Okay, fine. I’m delusional.

I thought I would never break my early morning routine. For more than 13 years, I’ve been waking up around five in the morning to write. I did it while planning my wedding, I did it while on honeymoon, I did it while on vacation, I did it through tough times, and I did it through good times.

It was the only thing that allowed me to keep writing when my first baby was born and then again when my second baby was born.

But for the past two months, I have been underwater.

It has been tough to reserve any mental space for writing.

We started sleep training our youngest while we potty trained our oldest and moved her to a new room and traveled for fun and for work and lived life at the end of the pandemic, global warming, and let’s never forget late-stage capitalism — which seems to be responsible for the first two and the rest of all the world’s woes (even though I can’t really articulate what it is.) But it is a big deal — that I know.

I haven’t slept as much. So I haven’t done much writing. I haven’t performed as much. I haven’t slept as much. (Did I say this one already? I guess I did). I haven’t read as much. I haven’t tweeted as much.

I tell you what I have been doing along with trying to keep my offspring alive: I have been eating. I have been eating a lot. My emotions are quite tasty. Whatever I’m eating always gets a heaping accouterment of guilt and inadequacy. Yummers!!!

But slowly, I move forward, and I do a little here and a little there, like performing the story below.

Below is a video of my latest story slam which I performed in July at Hotel Petaluma. I won the slam that night, which means I will be performing for the second time at the West Side Stories’ Grand Slam in December.

The story is an abridged version of my essay, Rolling Into Trauma With My Fuchsia and Magenta Unisex Rollerblades.