One of the crueler aspects about getting older is that a decade becomes a very real concept. A decade ago I was in my early twenties. I’ve changed since then, but I don’t feel all that different. I’m a more and less recognizable version of the same self. And yet, when I was twenty-two, a decade earlier would have made me twelve. There was nothing to connect those parts of my life. We used to talk in months and years. But now I tell people about things, and it’s a decade apart. I talk about Japan, and Prague, and Chicago. And I’m right there with myself in those moments. But …

I’ve started digging out my old ALA posts from years ago. I had started to republish them earlier, and then became distracted in completing line edits for a novel. The years through 2010 should be easy, they were already on the old site. What surprised me in reading this small stretch of time between leaving Prague and getting settled in Chicago (approx June 2008 through August 2008) is how restrained the posts are. I was clearly going through a quarter life crisis and frantically grabbing at anything that could keep me afloat, and yet in the writing I come off as (somewhat) under control. Specifically, the part about the cruise …