'Toit Nups' and Building a Forest Giant (Instead of a Life Plan)

Married, scattered, slightly feral — building strange things anyway.

The tequila bottle is officially empty (and several other full ones now sit crammed into our tiny bar cart), the decorations are boxed up (or still missing—where did those creamer tins go?), the vows spoken (now tiny slips of paper tucked away for a shadow box project I’m saving for a rainy day).

In short: The wedding is over (read Nina’s recap here — as our officiant, no less).

I’m no longer a bride with a mile-long to-do list—I’m a married person with a head full of static and a calendar with strange little holes here and there.

So, what’s next?

It’s not that I don’t have tasks to fill those gaps. My schedule could easily be jammed up again. It is jammed up again.
I’m back in the rhythm of a job I didn’t really want but needed—because even micro weddings aren’t cheap, and practicality doesn’t care about your passions. I tell myself that all the time and energy I poured into the wedding (a massive, magical production helmed almost entirely by my mother and me) can now be funneled into something else. Something that matters in a deeper, longer-term way: the programs I’m building out with Nina, the writing I’ve been aching to return to, etc.

That’s the simple answer.
But I’ll be damned if it’s that easy.

Sure, I’m writing. I wrote yesterday. I wrote last week. I’ve entered contests and I’ve written plenty of flash and micro fiction. I’ve been writing.
But not with focus, not with direction.

The other day, I had this thought: what if I scrapped my whole novel and just… started over?
Page one. Clean slate.
I know the characters. I could do it.
Part of me is feral with excitement for fresh meat.
But another part panics, shrinks, says: You’re kidding, right? You’re just gonna toss it all and start over? Are you insane?

To which I reply: Maybe. I don’t know.

These days, writing the novel feels less like building a house and more like tossing puzzle pieces into the air. I'm writing what I feel in the moment, and while that isn't useless, it’s hard to tell what fits where.
I have this idea that if I can just get all the pieces outside of me, I can rearrange them into a final picture.
Though I’m starting to suspect the final picture is one of those "expert-level" puzzles—swirls of color and abstract chaos—where even when it’s finished, it doesn’t actually look finished.

What I do know is this:
I want an art studio.
I want to overpay for a space where I can sprawl. I want to hot glue wood scraps together, wrap them in torn-up dresses I found at estate sales, and layer on plaster, acrylics, and spray foam until I’ve built a fleet of forest giants.
A small army of walking stick walkers.
Silent company to stand guard while I find my way back to the page.

Something tactile. Something strange and freeing.
Weird little sentinels to keep me company as I write in the in-between moments.
To hold space when I need bursts of creativity that aren’t words—to relieve the tension, the self-doubt, the expectation.

But even in that dream, I know what I’m circling back to: structure.

And that’s the Virgo in me, right?
"Let’s start a calendar."
"I know what will help—a list!"
"We only have five projects going. A sixth will really hit the spot, you know?"

Sometimes it works beautifully.
Other times, it leads to piles on every surface—or me digging under the back left leg of the dresser for a hair tie I know is there, because I took a mental snapshot three days ago and filed it away for future use.

To which my husband (hehe) gives me a blank stare and a tiny shake of his head, likely thinking, what have I married?

Speaking of my husband:
The other day I came home to find him sitting on the couch, sipping red wine and watching basketball. I was tearing into some leftover shredded chicken from the fridge when he leaned over and said, “I was thinking.”

And I mean, come on, one of the main reasons I married him was for his thoughts, so of course I closed the fridge and said, “Yes?”

“You should read more.”
“I was just thinking that on my drive home!”
“You’re a writer. You need to read more!”
“I know! I haven’t been doing it enough lately. You’re right.”

And then I went back to eating more chicken and he went back to sipping his wine.

I have three books on my bedside table.

The first is the full collection of The Lord of the Rings (the one where all three books are crammed into a single volume that looks wildly impressive but then you’re shocked to find the font is normal-sized, if not slightly larger, and so you just kind of stare at the words for a moment trying to understand how that could possible translate from the big books with tiny font? Anyway, I digress…).
It was the week before the wedding, and I was visiting my parents, trying to tie up loose ends. I said, “Hey Dad, mind if I borrow LOTR?”
He said, “Which one?”
I said, “All of them.”
He said, “Yeah, go for it.”

So I walked into the library, found it—and when I pulled it off the shelf, it was covered in sticky note tabs. I chuckled, realizing I’d forgotten about my own overly ambitious undergrad project when I did a close-reading of The Fellowship of the Ring. (And then an even more ambitious final project involving The Silmarillion at the end of the term).

My mom walked into the room, saw the book in my hands, and said, “Why the hell do you have that out?”
“To read,” I said.
She laughed—really laughed—and said, “NOW?”

She was right, of course.
I got home, put it on the bedside table... and haven’t cracked it open since.

After our tiny version of a honeymoon—a couple days alone on the coast—I looked at that big ol’ book and thought, I need something lighter first.
I scanned my bookshelf and found nothing that sparked anything (it happens; don’t judge) until I pulled out Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh.
I threw on sandals and shades, plopped myself into a sun-baked wicker chair out front, and dove in.

But then work roared back in, as it does.
Hiring new employees. Drawing new signage. Recording new reels for marketing. Writing out class structures for our flash writing courses (won’t you join us!?) launching in May.
And the book slipped into the shadows—like Gollum slinking back into the caves.

Yesterday was my dad’s 73rd birthday.
My husband, my stepson, and I piled into the car with the dogs and drove down the hill to celebrate.
I’d ordered him a loom for his birthday, but since it hadn’t arrived (thank you, Amazon, for lying about delivery dates), I checked his wishlist—and saw Antidote by Karen Russell. (And we all know how much I love Karen Russell. Swamplandia! review right heeere.)

Luckily, the book arrived just in time. (I assured him the loom will come later.)
Talking about Russell led to a conversation about her short story collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove and how lately it’s been hard—for both of us—to find the attention span for big, sprawling novels.

So that’s where the three books come from. Sitting patiently on my bedside table:
From bottom to top: LOTR, Eileen, and Vampires in the Lemon Grove.

Eileen is still whispering in the back of my mind, in that brilliantly sharp older-woman voice recalling her younger years. (It’s subtle but it’s there, and isn’t that incredible?). I’m invested. I’m eager to indulge. But maybe it’s time to crack open a short story or two and get the creative juices moving again.

Because—and it’s funny, really—throughout writing all of this, I’ve lathered myself into a full-on creative tussle.
I’ve gone from feeling overwhelmed, to organized and confident, back to wanting to hide in an artist’s hole somewhere—making art purely for the sake of making art.

(And isn’t that hard now, too? It feels like everything has to be a hustle—a side hustle, a straight hustle, a monetized moment. (Check out my etsy shop hah!) But why can’t we just make art to make art? Isn’t that where the best stuff comes from, anyway?)

So that’s where I am now, I guess.

Maybe I’ll start the novel from scratch.
Maybe I’ll go hunting for an affordable studio space to share with another artist friend.
Maybe I’ll draft a few more emails for work (any of the works, all of the works).
Maybe I’ll make a master list, stare at it, and run out of time before tackling anything.
Maybe I’ll edit some more wedding photos.

Or maybe—
Maybe I’ll just sit in the sun for a minute, crack open a short story, and let myself begin again.