There are very few things I’ve been able to dedicate myself to. I’ve always had a fear of commitment, which for me is actually a fear of boredom. Worse, I think it may actually be a fear that anything I enjoy, anything I care about, will eventually turn sour. Nothing can last forever.

I have always loved music, but have never loved it enough to make it. I took band in middle school and spent a year learning the trumpet. I got bored with it and switched to the clarinet. I got bored with that, and instruments are expensive, so I quit music.

Nothing can last forever, I told myself, though never in words. When I imagined my future, it was never fixed. It wasn’t just different every time—even one vision of what I might be like shifted from one thing to another. My future self was always in a state of transition.

There will always be a part of me that wants to run away to the woods, but, looking back, I see how much of me was always here, how many of those imagined versions of the future were based in fear. I haven’t gotten bored yet. I may not play any instruments, but at least I have that.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I didn’t always know how to cook. I didn’t always love cooking, either—in fact, there are many days where I don’t love cooking. It’s time-consuming and messy. Things don’t always turn out right. I will almost always forget a key ingredient.

But I do love food. I have always loved food, even back when I ate the same few things over and over again. I like to play with food, sometimes to the point of disgusting everyone around me—grapes and ranch dressing do not go together, and there is such a thing as too much garlic salt on popcorn (though I maintain that that was not actually my fault).

Part of loving food, for me, is learning how it works. So I screw up recipes weekly, buy regular ol’ Bumblebee instead of fancy Italian canned tuna, mistake anchovies for sardines. Most of the time, it turns out fine. When it doesn’t, I curse and startle the dog and eat it anyway, a lesson learned.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

It’s always been easy for me to believe in things. Too easy, most of the time; I spent a not-insignificant portion of my life afraid of inhaling spirits in graveyards and fearing that thinking “Bloody Mary” in a mirror might cause a violent ghost to appear. I don’t really believe them anymore, but sometimes I do, because it’s easy to believe things when you’re afraid or alone or uncertain. I try not to let fear impact the things I do, but it’s much harder to stop it from impacting the things I think. I keep trying, hoping I’ll do better tomorrow.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I have always loved reading descriptions of food, so much so that it was a shock to me to find out that other people didn’t like it. I’m happy to read loving descriptions of foods I’m familiar with, foods I’ve never food up, foods that don’t actually exist. More simply put: I love food, and I love descriptive writing (a thing I find myself woefully inadequate at), and I will therefore cherish your George R. R. Martin feasts, your Audrey Niffenegger meals, your Brian Jacques rations.

I don’t have anything more substantial to add here; this is simply an unpopular opinions post about how much I love food writing. Carry on.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I’ve written about blackberries more times than I can count. They’re an invasive species. They prick you and draw blood. They grow and grow, unstoppable.

And yet, I love them anyway. Not just because they produce delicious fruit, but because they are what they are—resilient, monstrous, prickly. I used them as a positive metaphor once and was told the metaphor didn’t work. I’m thinking about getting a tattoo of a blackberry bush on my forearm.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I like being an only child. I never had to compete for attention. I developed an appreciation for being alone; if I’m too social too frequently, I get this horrible craving for being alone that turns me into a monster. I don’t know if that’d be different if I had a sibling growing up. But I’ve always had this curiosity about what it’s like to have someone close-ish to you in age who was always present. Would I be better at frequent socializing, if that’s how I’d been raised?

Who knows. It’s a relationship I don’t have, and while I don’t feel at all like there’s some gaping hole in my life where a sibling ought to go, it does bother me a big that it’s an experience that I can’t ever really have. I just have to imagine, which, while not necessarily a bad thing, always feels like it misses the mark.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.