innocence (if you can believe it ever existed), my sex column, my modeling career and my will to live (at least for a time). But there was a lot of creation too: I finally acquired self-confidence, became a PAID writer (praise be), fell in love with both a small hairy comedian and a large hairy myth (a la the legendary Bigfoot) and gave birth to this Hot Alien you see before you, my pride and joy.
Things could have been better and things could have been worse these past 10 years, but one thing is for certain: I’m completely different than the person I was in 2010—a totally-depressed college girl who barely knew what life was like outside of a small town in Maryland. Now I’m a sometimes-depressed 30-year-old in the San Francisco Bay Area who researches ghosts, aliens and mythical animals in her spare time. Remember: Things could be worse.
Seriously though, I’m grateful for much of what this decade has reaped. I’m especially grateful for those who have been reading my work, dutifully checking my blog for new words, asking when my next article will post, urging me to get a book out. Despite the irregularity of my publishing, due in part to what the capitalist overlords call a “full time job,” quite a few of you still write me digital letters of encouragement to keep going—because you want to read me, you say, because you think I’m a good writer.
Really: Thank you. Your support is something I appreciate with each warm and fleeting moment, and I’m thinking of you too.
I have some things in the works for 2020. I won’t go into detail about much now, but know that I will do my best to write carefully-crafted pieces I think you’ll enjoy. I don’t want to produce words for the sake of words and pollute the Internet with more needless, festering, digital detritus—the stuff I see every day in the news feed that makes me wonder why people even give my blog a chance. Again, to all of you who still have faith, thanks. A ton.
Anyway, just dropping in to say hello, and to let you know that despite my bouts of silence, I’m still consumed by the irrevocable itch that’s made me scratch ink into my notebooks since I was three. I don’t know much about what’s to come in the next decade, but I know that I made it out of this one alive. And I’m glad about that.
It’s the first day of a new era, y’all. Welcome to the other side.
All photos by Jessica Buckner-Knai
