Hi, loves. 🌿
The December crazies
Well, hi, all!
I’m going to be upfront that December might be a bit of a wash for our Tuesday mornings together? On Christmas day, we leave for Cambridge, England, for seven months — yes, we are going on sabbatical! eeeek! — and the amount of shit that piles up when you are taking your child out of school and putting her in another one and have lived in a warm climate for 6.5 years and now own no warm clothes and you need visas and a place to live and plane tickets and a school uniform and you need to plan the last sleepovers and going-away things and you need to hand over apartment keys and car to others and empty the pantry and you also need a functioning body before you go…. Well, it’s a little chaotic around here. So! All to say: maybe a letter will appear next week? Maybe it won’t? I cannot say. Anyway, send me strength.
I did not anticipate being so overwhelmed before leaving. We aren’t moving — we’ve done that a few times already, and it ain’t easy — and most of the big things are set up (thank you, husband) and people, of course, speak English in the UK (this was not the case when we moved to Austria in 2012) and we have dear, dear friends in London and Oxford and Glasgow and Paris and Berlin and Vienna. We honestly cannot wait. Give me a small city with no car and gloomy mornings and hours to write and endless pubs and friends scattered around Europe we haven’t seen since we left in 2016, please please.
And also: it’s the small things I think about. This is, by the way, why marriage is a very good thing because I am not convinced I could have gotten us visas and I don’t think my husband is convinced he could find us friends. So the small things are getting me now: emptying the bedroom closet for my parents who will stay in LA. Trying to figure out what on earth we will do with nine days before school starts with one kid and no friends and enormous jet-lag. Will I get a new phone? How do we get her uniform and the proper shoes? Will the bed be hard/soft enough for my back? What if I need an acupuncturist there? What if someone gets sick? Will the kid be horribly homesick? Will I? Will I never want to come back? Will I have boots that I can walk around the rain in?
These are the most boring questions on earth but they are the ones that make up everyday life, so they are coming at me in waves. If you see me, please offer me a drink and some chocolate.
In the meantime, I am also thinking about the new year. The new year! In a new place! I will have time to write, finally, and hours of uninterrupted time because my kid will be at school and my phone will be dormant because everyone I know across the world will be asleep until at least noon my time, so I am trying to tell myself that I am on a writing fellowship and to act accordingly, AKA, write the fucking thing. Please keep me to it.
But also: maybe you want to write in the new year? Or you need a jolt of creativity or time for yourself? Or you just want to read some gorgeous poems and have them move through you? We had the most joyous time at Summer School last July and August and Winter Creativity Camp will be just the same: bi-weekly poems and prompts, a loving warm community of writers cheering you on, little craft talks, so much joy and encouragement for (only!) four short weeks. We all cried at the end-of-summer reading. Truly. Give yourself the time to reset with us.
This is some low stakes, high-reward shit — open and welcoming to everyone, “writers” and “non-writers,” whatever that means — so please come on and join us. You can read all about it and sign up here! It will make me feel so connected to read your beautiful, painful, challenging, hilarious words.
Sending love,
Abs xxx
✨ Creativity Camp folks! If you sign up, please request access on Instagram @abbyscreativitycamp. Then you can follow everyone else! ✨