#now i’m imagining the fellowship on a bus

[silme-lorien]

aragorn the type of guy to sit in the front seat on the bus and talk to the driver

[halfagonyandhope]

ignite the stars │ch. 21

first chapter (x); previous chapter (x)

Satine Kryze is an internationally-recognized scholar in genocide studies who recently resigned from the Department of State over her concerns regarding the agency's ethics. Ben Kenobi is a tenured professor at Georgetown University studying the use of religion to justify military conflicts. Once high school sweethearts, the two haven't spoken since parting ways for university. That is, until Satine accepts a research fellowship - at Georgetown.

---

Ben is waiting for her at baggage claim. Satine grins at him as he wraps his arms around her, and it’s a homecoming twice over.

He knows she didn’t check any bags, so they bypass the throngs of disgruntled travelers waiting around the carousels. Though he has his own travel bag on his back, he takes hers as well, putting it on one shoulder, and his free hand grabs hers.

“How was your drive?” Satine asks.

“Better than flying,” says Ben. “The timing was convenient, too - I just returned the rental car half an hour ago, so I wasn’t waiting long.”

Satine nods. “Good.” She smiles. “And how was your job talk?”

“As smooth as I could have hoped for,” Ben says. “I just hope Anakin managed not to lose his PowerPoint remote in the meantime - it’s not like he could borrow mine when I was at Princeton.”

“I’m sure he was fine,” says Satine as they begin to navigate their way to the Metro. “Eventually, you know, he’ll have to survive without you.”

“Oh, I know he was fine,” says Ben. “You’ve heard Anakin talk; you know he could lecture without a PowerPoint. It’s his students I’d be worried about. Can you imagine following his train of thought without bulleted notes to keep him on track?”

“I can, but I’d prefer not to,” Satine says, and Ben just laughs. As they wait for their train to arrive, she turns to Ben. “What is Anakin planning to do after his postdoc ends? That’ll be in May, right?”

But at that moment, Ben’s phone chimes, signaling an incoming call from Anakin himself. Satine tenses, knowing what the call will likely be.

Ben puts the phone to his ear. Before he even greets Anakin, Anakin is already talking.

“Let me know what I can do,” says Ben. “And if you need anything.” And he hangs up. “Padma went into labor,” he confirms. “So, to answer your question: I think Anakin couldn’t care less about what he does after his postdoc ends. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that it’s basically ended now. He’ll take paternity leave, but I kind of wonder if he’ll come back after that.”

Their train arrives at that moment, and they board a car that’s not too empty nor too full.

“You’re taking over one of his classes?” says Satine as they sit down together.

“As is Ventress,” says Ben. “He gets six weeks’ leave, which I don’t think is nearly enough - especially for twins. But like I said, he might decide just not to come back. So I may be more than 100% FTE for the rest of the semester.” He shrugs. “At least it’s a class I’ve taught before. No prep work involved.”

“What should we get them?” Satine asks. “I’d imagine Padma has pretty much everything she’d need, but it still feels like we should bring them something.”

“She had a baby shower before you two became close,” confirms Ben. “So let’s just plan on prepping some meals for them. You can’t go wrong with food. I think they’ll be thrilled.”

He grabs her hand again as the doors to the train close, and they are pulled away from the station.

---

On Sunday, Satine and Ben get back on the Metro to head toward Embassy Row, each carrying a bag of frozen meals in one hand. They end up taking a cab after disembarking at Dupont Circle, as waiting around for a bus transfer would take too long, and the walk is too far.

When they arrive, Anakin opens the door, looking exhausted but immensely happy. Like he’d done the last time they visited, he embraces them both as they walk in, noticing belatedly that they are both carrying bags of food. He grabs all four bags from them and ushers them into the kitchen. He unpacks the bags with a look of awe. “There must be hundreds of dollars worth of meals in here,” he says as he plays Tetris with the freezer. “Thank you both.” Shutting the door to the freezer, he gives Ben and then Satine another hug. “You are definitely the cool uncle and auntie.”

Satine returns the embrace. 

“Come on,” Anakin says. “Padma’s awake upstairs. And I want you to meet the twins.”

And he leads them up the stairs, into the brightly colored nursery. 

Padma is currently seated, rocking one baby, but her eyes light up as Ben and Satine enter the room. She moves to stand up, but Satine places a hand on her shoulder. “No need to get up on our behalf,” she says. “How are you?”

“Amazing,” says Padma, and Satine thinks she is practically glowing. Satine's eyes flicker over to the crib, where the other baby lies. “The doc said it was the easiest delivery of twins she’d ever done. I’m just very, very grateful.” She shifts slightly so that Satine and Ben can better see the swaddled infant. “This is Leia.”

“She’s a handful already,” grumbles Anakin, but there’s a fondness in his voice that he can’t hide. “You want to hold her, Ben?”

And without waiting for his reply, Anakin picks up Leia and deposits her into Ben’s arms. Leia blinks up at him, her brown eyes searching.

“Very discerning already,” notes Ben with a chuckle.

“Behave,” Anakin says pointedly to Leia. “You want to get on Uncle Ben’s good side. Especially if we’re counting on him to babysit at some point.” He scratches his head. “We probably should have started you both with Luke. He’s usually better behaved than she is.”

Satine laughs softly at this. “I don’t know,” she says. “Leia’s doing perfectly well with Ben. What a princess.”

Padma smiles. “I think that description is more apt than you realize,” she says, laughing, while Anakin picks up Luke.

“Here, Satine,” says Anakin, and Satine’s arms are suddenly weighed down with warmth. Luke blinks at her with wide blue eyes.

She breathes in, pressing her lips to the wispy thin hair on the top of his head. “They both really are perfect,” she says, looking over at Ben, who is still watching Leia with awe.

Satine thinks she recognizes that expression: it’s the one he wears when he looks at her.

And the one she wears when she looks at Ben.

---

That Tuesday, Satine eats lunch with Asajj at one of the outdoor tables on campus, and Asajj tells her about her fieldwork from over the summer. She’s yet to fully analyze it, but she thinks it’s strong enough to warrant a full manuscript as opposed to separate journal articles.

“If you’d like,” says Satine, “I’d be happy to connect you with my publisher. I know they’re looking for book proposals at the moment.”

“I’d appreciate that,” says Asajj. “Thank you.” She pauses, pushing her empty lunchbox to the side. “So how is self defense training coming along? I assume you and Kenobi continued throughout the summer?”

Satine smirks. “Well, Ben says I’m doing well, but he’s also got a terrible blind spot when it comes to me. So I’d say I’m progressing perfectly adequately. I mean, it was enough, you know, last spring.”

Asajj nods. “You never heard anything else about Malek, did you? Or anything from Title IX?”

Satine shakes her head.

“You could sue them, you know,” says Asajj. “I assume you took screenshots or saved emails or something when you submitted your complaint to the Title IX office?”

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” Satine says. “But with everything else - ” 

She gestures vaguely at the air.

“ - it’s just been rather low on my triage list.”

“I understand,” says Asajj. “If or when you do decide to take it further, you have me as a witness to the aftermath. I saved the texts and everything.”

Satine nods, her throat suddenly tight. Asajj seems to understand her unspoken thank you.

Asajj changes the subject. “My new grad student this year is interested in doing mixed methods work. Would it be okay if I gave them your email address so you can assist with the qual stuff?”

“Absolutely. Just give them warning that I’m really not sure where I’ll be come next semester. I’m happy to help virtually even if I end up somewhere else, but some students may not prefer that.”

“That won’t be a problem,” says Asajj. “Thanks. She has a lot of potential. She’s from Aotearoa - she’s Māori - and she brings good experience to the table. A little green still, but I’ll train her up.”

Satine nods. “We both will.” She smiles, crossing one arm over the other as she leans against the table, and her ring sparkles in the sunlight.

Asajj’s eyes are drawn to the ring. “That reminds me,” she says, bending down to rummage through her bag. She withdraws what appears to be a folded-up blanket. It’s mostly steel blue but interspersed through the blue are white geometric patterns, and it’s breathtaking.

Asajj passes it to her.

“Vos and I felt bad about missing your engagement party,” she says. “So we wanted to get you and Kenobi something instead.”

“You didn’t need to - ”

Asajj smiles. “I know.”

Satine opens up the blanket to examine it more closely.

“In many Indigenous cultures,” says Asajj, “blankets are an important type of gift. They’re often given at life milestones, like graduations or weddings or births. I saw this one this past summer while in the field and thought of you and Kenobi.”

Satine pulls the fabric toward her, speechless.

“I’m glad you’re here, Satine,” says Asajj. “This place…this is your home, too.”

It takes a moment for Satine’s vocal cords to begin working again. “Thank you,” says Satine. “I’ll treasure it.”

The bell in the tower over at Healy Hall chimes, and Asajj sighs. “I’ve got to get going - class to prep. Still on for Friday, though?”

Satine nods at her. “Count on it.”

---

The following week, Satine finishes the first draft of her book and sends it to her publisher. Just as she’s finishing sending the files, a knock sounds at her door. Satine looks up.

“Ahsoka! Come in. I want to hear all about data collection.”

There’s a calm and composure to Ahsoka that hadn’t been there in the spring, Satine immediately notices, as Ahsoka sits in the chair in front of Satine’s desk and tells her about the highlights of her summer. Fieldwork, Satine reflects, often has that effect.

Eventually, Ahsoka says, “I got a small grant from the department so I could send my interviews to be professionally transcribed. So I’m waiting on the transcripts, but those should be back sometime next week.”

Satine is impressed and tells Ahsoka so. “That’s fantastic, especially for a second year master’s student,” she adds.

Ahsoka grins. “Thanks,” she says. She leans forward. “I was wondering if I could go over the first draft of my codebook with you. I’ve already worked with Ben on it a bit, but I thought you’d have some insights.”

Satine nods, clearing a space on her desk, and Ahsoka places her laptop there. “What do you have so far?”

Ahsoka brings up the document. “Ben suggested a mix of inductive and deductive coding. Obviously each has their strengths, but I can’t do a completely open coding project because I simply don’t have enough person hours available to code that. So I need something more structured, but not structured enough that I’m missing insights because of my preconceived structure and biases.”

Satine rests her chin on her hand, her elbow on her desk. “He’s right, of course. But don’t tell him I said that.”

Ahsoka laughs.

Satine gives her a smile. “Can you pull up your interview guide as well? I’d like to see the questions you asked. Then we can make sure your codes cover everything.”

Ahsoka nods, turning her attention back to the laptop as she navigates to another document.

Behind her, Ben walks past the door. He catches Satine’s eye and shoots her a grin.

---

Satine and Ben fly to Paris the following Monday evening.

It’s a long flight, only helped slightly by the fact that it is overnight. Neither of them manage to sleep much, however, and they land in Paris on Tuesday in the early afternoon feeling jet-lagged. Since the conference won’t start until the following day, they decide to drop their bags at the hotel and then wander around, desperately trying to stay awake.

Ben, having grown up so close to Paris, has visited before, but he doesn’t remember much of the city from so long ago. Satine is more familiar, having been on holiday a few times with her adoptive parents when she lived in Norway. They try to avoid too many of the touristy stops, but Ben insists on seeing the Eiffel Tower, and Satine will not be dissuaded from visiting the catacombs.

As they follow their tour guide past walls of skulls underground, Ben doesn’t let go of Satine’s hand, and his discomfort is obvious. “Marry an anthropologist, they said,” he mutters. “It will be fun, they said.”

Satine just snickers.

The conference begins the next morning, and while they mostly stick together, they occasionally go their separate ways to catch different presentations of interest held in opposite parts of the conference building. Satine runs into a couple of colleagues from Northwestern and spends a happy few hours catching up with them, genuinely excited to learn where their careers have taken them since she’d finished her postdoc.

On Thursday, Ben gets a call from Princeton: while they were immensely impressed with his credentials and his job talk, they have chosen another candidate.

“Are you okay?” asks Satine as they sit together at an outdoor table at a café to escape the hustle of the conference and allow him room to breathe.

He sips his tea. “I think so,” he says. “It’s not like I really wanted the job; I just wanted to find a job with you. And we’ll still be able to make that happen.”

Satine nods. “We will,” she agrees. “Also, I feel obligated to say that it’s their loss. They don’t know what they’re missing.”

Ben shrugs. “I know it’s not personal. Like you said, they may have had an internal candidate in mind already. At the very least, it was good experience.” He takes a bite of croissant. “When are you supposed to hear back from Harvard?”

“Literally any day now,” Satine admits. 

And she does - the very next day.

She’s seated in the audience as the next speaker takes the podium, Ben at a different presentation, when her phone vibrates. Before the speaker can begin, Satine slips from the room and closes the door behind her, careful not to interrupt the presentation.

She answers the call with tempered expectations. It has been a while since her on campus interview, and in her experience, usually that means HR has offered the position to the first choice candidate, who is taking their time to negotiate. HR, in the meantime, bids their time in telling the other candidates - because if the first candidate falls through, they can move onto the next candidate without needing to inform them that they were the second choice.

“Dr. Kryze?”

“This is she,” says Satine.

The caller introduces themself and then continues. “I’m so sorry about the delay in our response,” they say. “It took longer than we anticipated to get everything approved by the university, considering we wanted both you and your fiancé.”

Despite her best efforts, Satine cannot help but feel her hopes rise as the caller continues.

“We’d like to extend a formal offer for you and Dr. Kenobi to join us at Harvard in the spring.”

Satine nearly drops the phone.

“I’m honored and speechless,” says Satine breathlessly, after she's pulled herself together. “Thank you so much.”

“I take it you’re open to seeing the offer then? Or I guess I should say offers.”

“Yes, please,” says Satine, still giddy.

“I’ll send some paperwork via email for you and your fiancé to review, then. If you have questions, feel free to reach out; I’ll be happy to answer them. I’ll also include information on the relocation allowance, as well as benefits like health insurance and retirement contributions.”

“Thank you so much,” says Satine. “I look forward to receiving everything.”

The call ends quickly after that, and Satine leans against the wall in the hallway.

She can stay. 

She can stay with Ben.

She covers her mouth with her hand, hardly daring to believe it.

Then she texts Ben to meet her in the hotel room.

They have a lot to celebrate.

---

The next morning, Satine is seated in the back of a panel presentation. The room is about half-full, with most of the audience toward the front. Ben is listening to another panel, and she’s grateful, in a way - she’s still on a high from hearing back from Harvard the night before, and how they’d celebrated afterward, that she doesn’t think she’d be able to keep her hands to herself.

Satine peruses the conference program, planning out which sessions she’d like to attend next.

Suddenly, a man sits next to her. Satine is immediately on guard - it’s against etiquette to choose a seat so close to someone else when so many seats are available - and she turns to look at the man.

She doesn’t know him by name, but - like Malek - she has seen him before. 

He’s also a member of the Secretary of State’s “privy council”.

“I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure of being introduced,” says the man in a low, wheezy voice. “I’m Gunnar Greeves.”

Satine’s eyes narrow. This name she does know, even if she hadn’t been able to link it to a face. He’d served as a general in the American army before becoming an advisor to SecState. Satine is familiar with his strategics across various conflicts.

She hadn’t agreed with any of them.

“I wish I could say it was a pleasure,” Satine mutters.

“Oh, don’t be like that,” says Greeves. “After all, I’m doing you a favor.”

He begins to cough.

COPD from smoking, thinks Satine, if the smell of cigarettes on him is any indication. Heart failure in more ways than one, apparently.

“I think you and I have different definitions of that term.”

“Perhaps,” admits Greeves. 

“Look, let’s forgo niceties,” says Satine sharply, her voice still low. “You’re here to deliver a message from Palpatine, correct? So deliver your message and be on your way.”

Greeves sighs, coughing again. “Very well. The Secretary wants to give a final reminder. He’s already approved the keynote address you’ve prepared. He hopes there will be no deviations.”

“Or what?” says Satine. “He’ll tell Customs to prevent my entry back?”

Greeves just holds her gaze, and it’s all the confirmation she needs.

Eventually, he speaks again, voice so quiet that Satine can barely hear it. 

“Your ability to travel freely between countries is not the only thing at risk here,” he says. “It would be a shame if that speech were to come between you and your fiancé.” The first sentence he manages to complete entirely without coughing, but he barely gets out the last word of the second sentence before beginning to struggle for breath.

Satine turns her head sharply to the front of the room so that Greeves cannot read her expression.

He doesn’t have to explain further.

If Satine goes off-script, she’ll be blocked from entering America again, forcing her to return to Norway. If she goes off-script, the Secretary will pull strings so that Ben cannot join her in Norway.

“Message received,” whispers Satine.

“Then good day, Ms. Kryze,” says Greeves, and he stands to exit the room, not bothering to mitigate the noise of the door he slams behind him as he leaves, startling the panelists.

Satine just stares resolutely ahead, even well after the panel has ended.

---

All too soon, the morning fades to day, and the day to evening.

Satine is exhausted. She’d gone from the elation of the call from Harvard to the devastation of the encounter with Greeves to the high of another email that afternoon - and the latter two she hasn’t yet shared with Ben.

Satine is also drained from a week of perpetually needing to be “on” - needing to smile on cue, needing to be gracious whenever someone approaches her at the conference, needing to prevent herself from rolling her eyes during a presentation when the researcher explains his rationale for using the wrong statistical analysis.

She and Ben laugh about this, out on the balcony of their hotel room. It’s a small balcony, really just large enough to fit one person comfortably. But that’s irrelevant, really, when his arms are around her waist and her back is pressed against his chest, the warmth from his skin fighting off the cool of the brisk autumn evening air. Paris is alive beneath them, the City of Love bustling with activity and sound. They aren’t all that far from the Norwegian Embassy, fairly close to the Champs-Élysées; they can see the Arc de Triomphe lit up in the distance. Satine wishes she had more time.

More time in Paris, more time with Ben - just more time.

“I’m not a quant person, and even I knew that,” Satine says, referring to the stats gaffe, and he chuckles into her neck. Satine rests her hand over his, twining their fingers together. “I got an email today,” she tells him.

He kisses the bare skin of the crook of her neck. “Hardly surprising; each day you must receive dozens.”

Satine hopes he can’t feel the way her pulse races. She breathes in.

“This one was from the NSF.”

She looks at him over her shoulder, taking in his furrowed brow.

“Back in April,” Satine explains, “I applied for the Faculty Early Career Development Program grant.”

Ben’s confusion grows more obvious.

“I didn’t tell you because it was a long shot,” she admits. “It seemed incredibly unlikely that I even had a chance to get it.”

Satine breathes out.

“I got it,” she says. “I got the grant, Ben.”

His confusion switches instantly to a rush of other emotions: elation, excitement, awe, and then, finally, pride. Ben turns her around so that they are face-to-face, his hands now resting on her hips. Then his eyes search hers.

“You got it?” he whispers, and it’s like he’s afraid to speak the words out loud for fear of banishing them.

She nods. “It’ll fund five years of my salary at an institution of my choosing. I can stay at Georgetown.” She clears her throat. “We can stay at Georgetown.”

He just gapes at her, jaw slack, and she thinks it may be one of the rare occasions in which she has left him speechless.

Satine grins. “Nothing to say to that, hmm?”

Ben raises a hand to her jaw. “What is there to say to that?” he marvels. Then he crushes her against his chest, pulling her into a tight embrace. “Congratulations, Satine. I’m so incredibly proud of you.”

“Do you think they’ll let me keep my office?” she whispers against him.

He laughs. “They’d probably let you have the office of your choosing with a grant like that one,” he says.

“Then I choose to stay, right next to you.”

And Ben just laughs again. “I can hardly believe this,” he whispers in her ear.

She pulls back to look at him.

“What is it?” he says, reading her expression.

She sighs. “One of Palpatine’s privy council sat next to me at a panel today,” she says. “He confirmed that if I go off-script during my talk tomorrow, I won’t be allowed back into the United States.”

Ben nods. “It’s what we expected,” he says. “That doesn’t make it any easier to hear, though. Especially not after hearing about the grant.” He searches her gaze. “What are you thinking?”

Satine pulls back slightly to put some distance between them, but she doesn’t let go of his hand. “There’s no winning. I get to keep my fiancé and my friends, or I do the right thing and act as a whistleblower. If I choose the latter, there’s no guaranteeing I’ll see you anytime soon. You have to return to the States after this conference, and the message also made clear that they would continue to pull strings.” She’s angry again at the recurring image of the marionette. “What if those strings mean you become persona non grata in Norway now?”

Ben sighs. “Retribution doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibility,” he admits.

Satine takes a deep breath. “If I go that route, I have to leave behind the grant,” she says. “And, not that it matters much now, I’d have to leave the offer from Harvard. I’d miss my immigration hearing back home. How much of my life is worth giving up to do the right thing?”

Ben grabs her hands and holds them to his chest, kissing the knuckles on first one hand and then the other.

“I think the fact that you’re calling one of the options ‘the right thing’ is telling. Specifically, it’s telling me that you’d be giving up more by staying in the States, by being silent, than you would by speaking up.”

And just like that, all the work she’d spent putting her heart back together, every hour she’d taken to meticulously fit the pieces back in the right spots - it’s all for naught. 

Because her heart just shatters again.

“I know,” she says, her voice cracking on the last word.

He pulls her toward him again, this time touching his lips softly to hers. Satine tastes tears, and she realizes they are Ben’s.

This, of course, brings tears to her own eyes, and she grabs Ben’s hand, pulling him back inside the tiny hotel room, shutting the doors to the balcony and closing the curtains.

She stumbles back into him, and his arms twist around her, pinning her own arms against his chest. He’s whispering to her, telling her how absolutely extraordinary he thinks she is, and she doesn’t feel trapped or claustrophobic. 

She just feels safe.

“Ben,” she whispers.

He pulls back for a moment, watching her.

“It wasn’t the position,” she realizes. At his confused expression, she elaborates. “Back when I used our safe word, it wasn’t because of the position. It was because you weren’t talking. I couldn’t hear your voice.”

She reaches up to wipe tears away from his cheeks.

“I told you I like knowing it’s you. Well, it turns out I need to know it’s you.”

He just leans back in to kiss her again, his lips absolutely everywhere - her jaw, her forehead, her collarbone.

“Of course we figure this out when we have one night left together,” he manages to groan out, his lips still against her skin.

“Should we test the hypothesis?” Satine asks. “One last thought experiment for old time’s sake?”

And she reaches up to loosen his tie.

He pulls back slightly, slowing down, as she reaches forward. She sets the tie to the side then moves on to his suit coat, placing it on the back of the chair by the desk. Then she rests her hands over his pectorals; a beat later, she slides them down to the buttons on his vest, taking her time with each one she undoes.

The vest she sets on top of the suit jacket, and then his belt is next, though that she drops to the floor. Ben watches her all the while, hands trembling, as she begins to pull his dress shirt from his trousers. She is slow, steady with these buttons, too, and Ben shrugs out of the shirt, tossing it to the side.

He removes her blazer, setting it over his clothes, and begins to work on her blouse from the top-down. She starts at the bottom and meets him in the middle, and he catches her hands there, moving them aside to press a kiss to the skin just below her brassiere. Her belt is next, and then Ben is unzipping her slacks. Those also end up neatly against the growing pile of clothes set to the side.

Ben scoops her up, and it’s two short steps to the bed. He lowers her down, making sure her head rests on the pillows, that the duvet and sheets are out of the way. Then he climbs up beside her, bracing himself over her torso on one forearm, his other hand snaking beneath her head to pull her to him.

And then he begins to speak.

Between kisses, he tells her about the first time he saw her, the first time he knew she was it for him, the first time they’d made love and what it was like for him. He trails his mouth down her skin, leaving echoes of words along with the ghost of his lips. By the time he reaches her hips, she’s so, so ready for him.

She nods, and he pulls down her undergarment, placing it to the side.

Ben hooks his arms beneath her legs, curling them around so that his hands can keep her open for him, and he dives into her, his tongue and words magic. He licks her clit, working her, speaking against her.

She arches into him and moans.

“Ben,” she whispers.

Her hand is reaching for him, and he sees, moving his own up to grab her fingers, still speaking to her as he does so.

She’s close, and he knows it. But instead of helping her to the edge, he pulls her away from it, moving his lips to the inside of her thighs.

Satine quivers. “Please,” she says.

So he drags his teeth lightly over her clit, and it is enough.

She jerks beneath him, arching up, whining as everything explodes, and he pulls her roughly against him, helping her ride his tongue, prolonging her ecstasy. When she’s finally able to see straight again, she pulls him up to her. “Condom?” she asks.

He’s still wearing trousers, so he digs in his back pocket. Satine unzips his fly and pushes the fabric down, and he wriggles out of the slacks and boxers. Together they put the condom on, and Ben returns to hover over her.

“Are you okay?” he whispers.

She nods. “I’m ready.”

He pushes forward, coming home.

Before moving again, he watches her face. “Still good?”

“More than.”

So he settles against her, still bracing himself with one forearm. He speaks lowly to her; he begins to tell her everything he’s catalogued about her body.

And then he begins to move.

Still murmuring, he thrusts in, pulls back, checking her eyes for any indication she is uncomfortable.

But she’s not, and she just nods, encouraging him onward.

His free hand moves to her clit, and Satine’s breath hitches.

“Like that?” Ben asks, and he repeats the movement, with similar results. 

Satine bites her lip and nods.

Ben smiles. “I like the sound of your voice, too, you know,” he tells her, still thrusting.

She groans. “Incorrigible man.”

He smiles. “Incredible woman.”

She hooks one leg around his hip, pressing into his lower back. “What do you need?” she whispers.

“I’m close,” he grunts out. “I don’t need anything else. Just this. Just you.”

Satine frames his face in her hands and pulls him down to capture his lips.

Then he says, his voice breaking, “I’m - ”

And she knows he’s reached climax by the way his thrusts change, by the way his arms shake as they struggle to hold him up. He groans, and then his thrusts become more shallow.

He pulls her to him and rolls over, spent, still inside her, his uneven breathing matching hers.

“That was the first time,” he says weakly, “that we both - ”

Satine nods, still in awe: they hadn’t climaxed together since they were both eighteen.

He kisses her, and Satine tries to ignore the wetness his tears have left on her collarbone.

“Just a moment,” Ben says against her lips, and then he pulls back, pulls away, to move to the washroom. Satine hears running water, and she closes her eyes. Then the mattress sinks again, and Ben is gently spreading her legs to press a warm washcloth between them. She keeps her eyes closed as he tends to her, trying to keep her emotions in check.

He’s gone again a beat later, only to return and slip back in beside her, pulling her close, pulling the duvet over their skin.

“I wish we had more time,” she whispers. “I have so much more to learn about you. About myself, too.”

“It was perfect,” Ben says. He kisses her, soothes her. “Hush.”

Satine opens her eyes.

She takes in the wonderful, kind man before her. The man who taught her to fight when pacificism was all she’d ever known. The man who was born a fighter but left the fight behind because she’d asked him to. The man who had honored her deepest request even though it had gone against every fiber of his being and his training.

The man who loves her.

“I love you,” Satine says.

He freezes, even his eyes unblinking. Then, after several moments, he whispers, “What?” as though he can hardly believe it.

She gives him a bittersweet smile. “I love you,” she repeats, this time more firmly. “My heart might be broken beyond my capacity to repair, but it’s time you know it's yours, for better or for worse. Especially because you’ll be taking it with you when we part tomorrow.”

Satine wipes the tears that build at the corners of his eyes.

“Please don’t cry, Ben,” she murmurs. “We’ll see each other again. I know we will.”

He swallows. “Promise me.”

“I promise. I swear.”

Ben nods. “Say it again?”

And there’s no doubt what he is referring to.

Satine smiles, genuinely this time. “I love you, Ben Kenobi.”

And then she pulls him toward her so he can rest his head upon her chest.

He falls asleep there, resting against her, exhausted and sated. But Satine can’t sleep, not when they’ll part tomorrow faced with another separation of undetermined length.

So, instead, she studies him by the light of the moon, cataloguing his skin as he did hers: the mole he’d always had above one eyebrow, the laugh lines at the corner of his eyes, the different shades of color in his beard, the patterns of freckles down his arms that remind her of galaxies.

She’d needed to cross galaxies to find him again, and in the end, she’d fallen just short.

What she wouldn’t give for the two of them to no longer be star-crossed.

I’d quite literally burn the stars to the ground, she thinks.

And then -

Satine opens her eyes.

“Ben,” she whispers gently.

He stirs against her in the dark.

“Hmm?”

“I have an idea.”

When his eyes open, she’s smiling.

[she-karev]

The Pregnant Resident (Andrew DeLuca x Alex Karev’s Sister Imagine)

Previous Part Here

Age Rating: 12+

Chapters: Four of Four

Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy

Ship: Andrew DeLuca x Amber Karev (Alex Karev’s Sister)

Canon Episode: Season 19 Episode 2

Summary: After his surgery Andrew finds Amber passed out in a gurney in the middle of the hall that makes him worry. Afterwards Amber officially starts maternity leave and says a final word to the interns.

PS: There's some Season 1 Bailey vibes at the end lol.

Words: 1873

August 13th, 2022

Andrew DeLuca exhales deeply taking off his navy-blue constellation pattern scrub cap after finishing an emergency splenectomy on one of the car accident victims. The pit has been cleared and all the major injuries were sent to a private room to recover. He thinks about how stressed and tired Amber must have been after working nonstop in the ER for 18 hours.

He looks at his watch and sees it’s 2 am which means he and Amber need to clock out. The hallway is mostly empty as he makes a left and sees Amber on her side on the gurney, with her eyes closed looking unresponsive. The sight alarms him causing him to run towards her and shake her arm.

“Amber.” She doesn’t wake up making Andrew worry and shake her harder, “Amber!”

Amber groans tired and opens her weary eyes to see her husband exhale in relief at her response, “What? What is it? What are you doing here?”

“I just got off a surgery and I was about to look for my pregnant wife so we can clock out and get a good nights rest.” The tone in his voice makes it clear to Amber he has reached his limit with her working in her condition, “Instead I find my wife passed out in a gurney in the middle of the hall looking dead.”

Amber sighs, “Don’t be dramatic you know I was in the pit and handling the trauma.” Amber gets off the gurney and groans in pain as her feet hit the floor causing her husband to worry and put his hands against her back and belly.

“What is it? Are you okay?”

“It’s my feet, it’s the damn shoes I’m fine. Now let me go I need to check on the interns make sure they didn’t screw up so bad again.” Amber moves to walk away causing Andrew to look up at the ceiling frustrated.

“Amber!” She stops at the sharp tone she never hears from Andrew and turns to face him. She sees the worried look on his face that accompanies the stern voice, “You are not fine. You look tired, you look exhausted I can see it, we all see it. You’ve been on your feet all day and all night. Any one person would feel like hell right after and they wouldn’t have to be pregnant. You know I’m right so don’t try to pass it off as me being dramatic.”

Amber sighs, “…Fine it’s taking a lot for me to put just one foot in front of the other and I am running on ginger ale and beef jerky I sneak inside my coat.”

“Which is why maternity leave was invented.” Andrew points out in seriousness to Amber’s annoyance, “Hey look at me.” Amber looks up at her husband who looks at her tenderly, “I love you and if something happens to you or this child that would be the thing that breaks me.”

Amber’s expression softens at that confession, “…I have spent my whole life working towards a successful career all on my own. I was a freshman in high school working two jobs, saving every dime that I had so I could get out of foster care. There was no graduation just a cap and gown on the first bus to college. And now I am the chief resident at one of the top hospitals in the nation. And when I pass my boards, hospitals will be calling me offering me a peds fellowship spot. If I take a leave I’ll lose my job and a chance at being a good role model for my daughter. I can’t be a disappointment to her like my mom was for me.”

Andrew nods understanding, “I get that and I get why your holding off on this. But if you keep going at it and overexerting yourself your not gonna have a daughter to be a role model for. This isn’t just about your goals, not anymore, right now this is about her. This is about our baby.”

Amber looks more convinced at that and presses her lips together to think.

“He’s right and you know it.” Amber turns to find Alex approaching her looking concerned for her as well.

The blonde chief resident snorts at what’s happening in front of her, “It’s never a good sign when the two of you agree on something when it concerns me.”

“It shocks me too trust me.” Andrew says, amused, as Alex walks up to them.

“Now I wouldn’t normally get in the middle of you two but when I found you passed out here on the gurney half an hour ago I realized it takes two men to settle down a stubborn bull.” Amber raises an eyebrow at the comparison as her brother continues, “Now I talked to Chief Grey, and she agreed that you need to start your maternity leave. Your spot will still be there when you get back and until then Schmitt will be the interim chief resident.”

“You replaced me with Schmitt?” Amber asks offended, “What did I do to make you hate this much?”

Alex grins, “Schmitt has been shown to be as hardworking as you and he juggles the duties of being one of the few senior residents quite well given the circumstances. And he would be too scared to fight against you for the position permanently.”

Amber hums in approval, “And they say I’m the evil genius of the family.” Andrew smiles at that behind her.

“So when does my lovely and beautiful wife start bed rest?”

“Right now.” Alex states causing Amber to groan, “And this is from me and Chief Grey personally so listen closely, you’re going home and you’re gonna stay home. I don’t want to see you back here until you’ve given birth to this child. Understood?”

“Is the alternative you and my husband hogtying me to the hood of my car?”

“Yes.” The men say in unison causing Amber to purse her lips.

“Fine I understand.”

Alex relaxes a bit, “Good. Relax, kick your feet up, let DeLuca dote on you. You more than deserve it.”

Amber grins up at her brother taking care of her, “Thanks. I can see why I keep you two around after all.”

Her husband and brother chuckle at that before Amber waddles away from them and walks down the hall causing her husband to call after her.

“Where are you going?”

“To pee and then get a snack!” Amber turns left.

“You just live ten minutes away!” Alex yells out and looks at DeLuca who shakes his head in defeat with a grin before grabbing a discarded wheelchair and following after Amber wheeling it in front of him.

Later

Amber sits in the wheelchair in her red shirt and black sweatpants relaxing as her husband behind her pushes her away from the resident’s lounge and toward the elevator so they can finally go home. Qadri, Parker and Schmitt follow her saying goodbye before she goes.

“You can never go wrong with Netflix.” Qadri says as she counts the cash money in her hands after winning the bet against Schmitt and Parker, “Or Disney Plus if you feel nostalgic for Lizzie McGuire. Also, it might be a great time to pick out a name for the child to be.”

“You haven’t picked out a name?” Parker asks and immediately regrets it as Amber glares at him, “Which is fine, it’s your baby, your timeline. And just to put it out there Casey works for a girl and a boy in case she reidentifies.”

“I have some good Hebrew names that mean beloved or lovely. I’ll text them to you.”

“You know I think I’m gonna miss all of you the second least while I’m in maternity prison.”

Qadri grins knowing her friend is not one for showing affection, “And who’s the least of all?”

“Dr. DeLuca!” Amber groans at the familiar voice of Yasuda who walks up to her carrying a brown paper bag along with Simone Griffith, Lucas Adams, Benson Kwan and Jules Millin who all smile at her.

Qadri snorts at Amber’s face as she faces the interns, “Spoke too soon.”

Griffith starts, “We wanted to come by and say bye before your on bedrest.”

“Also to apologize for using the ‘Q’ word while on shift.” Kwan says embarrassed, “Even though it’s just a superstition.”

“Kwan it’s not even a day with you as my intern and I already hate you.” Andrew grins at Amber’s blunt statement, “I am in no mood for nice words from people whose names I don’t remember so just give me the bag and we’ll call it a night.”

Mika holds out the brown paper bag with a smile, “It’s little things from the gift shop. Stuffed animals apparently touching them helps relieve anxiety and we thought you could use more than we do right now. Also, it could be good toys for the baby, we got all kinds of animals in case she’s picky.”

Amber looks at gift bag numbly not even taking it due to how tired and grumpy she is. Andrew grins at her before taking the bag from Yasuda.

“Thanks.” Andrew sees the elevator doors opening and enters backwards wheeling Amber in, “Okay my love, are you ready to be pampered like a queen?”

“As long as there’s a bed and I can spread across it like a starfish I’m good.”

Qadri holds out the cash for her to take, “Here I know how much you like cash as a gift so you can get it yourself. It’s from the people you like a little more than the interns.”

Amber takes the cash and mumbles thanks. Qadri nods and steps away with her friends. The interns face the elevator and are about to walk away as it closes until Amber stops it with her foot causing it to open again. Andrew looks on confused as well as the interns who freeze in place as their chief resident faces them with a hard lined mouth and narrow eyes.

“I may be eleventy months pregnant.” Amber starts, “I may be on bed rest. I may have a sharp pain in both of my hips and breasts but do not think you can slack off in my absence. I will know the second you guys make a mistake so huge it reflects poorly on me and my abilities to keep you all in line. And if that happens, I will rain so much hell on you it will make Hurricane Katrina look like a puddle.” The interns look frozen in fear as Amber makes a final statement, “I am Dr. Amber DeLuca, and I will be back.”

The doors close and the last thing Amber sees is the scared interns before facing the elevator doors. Andrew grins behind her squeezing her shoulder affectionately.

“Do you feel better?”

Amber exhales content, “So much. Now take me home so you can massage my feet and read Stephen King to my belly before I pass out for the next two months.”

“Will do wife.” The elevator doors open and Andrew wheels Amber forward so she can officially start her maternity leave.

[atimefordragons]

Don't question the coco

☾♔; October 6, 2020 ☾♔; 2:43am ☾♔; sotd: idk ☾♔; cotd: Miranda Bailey ☾♔; Gossip Witch ☾♔; All Three Grey's AU's

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: Grey's Anatomy (S02E21 - Superstition)

Lol, yeah, I was gonna pair down to two AU's inspired by Grey's, but oops, I got invested in all three. Also, it's such a trip going from Season 16 back to season 1 (I'm in a Grey's place, shut up about it), anyway, so much has happened. Looking at season 1 meredith, just barely holding it together versus season 16 who still has all that pain, but has grown so much, and is like a proper adjusted adult. Mostly. Tbh, I'm still mad at Maggie for saying those mean things to her about Ellis when her mom died, like umm, yeah, it was weird, but Richard and Meredith knew her best, it was nice of them to wash her ashes away in OR 2. Also, also, Izzie really should've been fired after cutting Denny's LVAD wire. She stole a heart and nearly killed Denny. She did kill him, and then he came back to life, and then he died for real. Izzie was nuts, I always did like April more.

IF/THEN not very grey's, but it was inspired by Meredith and the If/Then episode which imagined the life she might've had if Webber had left Adele too and he and Ellis got married (lol, before we knew about Maggie, so she wasn't in the episode). Overall, the setting itself is the same, but Svea is different, raised by her mom and is more Meredith with all the dark and twisty severe abandonment issues, also the whole landing yourself in endless life and death situations 'cause you have some suicidal tendencies. Oohh, I need to write a drowning story. Yeah, all of the stories I have so far are based on Grey's episodes and arcs, the first one is meeting Lili (based on mer and lexie meeting), and the second one is donating a liver 'cause of when thatcher became an alcoholic. I don't even think wizard medicine needs organ transplants, 'cause they can regrow bones, so why not major organs? but whatever.

CHASING CARS literally just grey's anatomy. internship and residency (also probably fellowship) at seattle grace -> seattle grace mercy west -> grey-sloan memorial, okay, maybe not the last one, it wouldn't be needed in our canon, now would it? also, no dying. so much. everyone keeps DYING!!! you work in a hospital! no bus crash, no plane crash, no car crash.  chasing cars is really just a temp title, yes, the song, but idk what else to call it. I could be lazy and just name it "Grey's Anatomy AU", but I like 3 grey's au's. and How to save a life is too long and clunky. idk.

SORCERER'S ANATOMY A magical hospital, I've been looking up information on healers and mediwizards and have many thoughts on magical medicine.

[liskantope]

A personal look back on my summer 2020

My fall semester has already been going on for a little while, but in the past week the weather has suddenly switched from hot to autumny and now it feels like the summer was a period which is truly over and which I can look back upon as (unsurprisingly) one of the most singular summers of my life.

I consider myself to be excellent at autobiographical memory, probably in the 90th percentile or so, at least when it comes to being able to recall the year or month (or sometimes week) that particular events of my life occurred.  I attribute this to often being able to connect various things that were going on in different areas of my life at the same time (rather like separate arcs in a television episode) in ways that allow me to anchor any particular memory to the time it occurred.  Sometimes there are particular time periods where the "plot arcs" of my life somehow seem to fit together really well in a united larger story or a      single flavor, whereas looking back at other periods I can with some effort remember various arcs but it's hard to hunt them out and put them together, as though they were part of a poorly-written TV episode which doesn't have any particular unity.

Summers for me have always stood apart from the years they were in (with the slight exception of the summers I spent abroad doing my first postdoc which had so little structure that my general routine was the same all year round).  This summer I often looked back at the summer of 2010 (the last divisible-by-ten year), which was an example of the former: somehow all the separate arcs going on in my life at the time -- my studying and research (sadly, this was the most recent summer when I actually felt good about how studying/research was going!), stuff that was going on in my immediate family, progress in my social life, my first forays into doing local gigs as part of a band, the weather, my      apartment/roommate situation, shows I was watching, and personal internal struggles I was facing -- feel like they were all nuances of the same flavor.  (This was back in the days that I had cable and it so happened that Curb Your Enthusiasm was on the TV Guide Channel and I was introduced to it and watched it a lot just that summer; for years afterwards the theme tune immediately brought back the emotions that came with the flavor of summer 2010.  Semi-coincidentally I've been watching a lot of Curb clips on YouTube since I noticed them appearing early this past summer.)

The following summer, summer of 2011, is an example of the latter kind of time period in my memory: I'm able to remember a bunch of separate things that went on, including a visit to Switzerland, some of the research I was trying to do, my living situation (and anticipation of a move and the shift in my social life it would bring), my discovery of the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship and being a regular attendant there the entire summer, some particular online interests, and the unpleasant bike accident I had, but it takes some effort to recall that this was all happening in the same three months.  (One thing I do distinctly remember about my living situation is that my one roommate spent most of the summer out of town and that, in anticipation of my next roommate who I knew traveled less and would be much more social, I was telling myself, "Enjoy this level of privacy now because chances are you'll never have it again." I was absolutely right in my prediction that there would be much less solitude and privacy with the next roommate who I remained living with for several years, but I sort of assumed that after that I would have found some kind of a partner to be with all the time, and... oh the irony as I sit here, still continuously partner-free, after another day of the far more intense privacy and solitude of the past six months!)

This past summer, the summer of 2020, is very, very clearly bound to become a longer-term memory of the former kind: its extreme flavor is unmistakable.  As is probably the case for most of us, my experience of summer 2020 has been shaped almost entirely shaped by the pandemic we're still in the midst of.  For me this has meant constantly being home alone (although I settled pretty soon on into a pattern of going on daily bike rides and weekly supermarket trips plus a number of other types of errands.  Also, a caveat to the rest of this paragraph is that my parents visited one weekend and that provided an exception to some of the otherwise constant conditions below.)  I became uncharacteristically super introverted and very intent on making as much research progress as possible in the absence of teaching duties. None of this has been too unpleasant, but there has been a complete and utter lack of any form of fun, both in traveling (this may hold the record of the only summer where I stayed in the same 6-mile radius the entire time) and in social events.  The one positively pleasant thing in my life this summer was discovering the most beautiful area for cycling in any place I've lived, as well as a handful of late-evening warm-summer-night walks.  The extreme degree of loneliness and the necessity of self-discipline to keep my wheels turning has been smothering, and actually I think I dealt with it much better than I would ever have imagined I could if someone had told me this was coming a year ago.

I'd say my summer was a personal success in that way and in most other ways apart from the main concrete objective of completing a research preprint, which failed quite badly and is putting my career aspirations in a very precarious place (it would have been nice to get some heavier blogging done as well).  One could say that this was a less important goal than that of not letting my mental health spiral, though, and I did succeed quite well at the latter.  (In fact, I was doing much worse in January and February than I was when the pandemic hit.)  I'm upset that my goals seem to take me much longer than I feel they should but am glad that this doesn't seem to be due to an inability to sit down and focus on the work, as was the case with research during some summers of grad school.

Part of the flavor of summer 2020 that will live on in my memory has to do with my being home alone so much of the time, never having to get near other people, in an apartment that I kept hot, that, let's just say it took me a ridiculously long time to accumulate each laundry load and there were often T-shirts draped over my sofa to be reused for an hour or two at a time over multiple days.

While I'm continuing on this gratuitously self-absorbed vein, as I've noted that I love keeping track of personal "endurance" records, I've (again unsurprisingly, because of the situation) made a bunch of them which I'll finish by taking note of here:

Longest time without stepping out of the front door: I actually was careful to make sure I never stayed entirely inside for two days in a row, but it finally happened the weekend before last (after a late Friday night walk in my complex where I may or may not have gotten back inside by midnight).  I believe it was 61 hours, or very nearly 61 hours, without exiting my apartment. This may be a lifelong record; the only other event that compares was a 2-3-day period in March 2011 when I was very feverishly ill in the wake of a snowstorm, and I don't recall how far beyond 48 hours I stayed in.

Longest time without going into my office (or even onto my campus) in over a decade of having an office: from April 2nd to August 11th.  Hardly a unique one here, but I never thought I could have handled only having my home to work in for over four months.

Longest time not going near any public transportation whatsoever, since high school: Sunday March 8th (or just after midnight on March 9th, a bus ride as the final leg of the journey home from my last trip of any sort) to 26 Sundays later on September 6th because of having to leave my bike in the shop.

Longest stretch of time not withdrawing cash or paying for something in cash: since sometime in early March and counting.  The only times I've touched the cash in my wallet at all during all of this time was on two occasions when I gave a bill to someone in need.

Longest time since age 19 not touching a drop of alcohol: since April 11th (at a virtual birthday party of a friend) and continuing.  This smashes a record from last fall of something like 54 days.

Longest time with the thermostat completely off (no use of heat or AC): from one of the last days of March to, I think, June 4th. This was nothing to do with the pandemic (in fact, it makes the pandemic situation slightly more remarkable since I've had to be home for a lot more of the time); the spring where I am was just particularly pleasant.

Longest time not shaving my facial hair: 32 days in the late summer, breaking a record from earlier in the summer of exactly a month.

There are probably other even sillier ones, such as the fact that I’m pretty sure I didn’t put on shoes from sometime at the start of June to a few days ago. You’d also think I’d break an endurance record for not uttering a spoken word to anyone, but I haven’t kept track of that.

Let’s hope future intervals in my life are much less extreme and record-breaking; that’s the gist of what I wish for everyone right now.

[birdiethebibliophile]

{fic} That Old Sweet Feeling (part 15)

Fandom:  The Adventure Zone:  Commitment Rating:  M Chapter Warnings:  None Relationship:  Nadiya Jones/Mary Word Count:  1,020

Here on AO3. Read the rest: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14

Tagging @someone-called-f1nch, @voidfishkid, @mellowstarscape, and @jumpboy-rembrandt!

Shorter one this week. Next time: All the NPCs!

Chapter Summary:  Irene makes connections. Remy chimes in. Nadiya sulks.

__________________

"Oh, God. Turn the sun down. I'm dying," Nadiya said, squinting her eyes shut as she pulled herself off the ladder. "Holy shit, is it always this bright?"

"We've been down in a nearly pitch-black sewer for an entire day, more or less," Irene said dryly. "What did you expect?"

"Ugh, I don't know," Nadiya complained. "Not horrific scorching rays assaulting my corneas." her eyes opened cautiously. They adjusted, and she was able to look around without her eyes watering. "How the hell are we going to get to Los Angeles?"

"Party bus," Remy said immediately.

"Party bus? Where the hell are we going to get -"

"Party bus," Irene agreed, pointing across the street to a small bar-and-casino where a group of obviously drunk people were stumbling out the door and onto a silvery bus.

"I don't know why you two think that's going to work," Nadiya groused.

"Trust in us," Irene said lightly, leading the way across the street and over to the bus. "Excuse me," she said to a thirty-something, bleary-eyed woman with limp brown hair. "I don't suppose you're heading to Los Angeles?"

"Yeah," the woman said agreeably. "Jim's getting married, aren't you, Jim?" There was a muffled hell yeah! from the bus. "You wanna come with?"

"Please," Irene said, and the woman stepped aside, letting the three of them climb onto the bus.

"How...?" Nadiya said, shocked, as they made their way to a group of free seats.

Irene pointed to the rainbow flag hanging in one of the windows. "Like recognizes like," she said serenely.

Remy, right behind Nadiya, sputtered. "Wait -"

"I'm a lesbian who was raised by two women, Remy," Irene explained, settling into a window seat. "You think I wouldn't recognize a gay party bus?"

Remy dropped into the seat beside her and gave her a very large hug. "Solidarity! I mean, I'm not a lesbian, I'm bi, but solidarity! Nadiya?"

"I'm going to sit over here," Nadiya said, picking the window seat across the aisle and several rows back from the other two. She pretended she didn't see Remy's face fall slightly. It wasn't that she wasn't a lesbian, because she was, but she didn't want to sit with them right now. She'd never been so long without some time to herself. Everyone on the bus was way too loud, and the sun was still a little too bright, and Nadiya sort of wished she could crawl out of her skin.

Mary Sage, where are you? she thought miserably.

Across the way, Irene had struck up a conversation with the brown-haired woman from before, and they were having a lively chat, Irene smiling broadly in a way Nadiya hadn't seen before. Remy, though he still looked jittery and unsure, eyes too wide, was talking to a guy whose shirt proclaimed him to be JIM, the guy who was getting married, apparently.

It wasn't fair.

Irene and Remy finally had some time to be in their element. They were both so good with people. Remy and Irene had figured out how to get to Jamie's. Remy and Mary Sage had cracked the encryption the night before. What had Nadiya done? Nothing. It wasn't like there was a lab she could do work in, or research she could analyze. There wasn't even a strongly-worded letter she could write, like she did when a committee rejected her request for a grant out of hand. No, Nadiya Jones was on a fucking party bus from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, and she was useless, and she hated it.

Nadiya pulled her feet up onto the seat and wrapped her arms around her knees. Her PhD wasn't much good here, either. Four-plus years of studying and working her ass off to get recognized and published and validated, and she made one bad job choice, and now the only thing her research was going to be used for was taking over the world, apparently. She felt as paranoid as Mary Sage usually was, wondering what modifications Martine had made that the Fellowship hadn't told her about, wondering if it was reversible.

Mostly, though, she was thinking about the bonds.

She closed her eyes, concentrating as hard as she could, and to her shock, she felt a tiny tug behind her heart, pointing her towards Remy and Irene. She must be imagining that - it was like a magnet, that wasn't how biochemical bonds worked. Then again, if Remy's mom was to be believed, there was a lot about bonds they didn't even know about yet. She needed to go through those other documents on Remy's laptop, figure out exactly what they were dealing with, scientifically.

She wondered if she had a bond with Mary Sage.

Well, of course she did. According to the theory, everything and everyone had a bond with everyone and everything else. But something more than that. Something like what she just felt tugging her towards Irene and Remy. Though, admittedly, when she thought about Mary Sage, there was a healthy dose of nausea and head-spinning along with the heart tugging.

What was the difference between bonds and just being really, really gay for someone?

Nadiya let out a frustrated huff and turned to stare out the window as the bus pulled out of the parking lot. Not that she liked Mary Sage. Much. It was just that she kind of liked looking at her, and she really fucking missed her when she was gone, which was more often than not in the past couple days. It was just that she kept thinking about that particular Biblical quote Mary Sage had picked, and how it was about maybe the gayest relationship in the whole Bible. It was just that when she thought about Mary Sage and her sandpaper laugh and her freckles and her weird, annoying voice and her soft body against Nadiya's chest in the Colorado cabin, she wanted to cry, a little.

Fuck.

She was never telling Irene or Remy - or Kardala, for that matter - any of this. Probably not Mary Sage herself, either.

If they ever found her.

[moodboardinthecloud]

How To Be A Writer: The Map Is the Territory Ramona Ausubel's Winding Path to a First Novel

I was talking with a student who asked, “How did you get from here to there?” And I wanted to tell her because she was a good writer and a hard worker and I wanted to make the map clearer for her. But I found I couldn’t tell her the story of the stories without also giving her the map of my life in those years. Before my first books were born they were with me everywhere, growing babies, part of my body and my every move.

We are not ever just writers—we are also sons and daughters of good parents and disappointing parents and we are partners who need to pick up a quart of milk on the way home and parents who crawl into bed with the little ones late at night to admire them when they are still, even though we know we don’t have any tiredness to spare. We are students and teachers. We are readers, taking in the universes created by other minds. Our stories and poems and essays are written in and amongst and because of these moments. A scene is not the only thing that takes place in space and time—the writing of that scene takes place in space and time, too. I remember working on a particularly dark section of my first novel, No One is Here Except All of Us, in which the character based on my great-grandmother escapes into the Russian wilderness with her children and survives on tree bark, and it so happened that this writing day took place beside a Southern California hotel swimming pool where my visiting father-in-law was staying. I spent the morning in the shade surrounded by Disneyland-bound families and I wrote about starvation.

The stories are woven together with my life and my life moved across the globe as I wrote, so the stories too took that long journey. My map of becoming a writer goes all the way around the world.

* * * *

A few months before finishing graduate school, my grandmother was in a minor car accident while riding shotgun to the grocery store with her boyfriend. She was hurt and needed surgery, but it seemed like she would be fine, until it didn’t anymore. My family members and I all gathered in Chicago to be with her while she died, and I stood by the window of her hospital room where the machines beeped, and looked out at Lake Michigan. There happened to be another old woman in the ICU near her and a sentence came into my head: the grandmothers find themselves at sea. It immediately felt true. On the plane back to California, I wrote a story—all these women, floating on a freight boat in the big wide ocean, not knowing where they are or where they’re going. I needed to make a world where I could look for my grandmother once she left this one. I invented a world because death is unknowable and someone I loved was about to live there.

My grandmother and I had always been close, and she was the most unwaivering supporter of my writing. Even when I was 19 years old, she took me seriously as a poet and as a writer.

A few weeks and several drafts later, one of my teachers submitted the story of the grandmothers at sea to a contest. It didn’t win but the magazine editor called to ask if they could publish it anyway. I was thrilled. There was a new green shoot of her life, sprouting.

* * * *

When I finished graduate school the next summer, I received a small fellowship. It was a few thousand dollars, and a total surprise. I refused to cash the check for weeks because I was afraid it would disappear the way money does. I badly wanted this to be a doorway rather than a stop-gap.

Then I got another check in the mail, this one much more complicated. It was the insurance settlement from the car accident that had eventually killed my grandmother. Another few thousand dollars and also a total surprise. I thought about returning it, upset to think that any dollar amount would ever equal a human life. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to do something she would have loved. Writing and travel were the things we had always shared, so I convinced my husband to quit his job and travel around the world.

My uncle donated frequent flier miles for our flights and I made a plan to research a book of nonfiction about families. It seemed like a practical project, a good idea. One of those things people out there think is worth doing. I scheduled interviews, did a ton of reading, and booked flights from San Francisco to Marrakech and another pair home from Beijing.

Soon, my story about the lost grandmothers was published and I received several emails from editors and agents who were interested in seeing what I was working on. I cried a lot that week. It felt like my grandmother had sailed her ship up and out and into fancy offices in New York and said, “I’d like to introduce you to my granddaughter. I think she’s a pretty good writer.” It felt like she had found a way, in death, to support me as energetically as she had in life.

I had been working on No One is Here Except All of Us and because writing a first novel is an exercise in ambient terror I really, really, really wanted it to be done. I knew in my heart that it wasn’t finished but I wanted it to be because I had gotten it in my head that the end was the part that mattered. There was that castle up there on the hill, all glittery. So I sent it to the people who’d written to me. And I waited.

While we got a zillion immunizations and made critical decisions regarding the two pairs of shoes we’d wear for a year, I started to receive rejection letters from agents. At best, they thought the writing was good but the story confusing. At worst they had no idea what I was doing. When we finally left for our trip, I’d heard back from everyone except one editor at a small press. I held hope.

Teo and I landed in Morocco and it was beautiful and wonderful and we ate lamb sausages at a street stand where they periodically rewarmed your dish of fat so that you were better able to soak it up with fresh bread. We rode camels. We ran down dunes in the Sahara. We drank tea in a tent with nomads who had ten children each and I took notes in my official non-fiction writer notepad, which was my only credential.

And then I got a long email from the lone editor. The only thing I remember was the answer: I don’t want to publish this book. Maybe I’d been wrong, I thought. Maybe I had misread the signs. Maybe I wasn’t such a good writer after all. We ate more lamb sausages and also these really amazing donuts on a string. Rejection sucks. Food helps.

Since then I have gotten to know a lot of writers and I know now we’ve all been there. Not the same thing at the same time, but the truth is always there: sometimes it’s so hard, and you really don’t know how to make your work work, and it feels like months or years of may have been wasted and you continue to be, beyond all heroic efforts, right smack in the middle of the job, rather than at the end, as you had so brightly hoped. People will tell you that you need a thick skin to be a writer, what with all that disappointment and rejection, but I think part of what makes a good writer is the ability to be porous, to be able to feel all the intricate and complicated notes, the particular music of each moment. No writer should turn the volume down on her own emotional register. That’s her instrument. We have to feel everything. Which also sucks. That’s where the donuts come in.

* * * *

I let the novel drift to the back of my mind. We explored Gaudi’s buildings in Spain, spent our entire daily budget on pasta in Venice, found the villages in Ukraine from which both my husband’s and my own family came. We bought postcards in a museum in Syria—neither of us could imagine the war that would soon overtake that beautiful, warm country—of these disarmingly sweet Sumerian clay statues with grass skirts and huge eyes who look as if they want to make your whole life better, and we sat at the shore of the Euphrates writing poems on the postcards in the voice of those statues about living and loving during the bronze age. I remember wishing so much that I could mail one to my grandmother who would have been the most appreciative of anyone.

Over those weeks between the final rejection letter and the Middle East, there had been a lot of long bus and train rides and one very vomitous crossing of the Black Sea by ferry and on all of them, I thought about my possibly dying novel. Some days I thought, forget it, it’s over. I’ll try something else. Other days I missed working on it, remembered it fondly, like a favorite cousin. Other days I thought maybe I’d make five beautiful cloth-bound copies to give my relatives and forget about writing after that.

And then I had an idea that seemed like it might change the story. I saw the next step towards making the novel better. This was great news, of course, except that there we were in Egypt. Fortunately, my sweet husband was glad to take a break from travel and he swam in the Red Sea and snorkeled and drank milkshakes with a litter of stray kittens curled up on his lap while I sat on our two-foot wide porch with a package of locally branded “Boreo” cookies and a view of Saudi Arabia in the distance, and I changed the point-of-view for my entire novel. It was a total experiment. When I’m stuck, I tell myself, “You’re right. It’s a big mess, probably irreversible. How about we just pretend to try and fix it?” Richard Bausch says, “You can’t ruin a piece of writing, you can only make it necessary to go back and try again.” So I dove in. And it felt good to be trying something. And I could feel how the change was opening the book up. At the end of the week we had a little party. The Boreo cookies were joined by a bottle of “Gordoon’s” gin. I had lots and lots of work ahead, but a passage is a passage.

* * * *

We continued on in our journey. We watched huge herds of giraffe cross the Great Rift Valley in Kenya, rafted down the White Nile in Uganda, rode on a bus driven by an actual giant who ate what can only be described as bouquets of chicken skewers as he honked and weaved. I was completely filled up by what the world was made of—the beauty and the sadness and the lives being lived in fancy cities and humble cities, in grasslands and deserts. I dutifully conducted my interviews, continued my research and tried to believe in my journalist alter-ego. We made our way to the far north of Kenya where I talked to a Samburu woman who was one of five wives and had six children who, once weaned, often subsisted on a mix of cow’s milk and blood let from the living animal’s neck.

The research was fascinating, but something started to happen: I began to dread the job ahead. I hadn’t even begun to begin and I was already running out of spark. The project I had outlined was something I wanted to read, and not so much something I wanted to write. I thought of one of my favorite pieces of writing advice, from Jim Shepard. He says, “Follow your weird.” In other words, only spend your time on things that are your very own. I knew that this was not my dearest wish, this book I’d been researching. I knew that I this wasn’t my work. It was sad to let go, and I also felt like I had wasted my fellowship money and made a promise I couldn’t keep to my grandmother.

* * * *

India was our halfway-point. In a small city in Rajasthan, in a half crumbling hotel that had once been a palace, I began to panic. I began to think of plans B through Z. No one wanted my novel. Maybe it was better now, after my binge revision, but maybe it wasn’t. Even I didn’t want my nonfiction project. While we ate butter masala and naan, I considered becoming a midwife. While we walked through the marigold scattered temples, I thought maybe I should be a zookeeper. I even emailed a friend who raised money for the Portland Zoo and asked how a person became the elephant tender. She wrote back, “Um, you need an advanced degree in zoology. Last I checked you were a fiction writer.” At night, listening to the tuk-tuks whiz by, I planned to open an artisanal snow-cone stand. I spent weeks this way, manufacturing alternatives.

Then I ducked into an Internet café and found an email with the subject line “Your Work.” It was from an editor at a big publisher in New York who’d read the story of the grandmothers, of my grandmother, and wanted to know what I was working on. The power went out in the café while I was sitting there and I was pretty sure I’d dreamed the whole thing. I waited half an hour, the power came on, and the email was real. It was a tiny crack, just a sliver of light, but my desire to walk through that opening filled my entire self. That was what I wanted to do most of all—the fact-gathering, zookeeping, baby-catching, and snow cones would have to wait—I wanted to finish this novel, not be done with it, but to actually see it through because it was a story that mattered to me to tell. And I realized how much energy I’d been spending thinking of plans B through Z. I had been all but insuring that what I most wanted—to write—would fail, by spending all my time drafting insurance policies against it. I resolved to ignore the fear until I had really and truly let this story become its biggest, most complete self.

I was relieved that I didn’t have to keep up the pretense of being a journalist, though I kept talking to people because their stories interested me. I didn’t think of it as research anymore. I didn’t worry about whether it was productive.

A few months, a few countries later, it was time to go home. I was sad that our trip was ending but I was looking forward to having a kitchen and a couple of bowls and I was looking forward to getting back to work.

My husband and I lived in a two hundred square foot house for a few months to keep expenses down so I could write full time. While it snowed and thawed and snowed and thawed, I sat on a child-sized couch for twelve hours a day, feeding the wood-stove and working. I fell into the novel in a way I never had. I was completely in it. I kept thinking of more and more that I wanted to breathe into it. It took up my entire self.

I corresponded with the editor who’d written to me in Calcutta. I did not offer to show her my novel because it was not ready yet, but she sent my stories to her favorite agent and he loved them. Finally, several months later, I was ready. I emailed what I think was the 16th draft of the book. By then I could practically recite the novel by heart.

That weekend I was looking through old boxes at my mom’s house and discovered some of my grandmother’s travel journals. One was from Syria, and out fell a photograph of the exact same Sumerian clay statues that I had seen in Damascus. At the top of the photograph in her handwriting it said, “Our attentive staff are here to make you feel at home.” Not only had my grandmother and I fallen in love with the same figurines half a world away and 20 years apart, but we’d had the same joke. She’d been with me all along, of course she had.

A couple of weeks later, my agent submitted the novel manuscript to publishers. I flew to New York. I was standing on the corner of 86th and Broadway in front of an exuberant grocery-store fish display when my phone rang. The editor whose email I’d received in Calcutta, into whose hands the story about my grandmother had sailed, had bought my books. I tried to play it cool on the phone and then I hung up and screamed and jumped up and down. It was New York so no one even noticed.

But this part surprised me. My very first thought was pure joy: “Now I get to write another one.” There I was at the finish line, that dreamed-of place, the goal I had once sprinted so hard to get to, and the best part, the magnificent part, was that I’d get to start all over at the beginning. Spend another few years in the dark mysterious chambers of a story I would understand a little better by the day. We’re all rushing along towards the end, but it turns out the middle has been the prize all along.

* * * *

Seven years later I am putting the polishing touches on a collection of stories about people far away from home the world over. So many of the places we went on our trip are in the book. So much of what I thought about on those buses and trains are in the book. Some of my research for the abandoned nonfiction project is in the book. Except there’s no pretense, no stretching to do what I think others would want. This version is all me. There are innumerable challenges to writing but there are also blessings. No work is ever wasted. Even if one throws something away, it leaves behind seeds. I’m so glad I tried the book that didn’t work because it turned into another one that does.

* * * *

When that student asked me how to write a novel I told her every true thing I know: Read 50 pages a day, which is the quickest way I know to get better. Stay in the chair until you’ve done that day’s work. Sit there right until the moment when you think you’ve had enough, then stay 20 minutes. Turn the Internet off. Leave the page knowing what you’ll work on tomorrow. Go places, love people, be good, be bad. Live as much life as you possibly can and then give it all away to your pages.

I did everything I could to give this writer the map to the castle. But here’s what I know: when she finally gets there, all she’ll find is a chair and desk. And it will be the most beautiful thing in the world.

https://lithub.com/how-to-be-a-writer-the-map-is-the-territory/

[canaryatlaw]

alright, I’m gonna try to make this somewhat quick because I woke up very early and it’s already somewhat late and I am quite tired. My alarm went off at 5:55, got up and got ready, driver was 10 minutes early so I scrambled to get out the door but we made it happen. turns out the driver is the dad of some kids that used to go to school with my siblings and I- their oldest girl was in the grade below me, then the first son was in my brother’s grade, and the youngest son was in my sister’s grade. so we had some pleasant conversation on the way there. Then of course Laguardia has to be literally the worst thing ever and it took us legit 35 minutes from the time we entered the airport to the time we got to the door, and we didn’t even get all the way there, I hopped out of the car and walked the rest of the way because the traffic was not moving and that was quicker. So I ran through the airport, and thankfully made my plane this time, which was a huge relief (the time I walked in was the same time boarding began so it was reaaaaaally tight. flight was fine, I sprung for the in-flight wifi so I could get some review done and watch the video for my child defender fellowship. Landed in Chi around 10:20, ubered home and got there around 11:30, and I hung out and tried to put some things away for about 50 minutes before grabbing my school stuff and taking another uber to my MRI appointment because I didn't feel like dealing with public transit when there’s no convenient way to get there. Super nice driver, we of course got into a deep conversation as that’s what happens with me almost always, haha. Got to the Ortho building, waited a little bit and filled out some forms, then did the MRI. I’ve had them done twice before, once in 2009 after I heard my right wrist playing soccer and it wasn’t healing correctly, so they were suspecting I had snapped some ligaments (thankfully I did not, because that would’ve required surgery to fix), and then in 2014 for my headaches that turned up nothing. so it wasn’t a big deal. Got out of there and there’s conveniently a bus that goes from right outside that building to right where my school is, so I hopped on that and then chilled in the PAD office for a few hours, finished the child defender fellowship video then started watching bus orgs quimbee videos and taking notes. I’m doing good on their practice quizzes at least, so I figure that a good sign. I couldn’t decide what I wanted for dinner, so I ended up wandering to starbucks to see if they had anything good, and they had a holiday turkey and stuffing panini which, as I’m sure you can imagine, was pretty heavenly, Went to poverty law and did our presentations, everyone did fine, I was fairly confident in mine. Then we reviewed some exam stuff, and my prof made a point of telling us the class isn't curved and she has no objection to giving everyone A’s or A-’s if they deserve it, so that’s always nice to hear. We got out about an hour early, like 7:30, so I dashed home and started the crossover episodes. I won’t get into too much of a full blown analysis right now because again, tired, but for all the hype we had building up to this crossover it was fairly underwhelming to me. I’m hoping tomorrow will step it up and be an awesome conclusion, but I don’t have all that much confidence that’ll happen. Oh well. And yeah, that’s it for me, and I’m tired so I’m going to bed now. Goodnight babes. Hope your Monday didn’t suck.

[pickupthepen]

The Last Time

There are a couple places in my life that I have loved- actual physical locations. I loved a bedroom in a house on Spruce Street in San Francisco. I’ve loved a couple boulders on lakes’ edges. I love the foot of my mother’s bed. 

There’s a loft at my gym, which used to be... I’m not sure- maybe a mechanic’s shop. A staircase leads to a platform high above all the climbing walls. At night, I lay up in that loft, with all the world bustling below. The sky is dark out in the bay, and I lay alone. I have known few happy places such as this. Sometimes I imagine what my answer would be if anyone were to ask my why I come up here. A good enough response might be that it’s just part of my workout- that it helps me to be a better climber. But honestly, you probably don’t care why I do it, and no one has ever asked. I like being up there while the world turns just beneath my feet. I like the feeling in my muscles when they are too fatigued to move another inch. I like listening to my breath as it fights to get in and out. I love this little place where I get to be with myself. I love it. 

I have thought a lot over the course of the past year about how I would tell its story. Maybe I’d have some advice on how to survive after a breakup. Maybe I’d have some final moral about what it means to accept change through these kinds of things. Maybe I’d write poems about self-love, self-worth, growth and internal power and what it means to move on. I don’t have any poems, but I seem to have a collection of memories, new friends, a couple learned skills and interests. I have a lucky little appreciation for the small things again, like the way my protein drinks say “extremely perishable”- extreme! I have gotten to know my own voice which I have used when I’ve had the courage. I’ve experienced levels of more awakened awareness, and in some ways I’ve backtracked in that. Growth! Okay...

Surviving a breakup is a lot like the phoenix burning in the ashes. I remember feeling like my body was being torn apart from a thousand angles. My whole life as I knew it seemed to burn in a day- the day she walked away. It is incredible, indescribable emotional pain, and if you’re going through it now, I implore you to dig deep in yourself and find me understanding what you are feeling. I could feel every cell in my body screaming at me for help, and I, with no power to offer assistance to myself, sat motionless. Sometimes it was very physical- a lack of breath, a lack of concentration, a lack of...

and then from the ashes, burning coals of newly fertilized soil, pieces of myself began to slowly grow in. It has taken a year- an entire year to remember that I am breathing again, and I’m not exactly sure when the deep breaths began. In the beginning, I almost cherished the agony. I held onto it because letting go felt like giving up, like accepting not having this person in my life anymore. I couldn’t bear walking forward without her. I felt like every way in which I used to be in control of my own life was beyond me, but time dragged me forward.

And yet, I don’t quite know what practical steps to offer someone who is on the precipice of this particular flavor of grief, other than my own realization that despite how I fought, how I begged, and all the ways I tried to convince myself that there was some way to muscle myself out of feeling that fucking bad, there wasn’t, and it eventually passed.

One by one, rainstorms flew in and watered my grasses. Each breath lightened by a small percentage as months passed. Each session in the climbing gym, I grew stronger, one day at a time. Every moment with my best friends, I laughed a little deeper, and listened with richer intensity.

Memories that ripped my heart out became memories that made me sad, memories that made me sad became memories that felt more like distant childhood memories, and the space between those memories grew until they didn’t spontaneously electrocute my mind and body any longer. Anger faded, and my love for camping, hip-hop and musicals, new ice cream flavors, and a deeper appreciation for my people and my brother slowly and methodically took its place. 

I fell in love with quiet, simple moments with myself. I fell in love with a good song on the bus ride home, a new recipe, a re-budding mint plant, and a moment alone on top of a loft in a climbing gym. It’s almost like I didn’t even play a role in moving on- more like moving on moved through me. 

I didn’t write you this letter to tell you about my breakup. I didn’t write it to tell you that time heals all- sometimes it doesn’t and most times it does. I didn’t write to tell you it’ll be okay, that you’ll figure it out, or that you’ll smile again. You will, and you don’t need my words for that to be true.

I’m writing to tell you about something else that happened. I’m writing to tell you that the story of this magnificent life that I play such a painfully small role in took the place of the story of my breakup. I’ve had to sit still and carefully think back on how things have changed and from where I came because all that I did to keep my purpose at the center of that story failed to keep it alive. Time kept moving, I moved with it, and the story of my breakup dissolved. I learned in a year that there is more to life than a story of how to survive something, and I can only share what I’ve learned as an exercise in witnessing how the past year has unfolded.

I’ve accidentally stumbled into a new world in which I am aware of the weight and depth of my choices. My desires have shifted from wanting to survive, to wanting to be better- to be an adult, to know childlike joy, and to strive for more. I’ve made decisions in the past year that will undoubtedly alter the course of my life, and I’ve made decisions in the past few weeks that already have. I’ve committed to my current location, I’ve committed to a new career, I’ve walked away from the one that saw me to where I am now, and I’ve decided to take my place in the fellowship that has promised to hold me, and has consistently and painstakingly kept that promise. It is true- we are always one decision, one moment away from an entirely new life, and this life, terrifying and wonderful, began the night that I didn’t die when someone broke my heart. 

I don’t know what else awaits me, but I know that in time, all will change. 

I have loved a few places in my life, and although I haven’t always liked it, I’ve learned to love where I am now. This is the first time I’ve written words about our breakup from a healed heart space, and it is likely the last time I will write about it at all. Here’s to leaving things where they belong, to new frontiers, and to happy little quiet moments alone.

Best Wishes. 

[awindowamirror]

Internship!!!

9/22/17

 I started my internship this week! I have been twice now, and am feeling pretty positively towards my experience at this moment in time. I say at this moment very specifically because as with many things in life, I have no idea what each day will bring. Also, my first day at my internship left me feeling very disappointed. Let me walk you through my first day (this will also be fun for posterity’s sake, because I imagine there will be a lot of growth in my position at this school).

So. School starts at 8 am, so I wake up at about 6:30, put clothes on and try to look moderately professional (I still wear a scrunchie every day here—I can’t change everything), and grab breakfast by about 6:45. It takes a bit to get food because things are just starting to wake up, and it seems like I will be one of the first faces people see in the morning. What a delight for all involved. My goal is to start walking to the junction where I catch my trotro (Okpongolo, if anyone cares) by 7:15 so I can be on a trotro at 7:30. Those are the logistics.

That first morning, everything went pretty smoothly, except I had been violently ill the evening before and discovered I was not entirely better once I took a bit of my oatmeal. No problem, I still had crackers left-over, so I packed those and went on my way. When I got to the junction, I was ready with the name of the junction I was going to, and I felt very confident in pronouncing it because it’s literally the letters SDA. That’s it. (It stands for Seventh Day Adventist, but everyone just says SDA.) Several mates approached me to ask me where I was going and they all looked confused when I said, “SDA junction.” One of them ushered me into his trotro anyways, so I assumed all was well. 20 minutes into the ride, after I had already paid, he asked me again where I was going, and I repeated “SDA” SO MANY TIMES wondering how on earth I could be saying letters wrong, and then EVERY SINGLE PERSON on the trotro (all people commuting to work at this time of day) repeated the letters the way I was saying them, trying to make sense of it.

Eventually, the man next to me said, “What is there that you’re going to?” and I told him the name of the school. Then he went “OHHHHHHH! SDA!!!!!” And I was like “YES!!!!” And then everyone on the trotro understood, and then the mate said, “Bus stop!” and we pulled over (not at SDA junction) and he hailed another trotro for me and put me inside it, so I inferred that I had been on the wrong trotro. I was so confused. Looking back, it was hilarious, and very clear to me that I was already developing a severe fever that then lasted the rest of the day.

Anyways, I ended up safely at the school, and have since practiced saying SDA the way Ghanaians do, so I feel a little like I’m mocking their accents, but people understand me, so I guess all is well.

Tot-to-Teen is a school that, as you can imagine, serves all ages until high school—I’ve been told that there are about 800 students enrolled this year, which is so cool to me because the school does not seem that big. It’s a very nice school—all the buildings are painted a friendly color of orange, and to get anywhere, you walk outside, so the whole space feels very open (very common here because the weather is so nice). The courtyard includes a basketball court, a fenced in playground filled with tots in multicolored uniforms, and an open space that is often filled with students playing football (soccer) in between classes.

I started on a Wednesday, and on Wednesday mornings, the whole school has Worship for about an hour. I was not expecting this. I walked in at about 7:50 am, proud that I was on time (most of you know this is rare), and saw students swarming around a pile of stools to set up outside like a church. The upper school and lower school have separate worships, but still, almost every space that is usually open had a student and a stool occupying it. I was thinking, ok, church, this will be interesting to watch but a lil boring probably.

Nope. There was singing, there was dancing, there was drumming, there was call and response built into the sermon…there was even a saxophone player, who I found out later is a member of a student fellowship at the University of Ghana, so represent! The students seemed genuinely into it, which I was really impressed by—I feel like I remember my friends begrudgingly going to church and barely being able to sit through it for boredom, so U.S. churches maybe have a few things to learn (just maybe).

After worship, the teacher I’ll be working with, Klenem (that’s his last name, but that is what I’ve been told to call him), said, “Come,” and so I followed him to a classroom already filled with seated students. When we walked in, they all stood up and said, “Good morning, sir,” in unison, which really took me aback for some reason. This was my first introduction to the very formal relationship of students and teachers here (although there are some exceptions to this relationship that I’m already starting to notice, just not in a classroom setting).

Klenem told them, “This is Miss Holly. She is our visitor. Miss Holly is from the U.S. and will be helping us with English. What is her name?” And the whole class chorused, “Miss Holly. You are welcome here.” (One little note: that’s one of my absolute favorite things about being in Ghana—almost everywhere you go, one you’re introduced, people say, “You are welcome here.” It feels so sincere, I don’t know. I love it, it touches me every time.) Klenem inspected the students, still standing, and critiqued a few for how they were standing or if they looked tired, and then pointed to empty chairs and asked where that person was. Then, the students sat down and Klenem pointed to an empty seat and told me to sit there.

I was absolutely shocked at this point. I had just walked into a room where students call adults (and me) “sir” and “miss”, I had been introduced by another person, and then told to sit down before I could even say a word. I don’t know, I thought maybe I’d get to say why I came to Ghana or that I love cats or something else that would give the students a tiny glimpse into my personality. I sat down, hoping that my smile helped them understand a piece of what Miss Holly is like, and assuring myself I’d get to talk to students later in the day.

Nope. That class period was full of dictation. Dictation for definitions, dictation to help with pronunciation, dictation for exercises AND homework…it was wild. My brain really does not work like that, or at least, it does not like working like that, but I guess that is how classrooms are run here, the good ‘ole British model. I’m sorry, I know this sounds really judgmental, I just cringe when I picture being young with so many ideas and so much energy and creativity and then being crushed into class after class where your ability to obey orders and memorize definitions is what is valued. I know our education system in the U.S. is far from catering to every learning style, but I’ve been so lucky in my life to have teachers who cater to as many learning styles as they can, and that has really shaped my education in a positive way. Ok. That’s all I’ll say about that right now.

After the class, I sat in the teachers’ lounge grading the exercises the students had just completed, and a couple of the teachers asked me what I thought of Donald Trump. I knew it would come eventually, it’s a very valid question. I made a face, and asked them what they thought of Trump. They all smiled big amused smiles and said things along the lines of, “Oh, I like him, he’s so wild, you never know what he’s going to do.” One teacher even said, “He wants to build a wall. He’s right to build a wall, that’s the only way to truly keep out terrorists, which is a huge problem in the U.S.” Oh. Ok. No.

I was so surprised. So surprised. I also realized that day that it was the first time I had to explicitly explain why Trump is neither a go leader nor a good person. Most people I talk to, at least in the U.S., have at least a basic understanding of issues surrounding Trump, even if they agree with him privately. I felt like when I was explaining my thoughts (based on facts), the teachers were all laughing at me. I think this is partly a cultural need to avoid conflict, but I couldn’t help but think it was at least somewhat because I am a woman with very strong opinions, and they aren’t used to that and don’t like that. I should mention almost all of my colleagues are male. I think I’ve seen a total of three other women on staff at the school, only one of them a teacher.

Three of the teachers seemed to lose interest in my rant and went about their own business, but one stayed to talk it out with me. He’s younger than the rest, and is perhaps more receptive to new ideas (I apologize-- though that is an ageist explanation, I think it may be true in this particular situation). He asked me follow-up questions to my explanations and genuinely seemed to give what I was saying some thought. At the end of our conversation, he said, “But you’re very biased. I can’t be sure of anything you’ve told me.” I said that that was a fair statement, and encouraged him to look into it more himself. Who knows if he will, but I said my piece. It’s very difficult for me to understand how people who are not welcome in “Trump’s America” can still support him. Oh, and I recommended two books to him in hopes that they build his empathy for targeted groups in the U.S. (Homegoing and Americanah, if you’re interested.)

After this conversation, it really hit me how sick I felt. Remember that fever I mentioned earlier? So I got the hell out of there, feeling exhausted and disappointed that I hadn’t been able to interact with any students apart from Jessie, the girl who showed me where the washroom is (thanks, girl!). I got on a trotro right away, but because it was the middle of the day, it took forever to fill up so we ended up sitting at various stops for several minutes at a time, and it took about 40 minutes to get home. When I got off at Okpongolo, I literally thought I was going to die. My whole body was aching and I was freezing even though I knew it had to be almost 90 degrees outside.

I climbed straight into bed and slept for a couple hours at a time until around 6 pm, when my friends brought me a muffin to see if my stomach could handle it. I’m not exaggerating, you guys, at this point I had had a fever most of the day, and I think it is the worst fever I’ve ever had in my life. I could barely walk, and this was after vomiting the night before, so I had NOTHING left in my stomach and I was freezing and oh my gosh sorry I’m complaining, but it was truly awful. One of the student aids in our program asked me if I had been sleeping with my mosquito netting on, so I was like good god, he thinks I have malaria.

Nope! I do not! That was just a dreadful day, but I had hot chocolate (it’s the best of the best here) and a cold shower (gotta confuse the fever—am I hot or cold??? If you don’t know, you can’t get me!), and went to bed knowing I’d wake up ok (knowing is synonymous with hoping to me). And I did wake up ok! And then I had a great day at the beach. So watch out.

Today, I went back to my internship, and it started out with just grading and observing in the classroom, but then when Klenem and I walked out of one class, he said, “Holly, can you do that?” I didn’t really understand what he meant. “Teach?” I asked. “Yes, teach that. Can you teach what I just did?”

I said yes, yes of course, though the truth of that answer is debatable. You’ll be happy to know it went just fine—I taught about 40 7th graders for about an hour, which I am very proud of. I am less proud of the lesson content; they’re currently working on auxiliary verbs, so I got to explain the differences between may and can, and need to and must. True story. But, hey, I TAUGHT. I taught for my very first time in a formal classroom setting, so there. SO THERE. Making moves.

I also have been given the task of reading the book they’re currently working on and coming up with questions about it. The examples Klenem gave me were, where does the story take place? Or, what is the main character’s name? But I’m thinking more along the lines of what is the effect of having a male narrator in a novel that revolves around a woman’s personal story? Because actually, what the hell is that? They’re literally going to fire me haha.

This has been lengthy again, sorry! I hope it’s been somewhat interesting hearing what my experience with Ghanaian school has been so far. Thank you so much for taking the time to read, it really means a lot to me.

[arrowsintl]

Restored, Healed, Refreshed

Wow, thank you Lord for preparing me and allowing me to participate this year, in such perfect timing. 

My name is Nilivette and I am from Panama. I am a full time missionary with Youth with a Mission (YWAM). 

On May 31st, I had just finished a very intense, but great, season as the leader of a Discipleship and Training School (DTS) and a student of the Leadership and Ministry Development School. Yes, I did both simultaneously for 5 months; it was 3 months of the Lecture Phase and 2 months of outreach in Costa Rica and various indigenous villages in Panama. We had our graduation celebration in the evening of May 31. Right after, I took a 8hr bus ride to Panama City to catch my flight to Oklahoma the next day. 

Everything was going really well; even though my body was tired, my spirit was expecting amazing things. On my way to the airport I received an email saying that my flight was delayed. I walked to the counter with the assurance that the Lord had everything covered and I was going to be okay. I flew from Panama to Florida and realized that I had missed my connecting flight to OKC - oooh no!! But once again, His peace was overflowing and I was fine because I was trusting in Him. 

As team members we were asked to be at the Arrows Base before 5pm, I had to make a decision. Should I wait for the next flight with the same airline and get to OKC the next day or take a step of faith and buy a new flight? Well, in this part I got a little nervous because it was an extra unplanned expense that was not cheap. After praying, I contacted Natalie, director of Arrows, to explain the situation. She suggested the second option was the best and that the Lord would provide. So, I prayed again and said, “Lord, you called me to do this and I'm gonna trust that you will provide everything I need to get there.” So, I got the new flight ticket and arrived at the Base only just over an hour late. I was received with smiles, good food and great fellowship. I had made it! Lord, thank you for being with me. 

On the first day of training I asked the Lord 3 things:

1. What do you have prepared for me? 

2. Please show me what my "role" during this time with Arrows will be. 

3. Show me specific people to invest in. 

As He is faithful, He answered me. His answers were specific:

1. You are going to get closer to Me and our communication will get better and better. 

2. You are here to love + serve them and to be a display of my kindness and joy. 

3. He gave me names. 

Now I have a confession. I know the level of excellence that Arrows pursues, which I absolutely admire and enjoy so much. However, I am not a professional dancer and when I saw the schedule for our 10 days of training, a question came to my whole being. “Have you conquered your fear of man or is it a struggle still?” I knew the Lord wanted to show me something. I took a moment to meditate and answered by saying, “You have made me free. I'm not afraid of what others would think or say anymore. Thank you for giving me security in who I am in You and for transforming my life for your purpose.” Our communication was very clear and real, can you see it? It was amazing. 

Love and Service

Something that the Lord has been teaching me is to be attentive, to see what needs to be done, and to just go ahead and do it. 

Influence is contagious! One night I was taking the garbage out of our dorms and some people said, “Thank you, Nili.”  But someone else came to me, took it from my hands and walked with me to the container. So, at the end, it was teamwork and a reminder that by unity and love, the world will know that we are disciples of the Lord. We want that, right?

Ladies - Mis amigas y hermanas 

Since 2017, I've been serving with Youth with a Mission and it's been an awesome experience. It has also been a place of loneliness, as I live away from my family, church and friends. Also, it's been a place of growth. I’ve been challenged to step out of my comfort zone and to develop leadership skills and a very necessary dependence on the Lord's grace to accomplish His purpose.

Coming from a season of being "the boss", I was really excited about not being in charge and just enjoying the flow of what the Lord was doing. 

I very much enjoy connecting with people and I'm very passionate about friendships and connections led by the Lord. Through love, willingness, care, prayers and obedience, the Lord has helped me to let go of certain things and people. I’ve forgiven hurtful actions and words of the past and received a fresh start for this new season in my life.

Through this team of old and new friends and sisters, the Lord brought back to me the sweet and powerful freedom of being an intentional, loving and genuine friend/sister/daughter/servant/leader. I will always treasure all the laughter, help, hugs, prayers, notes, beats, jokes and moments we shared together. It's an honor to be connected to all of you. Thank you again for being such a blessing to me. 

Ministry - Outreach - Ministry

I have a passion for interpretation. It was a dream of mine since I was a little girl. Now, the Lord has given me the tools to do it and it is something that I love. Being the only Spanish native speaker in the team, I was aware that this trip would bring many opportunities to use this gift. It was a pleasure for me to be able to interpret for the Arrows directors, team members and hosts as they taught the Word and various dance classes. 

For ministry/prayer time after outreaches, we'd divide in groups. One night in Lima, after an outreach in a plaza, we had the opportunity to talk to a man who was really touched by what he saw. He described what he was feeling as peace and warmth. It was very special for me to interpret the words that our director Natalie was sharing with Him. We prayed together and he committed to read the Bible, little by little. Knowing how the Scriptures have changed my life, I was very encouraged and excited for him! We know and pray the Lord will continue to guide his path toward Him and that he will encounter freedom and abundant/eternal life. 

Thank You again Lord, for everything you have given me! Thank you for restoring, healing and refreshing me, for giving me passion and purpose, and for doing exceedingly above what I can think or imagine. You are the best companion in this amazing adventure You designed for me: to soar higher, become balanced by your hands and sharpened by your Word, and to hit the mark to advance Your kingdom. 

- Nilivette, from Panama (Summer Team Member: Costa Rica/Peru 2019)

[bryanevansduff]

After 65 Years Of Hardcore Shredding, The Most Metal Thing Left To Do Is Face My Death With Dignity

Ever since I came out thrashing the day I was born, I have raised 65 years of hell on earth through raging, head banging, and dedicating my life to the sacred sounds of sick, twisted death metal music. But now that I see pathetic mortal existence drawing to a close, it seems the only metal thing left for me to do is to face the end of my life with my dignity intact. I have accomplished literally every other metal act in my life other than accepting my inevitable passing. I’ve spent six decades shredding guitar, slapping bass, growing my hair out, cutting it, then growing it out again. The only metal thing left for me to do is fully process my emotions so that I can gracefully accept my mortality through careful planning and preparation.

First things first, I plan to surround myself with a strong group of support – that includes my friends, my family, and my thrash brothers in blood and steel. There’s no way for me to cope with all my worries by myself, but I am sure after fellowshipping with the Angels of Carnage I will focus on the things that I can control. I’ll be a lot less worried about finding a home for my dark belongings and twisted collections once I’ve made my last will and testament with Dark Marcus, who in addition to slamming the bass for the Lambs of Death is an actual estate lawyer. And I know the Blood Ragers will want my funeral to be a massive black spectacle of the macabre, but I’ll want to make sure I make responsible arrangements so that my unused retirement savings can cover everything and my family won’t have to shoulder the costs of my ceremony or my customized black metal coffin a coyote skeleton painted on the outside. I’m sure in time I’ll accept the harsh true that I’m going to have to watch the Bass Hog’s set at MurderFest from Valhalla, as I cross from this realm into the next, but I am sure I will still be a little sad I’ll have to miss my grandson’s graduation from Brandeis.

I understand that to face my inevitable death head on, I’m going to need to admit my physical limitations. I’ve already accepted that moshing is a lot harder with my reading glasses, and I can only imagine how much more difficult it will be to crowd surf from a $3,000 four-wheel mobility scooter I got off of Medicaid benefits. I know I’ll lose some of my independence, but hopefully I can find the right hospice caregiver to share the duties of our ceremonial pre-show ritual, like coating our guitars in cows’ blood at the dark altar we’ve built on the outside of our tour bus. That reminds me, I’ll need to make sure that our bus, which we’ve modeled after the raft of Kharon (the ferryman of Hades who carried souls of the newly deceased across the rivers Styx) is wheelchair complaint.

No one knows that life has to end more than I do. Most of the songs I’ve written over the years have dealt with the cruel finality of death. It’s funny, I spent so much of my life raging at the injustice that undermines all of life, i.e. its inevitable demise, e.g. that once you are born you begin to die, that I wonder if I ever spent any of it just living. Anyway, remind me to make sure my credit cards are paid off before I go so none of my dependents get saddled with my debts.

In the end, I hope to pass as most people do: in peace, surrounded by my loved ones, and with Death’s steely cold hands mangling my corpse as he slowly chokes the life from my feeble human neck. After all, my death will be nothing more than the final act in a long life of sacrifices to the Eternal Dark Lord. Remember me as I slip gloriously into the oncoming unknown! Also: please remind my daughter Dark Marcus has my power of attorney.

[araeph]

So I was kinda bummed about how Teo, Haru, and The Duke didn't really do much when the Gaang was hiding in the Western Air Temple in Book 3. Maybe if there were more episodes in Book 3, we could have seen more of them, but how would you imagine them interacting with the Gaang and taking part in Aang's training? Also, if Appa was able to carry them when everyone was trying to escape the Air Temple, how could you see them taking part in helping Aang prepare for Sozin's Comet?

I know what you mean. Personally, at the time Iwas too busy being amused at the creators’ obvious struggle to find something for those three to do at the WesternAir Temple that would get them off-screen and out of the GAang’s way.

Teo: It’s so different from the Northern AirTemple.  I wonderif there are any secret rooms. Haru:  Let’s go check it out.

[later]

Katara: Hasanyone seen Toph? Sokka: I haven’t seen her since she stormed off yesterday. Haru: Maybe she’s just exploring the air temple. There are some prettyfun spots to practice earthbending. Katara: I think we should go look forher. Sokka: Oh, let her have fun with her rocks. I’m in no rush to have heryelling at us again. The Duke: We can go check for her. Teo: Yeah, I want to ridethat tunnel down to the hall of statues again. It’ll work a lot better now thatI fixed my brakes. 

Nice bus there, guys!

The problem was pretty unavoidable, to be honest. We hadthis big reunion at the invasion, with far too many characters to take with usfor the latter half of Season 3. It made sense to separate the kids and theadults for that reason, and it would be OOC for the GAang to just ditchthe B Team at the first opportunity. But then we’re left with three kids whodon’t have as much connection to the main story, as well as an overabundance ofprotagonists.

Groups of four to six main members are optimal forgroup-centered stories, in my opinion. Anything larger than that, and it startsto get messy and unfocused. That’s why the Fellowship split up in the firstthird of the story, so that smaller groups of two or three could meet up withmore allies and the stage wouldn’t feel as crowded (Hobbit, I’m lookin’ at you.) It’s why Star Trek: TNG and DS9would rotate their cast in and out of the episodes, based on which area of expertisewas called for in a given script. And it’s why Peridot and Lapis got shippedoff to the Barn of Comparative Obscurity in Season 3 of Steven Universe, when they started doing more with Greg. (Not tomention Connie fading in and out of the main plot as needed.)  

Consider how strange the confrontation with Zukowould have been at the Western Air Temple if they’d been present, too. Think of howweird it would be to have to cram character development for the B Team in thealready packed episodes we got from 312-316. And in “Sozin’s Comet”, we alreadyhave four main plot threads we have to follow for the story’s climax; it would havebeen impossible to focus away from that in a way that felt natural.

But you know where I would have liked to see moredevelopment for the B Team? In those blasted comics. The new charactersintroduced there just feel so flat.Why couldn’t we have Haru attend Toph’s metalbending academy, instead of thethree cardboard cutouts that we got? Why couldn’t we have Teo be the one toblow the whistle on the dirty mining operation in “The Rift”, instead of theutterly pointless Satoru? I would enjoy seeing Aang be conflicted over an oldfriend who is trying to make a new life for himself, but whose new life might leadto polluting the river. And maybe The Duke and Pipsqueak could have taken on agreater role in “The Promise,” with a subplot about having to split up theFreedom Fighters now that the war is over. It just feels like their charactersshould have been expanded upon after A:TLA, instead of during it.

[hottytoddynews]

Delta Streets Academy in Greenwood graduated its first senior class in May. The five seniors are all heading off to college, one of them to Mississippi State University on a full scholarship. The private school for young men, which is a member of the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools, was founded in 2012 by T. Mac Howard, a white guy who was a young twenty-something at the time and who caught a vision for what it meant to heed God’s call to do justice, to love mercy, and to sacrifice for others in the way Jesus sacrificed for him.

Mo Leverett, the founder of Desire Street Ministries in New Orleans, came to speak at T.Mac’s Reformed University Fellowship group during his freshman year at MSU. His stories of the poverty and the desperation of the people in the infamous urban housing project touched T. Mac in a profound way, and he asked Mo is he could do a summer internship there. The summer of 2005 opened T. Mac’s eyes to a world he had never experienced. Reading about squalor and dysfunction and lack of hope is one thing, but seeing it first hand, interacting with those who live it, is something altogether different. It broke his heart.

T.Mac and Meagan Howard are the parents of a three-year-old and almost 2-year-old twin boys!

After T. Mac graduated in 2008, he took a job at Greenwood High School teaching math and coaching baseball and football. He chose the Mississippi Delta because there weren’t a lot of established ministries trying to address the overwhelming problems that had morphed in the last few decades. He originally planned to teach and coach and use those as a way to build relationships and to share the gospel.

“The original idea was to do Bible studies in my house and disciple guys like that.” What he discovered was that teaching is exhausting in a classroom of 28 kids, all at different levels, where there are no consequences for misbehavior, tardiness, or skipping school, and where chaos is just the order of the day.”

At the end of the first year, he had not held one Bible study or shared the gospel with one kid. He was still committed, but he knew he had to come up with Plan B. He toyed with the idea of accepting a position with Fellowship of Christian Athletes as an area director in Northeast Mississippi, but he says, “God got hold of me and said, ‘If you leave now and try to come back they’re just going to expect you to leave again because that’s what so many white people do—they come in, lead a Bible study in the neighborhood, and then you never hear from them again.”

He taught at GHS for one more year, but in his mind, he was prepping to start the ministry before the next fall rolled around.

The following summer T.Mac offered a Christian day camp, complete with arts and crafts and sports instruction. He gathered his own interns who were mostly Reformed University Fellowship participants from MSU and Ole Miss. T. Mac had built a friendship with the pastor of Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church who offered his fellowship hall for an after-school tutoring program that started in fall 2011. It was a slow beginning, but it grew month to month.

Swayze Waters (far left) and T.Mac Howard (far right) teamed up to coach these aspiring young athletes at Delta Streets Academy.

When Delta Streets Academy opened in 2012, there were six young men enrolled. T.Mac says he can’t praise their parents enough for trusting their sons to “a white dude” who had never run a school. Each year has seen growth, and this past school year 58 boys in grades 7–12 completed the second semester.

At the present time, there are nine full-time staff and four part-time faculty members. First Baptist Church offers space rent free, and that is a great blessing. Cannon Motors has given the school the old Delta Chevrolet building in downtown, but the renovation price tag of $1.3 million has made renovation a distant dream for the time being. T.Mac wears many hats, from driving the bus to teaching to running the payroll, but one of his most important jobs is fundraiser in chief. “That’s the thing that keeps me up at night, but God has taught me a lot these past six years about his sufficiency.”

The first graduating class of Delta Streets Academy 2017.

“We’re not a great school yet,” he says. “But we are a good school right now. The sooner I can hand off some of my jobs, the better off we’ll be.” He adds, “The only thing I’m really good at is talking to people. But the day we have a $900,000 budget and 120 kids in school is the day we have the potential to be a great school.”

T.Mac believes they will get there. He wants to see his students competing with the strongest private schools in the state, signing Division 1 scholarships and being taught by a world-class faculty. He calls it a total “God thing” that it has come as far as it has in five years.

In the beginning, the great challenge for the boys who enroll at Delta Streets is the radical difference in the culture between the public and the private school. The structure and the discipline hit them hard at first because they have never had rules and consequences. Some push the boundaries, and some decide it’s not for them, but the ones who persevere flourish and will go on to bright futures and better lives than they have known.

Although T.Mac says the students themselves are pretty color-blind, he would very much like to attract minority staff. The racial reconciliation aspect of Delta Streets is just a beautiful byproduct of the Christian foundation. “It’s just in the culture at Delta Streets.”

Certificates of excellence presented to three young students.

When the Delta Streets students play other schools in the MAIS, the opposition is usually a private academy whose founding was all about preserving segregation. T.Mac could not be happier with the way his well-mannered students conduct themselves on the field or on the basketball court. He watches the walls come down.

Discipleship is a huge part of DSA. “We have an open enrollment,” he says. “Anybody can come here for $75 a month, but you have to choose to follow. I totally get that this is not for everybody, but our students are learning life skills that they would not be getting in the public school. They’re getting structure, discipline, work ethic, rules, and a sense of their worth and value as children of the God who loves them and desires the best for them.”

Changing Lives in Marks

About 70 miles north of Greenwood is the little town of Marks where the local economy was once dependent on the health and wealth of the large Delta farms. The radical transformation in farming operations hit Quitman County hard. Compounding that shrinking demand for an unskilled labor force was the effect of NAFTA, which closed small manufacturing plants taking those few jobs as well.

The railroad runs through the center of the once busy downtown. Many empty storefronts line the main street, and several beautiful old churches are in close proximity. Well-kept homes and lawns in the neighborhood hint that once upon a time this was a thriving Delta town.

Jaby Denton is a fourth generation Marks stakeholder. His family has forever owned a large farming operation in Quitman County. His entire life was lived right there until he moved his family to Oxford. When his children were in high school, he wanted them to have opportunities that were simply no longer there for them in Marks. He became a daily commuter between farm and home.

Although his children moved on to college, Jaby didn’t move back to Marks right away. Oxford was booming. He began attending a men’s weekly inspirational breakfast group at a local restaurant. Guest speakers each week discussed a myriad of topics. Jaby happened to attend one morning when T. Mac Howard was there to tell the story of Delta Streets Academy.

Either T. Mac or God spoke to Jaby in a big way. He wanted to spark the same kind of revival in Marks. And so he moved back to the farm and began to assess and plan. He found that in assessing the needs, they were even more overwhelming than he had imagined at first. Among one of the first things he discovered almost by accident was that a huge number of ninth and tenth graders in the local high school were not able to read.

Jaby Denton, a fourth-generation Marks resident shares his vision for a community park and sports fields with Marilyn Tinnin.

Meanwhile, Jason Stoker of Starkville, Executive Director of Reclaimed Project, spent an anniversary weekend in Greenwood. He was there to eat well, take a cooking class for fun at Viking Cooking School, and have some real downtime with Shannon, his wife. But they drove around enough to get an unvarnished picture in his mind of what poverty in the Delta looked like. It reminded him of what he saw on his visits to Africa.

He was thoroughly convinced that Reclaimed’s next ministry outreach needed to be in the Mississippi Delta—but where? Jason called Jill Freeze knowing she and Hugh had been great supporters of Reclaimed and he knew they had also been interested in some ministries in the Delta. Jill indirectly put him in touch with Jaby, who, in Jason’s words “has been the game changer.”

Local leadership and local “buy in” is, next to Jesus Christ, the most important factor in getting an effort off the ground and maintaining the momentum. Jaby has an “umbrella” vision for revitalizing Marks, and he has been able to do things that no outsider could possibly have done.

However, Reclaimed ministry’s piece of the pie is key. Reclaimed’s heart is for the children with a holistic and long-view approach. The strategy for “reclaiming” the Delta is not far removed from the strategy for “reclaiming” anybody anywhere. What are the short-term needs that will undergird the long term goals?

Will Overstreet, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Marks, points out the view of Marks Main Street from one of the loft apartments presently under renovation in a vintage downtown landmark.

The same ills that have affected public education across other parts of Mississippi have hit this Delta town especially hard. Finding and keeping teachers has been next to impossible. Aside from the run down facilities and the lack of family stability, teachers who might come to Marks had no options for places to live.

One of the first things Reclaimed did was to purchase a building in downtown Marks with the plan to repurpose it as a place for single teachers to live. It’s a very cool loft, apartment-style community of six private apartments sharing a common area, a kitchen, and a laundry room. Keeping its restoration true to the 1930 period of its origin means huge windows, high ceilings, old brick, and an aesthetic that would be enticing to most any 20 something! Rent-free and a commitment for two years seem like a generous contract.

The renovation of the building has been a real showcase for how the body of Christ works. The pro bono contributions in materials and time from contractors, electricians, and construction specialists have saved thousands and thousands of dollars. Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Ridgeland has a special group of volunteers who man their own construction ministry. They are all professionals whose day jobs involve building, but they usually take at least one trip a year giving their services for free to a cause that builds the body of Christ.

Tim Blocker, stewardship minister, with a lot of support from builders Ty Gardner and Jon Ramsay, has led a team of about 30 devoted volunteers who have spent many a Saturday in the last few months renovating the building that will house the teachers.

Reclaimed is about $40,000 shy of being able to finish the building debt-free. The plan is to have it complete and ready for move-in before the 2017 fall session begins.

Jason speaks highly of the leadership at the public school. There is a dedicated team who shares the vision for discipling and equipping students. There is an esprit de corps between Reclaimed and the school administration that is filled with hope for the immediate future.

Reclaimed is also about job creation. One thing that differentiates the Greenwood ministry from the Marks ministry is the presence of jobs. Not many jobs exist in Marks. Reclaimed wanted to do something about that, so taking their blueprint from their ministry in Lesotho and Botswana, they began looking for skills among the ladies of Marks.

Bethany Kuenzli, Director of Reclaimed Marketplace, came up with some patterns for aprons and pillows that the Marks ladies could sew. Many of them had worked in upholstery and garment factories and knew more than rudimentary things about sewing. The concept is much like the micro businesses that have helped support locals in third world countries. A volunteer from Jackson’s Fondren Church planned to teach a class for several Marks ladies on how to do more elaborate things – like bedding. It would be a gold mine for the ministry if a few moms decorating daughters’ dorm rooms let the Reclaimed ladies do their custom sewing.

When the instructor began her first class in Marks, she quickly discovered these ladies were already master seamstresses. They just needed the materials to put their skills to work. Mississippi Magazine was planning their Mercantile Shopping Event in early May. This was an opportunity to attract business. Premier Fabrics donated yards and yards of fabric. The Marks ladies worked their magic to create comforters, curtains, pillows, and dust ruffles. Hopefully, this will be an ongoing job-producing cottage industry to help the Reclaimed Project and the Marks revival.

Jason Stoker is definitely the kind of guy who can rally others to the vision. During spring break he took about 50 families from First Baptist Church in Starkville to Marks to do a four-day camp. (Let that sink in—a spring break vacation with no snow skiing, no beach, no place exotic, but going to Marks, MS to serve strangers)

The smiles on the faces of local children tell the story of happy times at the spring day camp conducted by the Reclaimed Project from Starkville.

The Starkville families took their children, and most of them stayed in the homes of the very grateful Marks families who wanted to be involved in the Reclaimed efforts. They wanted to bring black and white together, but they welcomed the know-how of Reclaimed.

First Baptist offered their facility for daytime activity, and First United Methodist took on feeding the volunteers every night. It was a week of bonding and learning and wrapping many heartstrings around the mission.

The locals and the children of the volunteers played side by side. They had a total blast, and they were completely color-blind. That in itself inspires hope.

Jason also learned that as the small town ages and the job market disintegrates, the young who go off to college, understandably do not return. The underclass continues to grow. They are children created in the image of an eternal God, and they need hope and a future.

Reclaimed longs to help create that.

The Heart of a Change Agent

Ole Miss alumnus Daniel Myrick, like T. Mac Howard, grew up in Brandon and attended Northwest Rankin. Jason Stoker had been his middle-school pastor at Pinelake Church. He had participated in mission trips through Pinelake and knew his calling was to be a coach and a teacher.

He signed on to teach in Marks his first year out of college. Expecting it to be hard, he found it to be even harder. There were some long days and some emotional lows. Teaching in Marks was about so much more than the classroom instruction.

As the assistant basketball coach, his team lost the first 14 games of the season. “That’s 14 post-game talks you have to have with the players, and after a while, you run out of things to say,” he says. Daniel persevered believing that his team wasn’t losing due to lack of talent. He continued to pour into the team, and they responded by working hard and trying harder. “Eventually we did win one, and then we won another. We kept winning, went to a district tournament, played the number one seed and won the district championship for the first time in twelve years.”

A very committed Daniel sees that win as symbolic of something more—something about hope and a future that is brighter than the one staring his players in the face today. He is coming back to Marks this fall and will be living in one of the Reclaimed apartments.

“If I can make a difference in just a few lives, those kids will change this community,” he says.

After all, wasn’t Jesus Christ all about relationships?

One of his brightest stars is a student named Daisia. She has a sister who is attending college at USM, and Daisia’s dream is to get there, too. Daniel has no doubt she can and will. These are her words and part of a letter she wrote in answer to Daniel’s question, “What would you want me to tell others about Marks?”

Dear Those Who I Believe Will Make a Change,

Where I’m from, I’m pretty sure everyone is familiar with the struggle. Whether it’s no lights or all you have is cold water, everyone is familiar with it. Everyone who ever had a chance to make it out of this place I call the “Waiting  Place” never comes back. It’s like escaping from a living hell.

The reason I like calling it the “Waiting Place” is because some just sit around thinking, not getting up doing nothing. But how can one take action when there is nothing around to take action about? … It’s like once you’re in the Waiting Place, you can’t get out because you don’t know which path to take.

But people like you are the only chance for my people to finally escape the Waiting Place. Every day and every night I pray for someone who actually believes in us to come and make a change…It would be such a blessing if you all took time out of your personal schedule to devote some of your time to help my people of Quitman County.

 What Is the Future?

 God, bless the T. Mac Howards and the Jason Stokers, the Daniel Myricks and the Jaby Dentons of the world. I asked them all if tackling the layers of issues in the Delta is a little like eating an elephant. That old cliché answers that it IS possible to eat an elephant one bite at a time.

Jason has a much better analogy. He compares tackling the problems in the Delta to peeling an onion. With every layer removed, the onion gets smaller.

No doubt, in the Delta, there are layers and layers of issues that have multiplied over several generations. What matters most at this intersection of time is that God’s people pay attention. In the kingdom of Light and Dark, there exists a great opportunity for impact at the moment.

The epistle of James is pretty clear. “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” James 2:15-17.

Lord, make us your vessels!

By Marilyn Tinnin, a former Miss University at Ole Miss. This story was originally published in Mississippi Christian Living Magazine 

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The post Salt & Light: A Revival In The Delta appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

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(Super-Saving For An Early Retirement, Part 2: Lessons Learned) [Editor’s Note: This is a lengthy guest post written by a long-time physician reader and his physician wife who wish to remain anonymous. We have no financial relationship.] In August 2015, WCI published my guest post, Super Saving For An Early Retirement. When I first contacted the godfather of physician personal finance with my idea for that post, my motivation was to give something back to him and the blog community from which I’ve taken so much. For a “fluff piece” without much number-crunching meat, it seemed to strike a chord among readers as judged by the amount of interaction in the comments section. It wasn’t a death-metal power-chord like when WCI takes whole life insurance salesmen to task, but it was a chord nonetheless. In any case, the post-guest post outcome was unexpected: I gained way more than I gave. I intended to show unsophisticated investors (like me) that a high savings rate can compensate for lack of knowledge; you don’t have to understand that much about the financial industry to do a credible job of preparing for early retirement. What I didn’t anticipate was the impact that your (WCI’s minions’) collective wisdom in the comments section would have on me. While there were plenty of comments about the topic of super-saving, readers also took the conversation in surprising directions that forced me to ask, “What the heck am I doing with my life?” Lessons Learned With that preamble, the lessons I have learned: #1 Change Your Job Now If you spend much of each day in low-level burnout, fantasizing about giving Admin the middle-finger salute while walking out the door for the last time, perhaps you should change something now. My wife (also a physician, remember) and I were so laser-focused on an imaginary finish-line that we had come to accept the “suck” as part of our lives, as if we had no power to control it. As we learned to endure the suck, it continued to fuel our desire to leave it all behind. Sure, it seems obvious that disliking your job will be a powerful motivator for achieving early retirement. But when the onset of burnout is insidious, you don’t necessarily have an “a-ha” moment in which perspective is gained and the path to improving your current situation becomes clear. However, when one WCI commenter after another hammers away at your sense of powerlessness, suggesting that you can make changes, it helps jump start the process of introspection. PsychMD was one of the first commenters to point out how I might work on my happiness now: “If I was in such a position, I’d tap into that young, naive, idealistic person I was before I started medical school, and try to make those dreams a reality…so I could have more of those rewarding moments.” Then John hit me broadside with: “I am way behind you in terms of retirement but I can tell you I feel so much richer than you because I love coming to work everyday. I mean it is work sometimes but I love it.” He followed that up with a highly applicable anecdote: “I have a friend who was 41 when he looked at his portfolio and saw he had enough, so he reduced his patient time in half and started helping the hospital with the business/leadership side of things. He took a big pay cut but he slowed down and gets a lot out of his new job.” This unleashed a torrent of similar comments that really resonated with me. Thinking about making some changes yourself? The Happy Philosopher has an entertaining, insightful blog dedicated to his journey in this realm. #2: Pulling The Trigger Is Complicated One of the frequent suggestions in the comments on my last post was to cut back my hours at work. With our accumulated assets, that would appear to be a no-brainer, right? Um, not so much. First, we had been obsessing for years over the concept of reaching the “finish line.” I used to play regularly with different online retirement calculators, getting a little endorphin rush every time one calculator’s projections for a successful, even earlier retirement (portfolio lasts 50+ years) were verified by another. Cutting back at work would mean either extending our careers or decreasing our projected yearly spend in retirement. Let’s start with extending our careers. My wife was not, and still isn’t, burned out to the same extent as I. Nonetheless, she is quite looking forward to the day when she can pack it all in. To her, medicine is a job; her identity is not wrapped up in being a doctor. Most days, she doesn’t mind her job too much, but she would never say she loves it (although she does love getting paid a lot for what she considers a relatively easy specialty). If asked the age-old question of “What would you do if you won the lottery tomorrow?” she’d probably say, “Quit my job.” Platinum Level Scholarship Sponsor Now, my turn. The idea of extending my career was tough to wrap my mind around, because it was hard to imagine the job getting that much better after cutting back. My brain just couldn’t seem to process that working less might have a profound impact on my perception of work-life, and that I might appreciate greater career longevity. Which is funny, in retrospect, because my identity is wrapped up in being a physician, and I view medicine somewhere on the spectrum between “calling” and “job,” but closer to calling. So wouldn’t I derive more personal satisfaction from continuing to be engaged in my calling for a longer period of time, if I could make the job more enjoyable? Not only that, but there’s the practical consideration of a kid who has nine more years until graduation from high school, so it’s not like we have the option of taking off for parts unknown for more than 1-2 weeks at a time during the school year. If I’m going to be in town, then it would be lovely to fulfill my mission of helping people while being well-compensated and happier. Next, I’ll address the idea of decreasing our projected yearly spend in retirement. Total nonstarter. As I’ve said before, we were fairly frugal for a very long time, – living like medical students for years – not upgrading to living like residents until several years after completion of our fellowships. For us, an important component of retirement will be reaping the benefit of all that saving done early in our careers, and this will lead to spending a bunch of money. Just like WCI has inflated his lifestyle to include a killer wakeboat and what seems like q.o.week canyoneering/mountaineering/camping excursions, we have become accustomed to frequent vacations at beautiful VRBO rental homes in exotic locales. Although we do much of our own cooking on vacation, we also enjoy dining out at (sometimes) expensive restaurants. In retirement, we expect to travel even more frequently and for longer periods of time. While some of this will surely involve camping, which we love, I would guess that 80% of our yearly travel won’t include sleeping under the stars or staying at hostels. For the past two years, our per-year spend has been just over 100k. Figuring in extra spending for more travel plus taxes, we’d like to have 150-200k/year in retirement. Physician on FIRE, who projects needing 1/3 that amount, just had a heart attack, folks. Does anyone in the room know CPR? #3: Luck Is Not A Strategy Around the time I was ruminating over some of these issues, a buyout of our group practice started to morph from a possibility into a reality. By late 2015, we were presented with an offer that, if consummated, would result in a high six-figure payout to each partner. As my wife and I were both partners, this was very good news. After months of mental constipation, I started to lay the groundwork for cutting back at work. Astute readers may argue that I hadn’t internalized any valuable lesson, seeing how it took the prospect of a massive infusion of cash (that we arguably didn’t need to achieve our goals) to mobilize my cutback effort. I agree that I’d have a more credible claim to enlightenment if I had taken concrete steps prior to the buyout news. I like to think that I would have eventually gotten to the same place without the buyout, but I admit the possibility I wouldn’t have. Hopefully, my thought process about cutting back and my experience with it since implementation will resonate with others on the fence, motivating you to take action more expeditiously. So luck is not a strategy, but it can motivate you to make the changes you should have made anyway. #4: Cutting Back Changed My Life…And Ticked Off My Wife Him: I’ll attempt to present this as balanced of a way as I can, ceding editorial power to my better half so you can rest assured that both sides of the story are told fairly. To put this in context, yes, the buyout deal happened, leading to obliteration of our outstanding student loan and mortgage debt, as well as a very large infusion of cash into our investment portfolio. I had identified my greatest pain point at work, which was the last few hours of each day. Not only was I mentally drained by that point, but after work I had a long drive to get our child and get home. We would often beat my wife home, so I would start cooking dinner as well. The cumulative effect of doing this for years was wearing on me, and it got worse when my daughter was districted to a school that was even farther away. After negotiating with my bosses, I was able to shave off the last couple of hours of office time each day. This addressed the mental exhaustion issue and allowed me to get out with enough time to pick my daughter up from our local bus stop, which is just a few minutes drive from home. I felt the effects of this change immediately. It was light outside when I got off work. I no longer felt beat up by the end of my day. Though I’ve always been good at making time for exercise, I could now exercise and do more stuff with my kid – it wasn’t one or the other. We enrolled our daughter in more after-school activities, to which I could now drive her and watch. On hot days over the summer, we might go stand-up paddle boarding in the late afternoon. I would cook a nutritious meal which would be on the table the moment my wife walked in the door. Homework was done. Kid was happy. Dad was happy. Everything is awesome! #Winning, right? Gold Level Scholarship Sponsor Wrong. After a few months of this new schedule, I started to sense a subtle hostility emanating off my wife. It wasn’t really overt, and I had no clue what was wrong, but I was certainly feeling under-valued and under-appreciated. In my clumsy, male way, I began to lobby for an “Atta boy!” from my wife, hoping that if I pointed out how great it was that I was taking care of our kid and home, she’d show me the love to which I’d become accustomed. Not only didn’t that have the intended effect, but it led to our first “come to Jesus talk” about our new situation. It turns out that I had completely misjudged the depth of my wife’s feelings about this next phase of our lives. Our marriage had always been 50-50 in just about every way, splitting almost all responsibilities down the middle. This wasn’t really a conscious choice; rather, it just kind of evolved that way. While I was aware of this balance, my wife expected this balance. I had naively assumed that picking up child and household duties would more than cover for her spending more time than me at the office. Apparently I was wrong. But the next part is what really shocked me. She was so jealous of my new schedule that, not only did she resent it, she felt that if anyone in this relationship should be enjoying a semi-retired lifestyle, it should be her! Her: I’m not sure why this really “shocked” my husband. I was the one who always wanted to be a Mom (ask him if he even wanted children before I forced the issue!). I was the one who felt like medicine is merely a paycheck, not a “calling.” So of course I was bitter that he was the one to cut his hours, not me! Some of the hostility was also fueled by times when I came home from a long day of work, saw the two of them looking all happy and relaxed, and then realizing after dinner that I still had to help with my daughter’s homework. Hey, if you’re going to cut your hours at work, then at least compensate by taking care of home-life! (To be fair, he has been doing a better job of this since we had our talk.) Him: It pains me to say that, for the first time, I felt like a better person than my wife (if you knew her, you’d probably assume that she’s nicer and more evolved than I – it’s ok, everyone else does). If our situations were reversed and she had cut back at work, I knew that I would be unconditionally happy for her. After discussing this with a couple of my male friends, I was convinced that on the scale of rightness, I scored at least 99%. Then I discussed this with a couple of my female friends (both married doctors) and I gained some perspective. While acknowledging that it’s not totally rational, my female friends counseled me that they don’t really want to feel like they’re doing the lion’s share of “bringing home the bacon.” Without wading too deep into old gender-role stereotypes, they could see how my wife wanted to feel taken care of by her man, in a more traditional sense. Her: This is true. When both of us worked full-time, I was making 25-30% more, which never really bothered me. But then he cut his hours, and that number went up another 5-10%. While his current salary is nothing to sneeze at, I view it as a big hit to our income. Him: I still thought this was a little crazy – despite understanding my wife a bit better – given the facts. One: the hit to my income was small in the grand scheme of things, as my hours weren’t cut as much as I had hoped. Two: we had just received a bolus of cash that had advanced our timeline to early retirement by several years. Three: we had previously discussed her cutting back at work and she had declined. Number three led to further emotionally charged discussions, in which she now stated that the only way she could manage her jealousy was to finally cut back her schedule, so we’d be “even.” I urged her to do so, as it was clear that the health of our relationship required it. Plus, we were on track to practically retire at-will, regardless of whether her salary was 10%, 20%, or even 50% less. Well, time has passed and she hasn’t made any changes to her schedule. She seems to have accepted our current situation for what it is, and she’s now batting around the idea of retiring at the end of her contract with our new parent company, in two years. But, if she’s still not that burned out, she may continue working, full or part time. Why the change of heart? Various reasons. She’s not that burned out. It’s logistically difficult to cut back in her department. Fear of “getting off the train” and not being able to get back on, should circumstances require it. Wanting to feel like she pushed hard to the end so she can feel good about quitting cold turkey while I continue to work. Anyway, her jealousy is currently manageable and the marriage is solid. Her: One more reason: fear of not having enough money in retirement, despite what he tells me. #5: Working Less Makes me a Better Person (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); Working less has made me a more engaged physician, a better father/husband, and a more introspective person. Jeff left an inspirational comment on my original guest post that turned out to be unbelievably prescient, as it sums up almost exactly what’s happened in my life: “…let’s focus on the beauty of working part time…You get to live a better lifestyle TODAY…Work 3 days a week, or shorter hours, or see less patients. Take less call. Think of what you could do with that time! …Whatever you want!!! You’d have time to make dinner, maybe not every night but much more than you do now. Likely you would find work to be less offensive and perhaps you rediscover that enjoyable, rewarding aspect again…life is too tragically short to be overly conservative. Don’t keep putting off your happiness just so you can “guarantee” you’ll have enough in retirement. Lots of adjustments can be made along the way if needed. Start to enjoy the freedoms you’ve definitely earned TODAY!” I touched on some of this earlier, but it goes deeper than just having more time at the end of the day. The downstream effects on my psyche from having this time have been myriad. I am happier to sit and chat with my patients, as I no longer feel like I have to ration my listening-energy to make it last all day. My fellow introverts know what I’m talking about – prolonged interpersonal engagement saps us of all available energy and empathy. Things that used to rile me up at work still bother me, but usually not to the same extent. I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m zen about all the nonsense in my organization, but I’m learning how to approach it more constructively. One thing about this new life that has surprised me is my focus on self-improvement. Many years ago, before I had a real job and a family, I remember being philosophical and way more introspective. For at least the last decade, I’ve just been busy. I’ve gotten really, really good at checking stuff off my to-do list. Unfortunately, the stuff that made it to my list was just what had to get done for daily life. The rest of me has been on autopilot for a long time. What would happen if you did almost no routine maintenance on your car for ten years? Maybe a Toyota would still seem to be running pretty well, but once you looked under the hood, you’d find some parts were about to break. I’m that Toyota. How I’ve gone about working on myself and changing the things I don’t like would take at least one more blog post, and I’m not sure anyone but me would be interested. Suffice it to say that, if you’re looking for personal improvement inspiration, I highly recommend subscribing to and combing through the archives of Tim Ferriss’ podcast and listening to whatever catches your eye. The collective wisdom there is brain-expanding and cannot be overstated. If you’re like my wife, however, and you just can’t sit through a 2-hour interview for a mere few brilliant nuggets, pick up a copy of his latest book, Tools of Titans, which is a high-yield compilation of all the tactics, routines, and habits of world-class performers. #6 Controlling Lifestyle Inflation Requires Constant Vigilance Sure, we have enough assets to retire whenever we’re ready. But not if our next ten years of spending follow the trajectory of the last ten, in which we’ve roughly doubled our yearly spend. There have been many great posts about this issue in the financial blogosphere, so I’ll simply share what I’ve found to be useful for reining it in. I now practice gratitude on a regular basis – a simple tool that helps me appreciate everything in my life. It also helps me couch things in terms of “I get to do this,” as opposed to “I have to do this.” I know it may sound like mental jiu-jitsu, but it does help shift perspective. The corollary to this is learning to want what you already have. When evaluating a potential purchase or other outlay of money, if I find myself saying, “We can afford it,” I pause and reflect. As WCI likes to say, high-income physicians can have anything they want, but not everything they want. I was shopping for a new jacket the other day and found two choices at the mall: a leather one for $250 ($500 before my 50% off Banana Republic coupon) or a faux-leather one for less than half that. They looked equally nice, and I’m not enough of a leather connoisseur to feel the difference. Call me a troglodyte, but I bought the fake one. #7 Other Things I Can Do With My Life (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push(); Having more time has allowed me to think about other things I can do with my life. Until I came up for air, I hadn’t thought much about what I’d do with the luxury of time. Now I’m working on launching a blog (in a genre unrelated to personal finance) of all things. If it turns into something substantial, I’ll monetize it. The point is, I never would have had the inspiration nor bandwidth prior to creating more time in my schedule. I have always enjoyed teaching, but having residents rotate through my private practice is challenging because productivity is valued over education. I’ve hosted them anyway, but it’s exhausting to give them a great experience while still churning through patients and closing charts. With a shorter day, I handle it much better, which has reinvigorated my love of teaching. In early retirement, I can see myself volunteering to staff the fellows’ clinic at our local academic institution. I took on a couple of malpractice cases as an expert witness this year and learned that I have an aptitude for it. I enjoyed working with the attorneys and teaching them, simultaneously feeling good about aiding in the defense of doctors who didn’t deserve to be sued. Oh, and the money was awesome. If I can leave you with one message, it is: don’t keep waiting for tomorrow to change your life – do it now. What do you think? Have you considered working part-time? What thoughts have you had about life change as you approach financial independence? Comment below! !function()function e()var e=document.createElement("script"),n=document.getElementById("myFinance-widget-script"),a=t+"static/widget/myFinance.js";e.type="text/javascript",e.async=!0,e.src=a,n.parentNode.insertBefore(e,n);var c="myFinance-widget-css";if(!document.getElementById(c))var d=document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0],i=document.createElement("link");i.id=c,i.rel="stylesheet",i.type="text/css",i.href=t+"static/widget/myFinance.css",i.media="all",d.appendChild(i)var t="http://ift.tt/2oFUowK";document.attachEvent?document.attachEvent("onreadystatechange",function()"complete"===document.readyState&&e()):document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded",e,!1)(); http://ift.tt/2qH1K3j

[birdiethebibliophile]

{fic} That Old Sweet Feeling (part 17)

Fandom:  The Adventure Zone:  Commitment Rating:  M Chapter Warnings:  None Relationship:  Nadiya Jones/Mary Word Count:  1,471

Here on AO3. Read the rest: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Part 15 Part 16

Tagging @someone-called-f1nch, @voidfishkid, @mellowstarscape, and @jumpboy-rembrandt!

m o r e NPCs (my suburban kids)

Chapter Summary:   Addison changes the channel. Irene broods. Kardala gives a pat on the back (metaphorically).

__________________

Jamie’s car pulled away almost before they closed the doors. Nadiya couldn’t really blame her; it was a cramped, tense ride, and Jamie drove exactly the speed limit. (Like Irene, Nadiya noted; apparently that’s what you do when you’re on the run. Action movies had lied to her.)

In front of them stood a small, slightly shabby house. Nadiya glanced from Remy to Kardala. “You think?”

Remy shrugged, walking up to the door and knocking. All three of them waited, then the door cracked open to reveal the terrified face of Addison.

“What do you want?” they said. “Get out of here. Tell Martine we aren’t –”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Remy said, holding his hands up nonthreateningly. “Why would we be from Martine?”

“I mean, not only were we the ones who fucked her up at the ‘Berg,” Nadiya pointed out, “but she’s locked up.”

Addison glanced down the street, then opened the door. “Come in,” they said warily. “If you were from Martine, you just would’ve blown the door open, probably.”

“Jamie brought us,” Nadiya said. Addison looked much like she remembered them: a person in their later thirties, a little soft around the middle, thinning hair. Open, friendly face that was currently tense with anxiety.

They relaxed slightly. “Oh. Well, that’s better, at least.”

“Addison?” a voice called from the next room.

“Coming,” Addison said, hurrying through the doorway. “You okay?”

The person on the couch – Flanagan, Nadiya recalled – shrugged jerkily. “Who is it?”

“Ahh, people from the Fellowship, escapees,” Addison said. “Nadiya Jones, Remy, uh, Kardala. Remember them?”

“Yeah.” Flanagan turned to look at them from the couch. Her thick, shoulder-length black hair was disheveled where it was hanging around her face, and she looked tired. She seemed a little younger than Addison – early thirties, maybe. “Hi. How’d you get here?”

“Cross-country road trip,” Remy said. “Hey, could you let us crash here for at least a night? We’re way tired.”

Addison glances at Flanagan, who nods. “Okay,” they said. “Yeah, sure. Just gotta stay on the DL, you know?”

“No, we know, we’re on the run too,” Remy said with a nod, and collapsed onto the couch, leaving some space between him and Flanagan.

“Nadiya? Kardala? You can sit,” Addison said, motioning vaguely around the space. “Sorry about the state of things.” They made a helpless gesture, then let their arms fall at their sides. “It’s… uh, a hell of a time finding a place in Cali with not much money. This was already furnished, so…”

“We slept in the sewers earlier today,” Remy mumbled from where he was rubbing his face into a pillow. “This place is great. Hey Nad, you aren’t going to yank us out of here again in half an hour, right? I could, like, fall asleep?”

“We’ll see,” Nadiya said grimly. “Do you two know where Mary Sage is?”

“What?” Addison said in confusion. “Why would we know?”

There was a thump as Kardala settled heavily onto the floor. “She ran away,” she said plainly.

“Yeah. And we don’t know where she is, and…” Remy trailed off. “We thought she might have come this way.”

Nadiya thought back to the tug she felt on the bus, towards Irene and Remy. If Mary had the same connection with Addison and Flanagan, she could very well be somewhere nearby.

Addison shook their head. “I’ll think about it,” they promised. “She’s been with you?” Nadiya nodded, and Addison let out a sigh of relief. “That’s, uh, that’s good. We were kinda worried about her after all the kerfuffle on the ‘Berg.”

“Mary Sage, of the robot angels, has been with us,” Kardala confirmed, leaning back against the couch. “Until today.”

“Addison,” Nadiya broke in, “why did you think we were with Martine? She’s in jail, we dropped her at the White House and everything.”

“Oh.” Addison chewed on their lip. “Oh. Right. About that.” They picked up a remote and turned the TV on, flipping through channels and back-logged episodes until they found what they were looking for. They fiddled with the remote for a minute, cursing mildly and hitting it against their hand, and then paused the screen.

It was C-Span, Nadiya could tell – she’d watched countless hours to fill up the times she was home alone, her father working somewhere else at whatever base they lived on. There were a crowd of people on-screen, all important-looking and wearing suits.

And one of them was Martine.

“Fuck,” Nadiya said quietly. “When was this?”

“Couple days ago,” Addison said. “The, uh… the day after everything went topsy-turvy at the Fellowship. She showed up at a press conference.” They turn to look at the three. “She’s not in jail, guys. She’s up and about, and probably looking for us.”

 The room was quiet for a moment.

Oh, shit, Kardala heard Irene say.

“I thought she’d go to jail,” Remy said in a small voice.

Addison shook their head. “Too smart for that,” they said. Flanagan reached up and grabbed their wrist, and they took her hand, holding tightly. “No, whatever she’s up to, she’s not done.”

“Should’ve known,” Remy mumbled. “Should’ve… fuck. She was planning this for years. Of course she’d have a backup plan.”

“What is it, though?” Nadiya said. “The Fellowship’s gone. Most of the people are, too. Richard – Dick – he was in bad shape when last we saw him.”

Addison shook their head. “I have no idea,” they admitted. “We’ve just been trying to stay off her radar.”

“Maybe it has to do with the people in the Fellowship,” Nadiya said, finally giving in and sitting in a nearby armchair. “Me, because of my research, right? The stimplants. Remy because of his parents.”

Addison gave Remy a questioning look, but Remy shook his head. “Please don’t ask,” he said. “I don’t really… not right now.”

“So, background was probably one factor,” Nadiya continued. “And then… special abilities? Addison, Flanagan?”

Addison glanced at Flanagan. “We already worked really well together,” they offered. “We were, uh, friends before the Fellowship. Worked together, y’know, on some pretty cool energy tech. Guess that’s why our powers turned out the way they did.”

Nadiya nodded. “All right. And Jamie knew Parson…” She glanced at Kardala, then away. Kardala frowned. She couldn’t tell what Nadiya was thinking.

She’s wondering why I got chosen, Irene said softly.

That is surely obvious. Because of me.

They didn’t know about you, though, Irene said. Right? Her thoughts became more troubled. I don’t even know why they chose me.

Though she wasn’t communicating it to Kardala, Kardala could sense what Irene was thinking next, as if to herself: Why did they pick me? There’s no reason… they needed an HR person. I’m good at my job, but they could’ve gotten anyone for that. And then flashes of words: shortish, plain, upperish middle class, average personality, average grades.

Kardala realized that that was what Irene was thinking of herself: average.

Nothing special, she concluded, just as Irene thought it as well.

Irene’s thoughts stuttered to a halt at their sudden synchronicity.

Irene Baker?

Yeah?

You are… Kardala shifted uncomfortably on the thin rug, and Remy gave her a questioning look, which she ignored. You are not nothing special. You are special.

Because of you?

Kardala paused, trying to think that through. Yes. And no.

Please explain a little more, Kardala, I’m having trouble following.

You… are a prison, Kardala said hesitantly. You know this. I have stated it previously. But you are also a… vessel? She sighed to herself. And a person.

Thank you, I think?

Kardala shook her head slightly. This time both Nadiya and Remy glanced at her, but she waved them off. They were still discussing each member of the Fellowship. (Irene knew all of them.)

It is not just anyone who could stand up to a goddess, Kardala said finally. As you have stood up to me. You have a powerful will, Irene Baker, and… She searched for a way to say it. And the ability to see what others do not. You knew what Nadiya Jones was thinking, didn’t you?

I did. Irene subsides into silence. Thank you, Kardala, she said after a moment, and the voice is slightly less heavy. Sorry. I guess I had just let things get to me.

I do not mind. And Kardala found – to her surprise – that she didn’t, really.

In fact, the presence of Irene in the back of her mind, quiet and firm and guiding… was becoming almost a comfort. Not that she needed comforting.

For what it’s worth, I like you too, Irene said, and it sounded like she was laughing.

Kardala smiled in spite of herself. I am a goddess with powers beyond imagination. Who would not like me?

Sure, Kardala, Irene said, still with that amusement. Sure.