I was fired from my very first job. Not fired in a dramatic sense—fired in a “quietly taken off the schedule” way. Fired in a “we’re never going to tell you you’re fired” way. Fired in a “you can keep calling and asking when your shifts are but the truth is that you don’t have any and never will again, and no, we’re not going to tell you that, either,” kind of way.

It was a shame, because I actually really liked the job. Despite customer service being soul-sucking and dehumanizing, I like talking with people. Unfortunately, that first job had a lot of expectations for what I should be doing (everything) that were at odds with what I was legally allowed to do (cleaning tables). As a minor with no cash register training and no food handler’s permit, you are, it turns out, not a valuable employee at a fish ‘n chips place, especially when the rest of the staff goes out on a smoke break and leaves you, a wide-eyed 17-year-old, alone to handle the rush.

I still feel kind of bad about it, like I should have tried harder. But I was seventeen, and was far better at that than working in a fish ‘n chips place.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I’ve had Greek mythology on my mind lately after devouring Madeleine Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe. These stories were part of my childhood, but returning to them as an adult, I find so much more than I could have imagined. As a kid, I swallowed them up. As an adult, I find myself wanting to shove my fingers through the cracks and look deeper. I want to look behind the curtain, under the table, out into the dark depths of the forest.

Both of these books take stories that have existed for centuries and broaden them, exploring the edges and pushing at the boundaries. It’s part understanding cultural context, but it’s also universality—Achilles and Patroclus’ relationship in context, yes, but also the timeless concept of desires that don’t quite align. The role of women in Ancient Greece, of course, but also the weight of expectations.

I think that’s why I’ve always been such a sucker for a good myth, well-told. I’m not Persephone, I’m not Artemis, but these stories ignite my curiosity and encourage my imagination because they are still so easy to identify with, even centuries later. The themes are there, even if the context is different.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

While writing The Compendium of Magical Beasts, I thought a lot about monsters and myths and women. In part because my narrator, like me, is the kind of person who would think about those things, and in part because I feel that to leave out discussions of marginalization, even in a book about creatures that probably don’t exist, was to do folklore and history and science a disservice. The chapter on nymphs is one of my favorites for that reason. I could have written a straightforward explanation of what a nymph is and how they live, but there’s more to it than that—call somebody a ‘nymph’ today, and you’re not saying they’re a forest-dwelling spirit. Same with ‘harpy’ or ‘siren,’ both words that meant female monsters, and now mean female monsters in a different way.

According to myth, there are some three thousand oceanids, with only a handful of them being worthy of names and stories. Of those stories, most involve them giving birth, or nursing, or caretaking; there was only one story to be told, and it was told again and again and again.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

One of the strongest ways that anxiety manifests for me is in the ways I think about the future. I’m generally an optimist, but when I’m feeling anxious, I imagine myself with a sort of reverse Midas touch: everything I do, everything I’m involved in, everything I know and love, will crumble by virtue of my involvement.

I’m not a Cassandra; most of these things don’t come true, and if they do, the consequences are never as bad as I imagine them to be. I am, as it turns out, terrible at predicting the future. If anxiety were rational, my acknowledgement of this fact would make it disappear. It doesn’t.

Instead, I have to recognize it for what it is. I don’t know the future. In fact, I don’t want to know the future. I prefer to let things be a mystery, anxiety be damned.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

I have written about the ocean so many times. I would say that I’m running out of things to say about it, and maybe that’s true to an extent, but then I think about the feeling of seeing a humpback whale in the wild, or the way the riptide tries to drag you out to see, or the feeling of turning over a rock to find a crab underneath.

It’s not heard to understand why it’s a potent metaphor. And though it might be borderline cliche, we return to it time and time again, because there is still so much of it unexplored.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.