This year, I have been trying to be good to myself. A month has gone by and I’ve written just one drabble, which is a sign that it’s working.

But having one this month, is also a sign that it’s working. People talk a lot about filling their creative wells, about taking time away from work to recharge. I’ve been trying to do more of that, spending more time with books I love and less with work. Sometimes anxiety gets the best of me and I don’t succeed, and other times work becomes the fun thing, as it did when I covered Global Game Jam a couple weeks ago.

I’m trying to find balance. Some weeks are better than others—this one, so far, is going well. Last week went poorly. I’m sure I’ll fluctuate through the rest of the year as I experiment with things that work and many of them blow up in my face, but for now I feel good. Peaceful. Cared for.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I still have dreams about the island where I grew up. There’s some half-true version of it in my mind, where everything is both bigger and smaller, where everything is the same and entirely different. There are large fields of grass where there should be a highway, and the ocean extends forever instead of butting up against the other landmasses nearby. But the ocean is shallow, and you can walk out and out and out and the water will never go above your waist.

I return there again and again when I sleep, running over these imaginary fields, stepping into a shallow ocean that never ends. Even when the dreams are nightmares—they often are—there’s something comforting about returning to this place that I know so well despite it being entirely unfamiliar.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

It’s been a while since I last found time to write a drabble. Or rather, it’s been a while since I found time to post—I think I wrote this one two weeks ago, but failed to actually read through and schedule it.

I’m not particularly sorry, either. It used to be that missing a week would have made me impossibly stressed, despite these drabbles not getting a lot of views and the likelihood of somebody coming to yell at me about it being slim. Still, I think a lot about what I owe to others, about what I promise, about what I’m allowed.

Writing these short stories every week started as an exercise. A writer should have a blog, according to my English professors, but what could I blog about? I should get used to having my fiction read by others, but how? Can I dedicate the time every week to train myself to post with regularity?

I could, it turns out. And I still can, when it’s a priority. But writing these was once my primary way to put my writing in front of people and isn’t anymore. Now, these 100-word stories are a respite from whatever I’m working on, a place to flex my creative muscles and challenge myself. This blog so far might have sounded like I’m leading up to saying that drabbles are going away forever while I focus on, I don’t know, more “important” work, but they’re not. I like them, and I like what they force me to do, so I’ll keep doing them—though perhaps with more lapses, because as it turns out, a writer should have a blog, but that blog is practice for other things that may have to take precedence.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I don’t know a lot about religion. It wasn’t part of my upbringing, and my brushes with it were… let’s go with unpleasant, which is more about me and my state of mind at an impressionable age than with any individual religion.

Whatever my feelings about it, I find discussing religion fascinating. I don’t mind it when proselytizers come to my door, provided they’re not going to badmouth the poor or anybody else right to my face (I say this because it’s happened; that particular missionary isn’t welcome at my door any more). I like hearing about peoples’ beliefs, about what brings them hope. I don’t have to believe the same things to connect with others about my need for solace and guidance and hope.

I don’t really have anything I’m getting at, here. I think that things that bring us hope are good, provided they don’t bring us hope at the expense of others, which I feel should be obvious but unfortunately isn’t. I don’t know if I believe the world will ever be as good as I can imagine it to be, but it’s important to me to imagine it anyway.

Here’s a drabble.

Like many people, I don’t like heights. The moment I reach the top of a building–let’s be honest, the moment I reach the top of a ladder–my knees go weak. Not in the romantic way; in the way that feels like I’ve lost control of my body. I picture myself falling, imagine the sick feeling in my stomach of missing a stair but it goes on and on as I plummet six feet, or ten, or twenty, and so on.

It’s not the worst fear to have, thankfully. I can mostly avoid extreme heights, and roller coasters go fast enough that I barely notice the drop. I honestly wonder what it’s like to not be afraid of falling off of even the smallest distances, but I suppose I’m better off not finding out.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I started a newsletter! You can sign up for it using the box on the sidebar.

In my first newsletter, I talked about voice, and how I never feel like I’ve really found mine. Or if I have found it, how it doesn’t satisfy me. I envy writer of lyrical prose, the kind of writers whose words get stuck in your head like music. The ones who play with sounds and meaning to craft sentences that are works of art individually, but also parts of a larger tapestry.

Since the only way to get better at something is to practice at it, that’s what I’m doing. It might not be to my incredibly high standards for myself (nothing ever is), but it certainly won’t be if I don’t attempt it.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

‘Anathema’ is one of those words I’m convinced is pronounced differently than it is. Both uh-NATH-uh-muh and ANNA-theme-uh sound equally nice to me, to the point that I’m never entirely certain which is which. Thankfully, it’s not a word I use in conversation much.

The concept is something I think about, though. When I was a kid, I used to think I was cursed (and since we played around at witchcraft, the idea made far too much sense to me). If enough bad things happened to me, a curse was the most logical explanation. It was too much to ask of a nine- and ten-year-old Melissa to conceive of a world that is randomly cruel, so magic and curses made more sense.

I’m not cursed. I don’t think I am. Strange things tend to happen to me, but they’re not all bad. Not a curse, just life.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.