Fran

Alright y’all. Welcome to those who are new and welcome back to those who have been along the ride with my very sporadic blog posts since 2023. 

I’ve honestly been sitting on this since January motherfucking first – it’s really been brewing in me. In the past, when I’ve written like this, the words really do just come to me. It’s been almost out of necessity… it’s almost like  I have to sit down and communicate my thoughts this way because I know if I tried to tell each of you these ideas and stories out loud it’ll get jumbled up in how damn fast I’m talking and all of the other shit going on and I can’t hyperlink you to all of the ideas that connect to what I’m trying to say. 

And that’s definitely still there, but something about writing now does feel different. 

I’ve been procrastinating starting because something, for some reason, feels more serious. It feels as if whatever I start here has some permeance, not just catharsis (maybe some of you have heard me semi-jokingly talk about wanting to be famous lately…) Everything in my life has felt so consequential in the last 6ish months, so connected to destiny in a spooky and also beautiful way, so distinctly a part of a narrative thread that is working up to some kind of climax in the not-so-distant future. 

This time, the push to write has felt less like a lightning strike and more like a slow boil. Things have been shifting in my life, little by little, since probably last summer. Friends have moved away, routines and structures have slowly realigned in new ways…I’ve been realizing just how much has changed since the last time I sat down at the computer and wrote something that wasn’t journalism. I have so much more stability, love, and time. New space and knowledge to play with.

I remember telling myself when I moved back to Chicago in 2023 that I needed two years to collect myself before asking any serious questions about what comes Next which…is interesting. Kinda sounds like something a person who is emotionally on the run a little bit would say. Or maybe medium on the run. It’s funny looking back on times like that and wishing you could reassure yourself that you would, actually, be okay. A dispatch from the other end of the winding road. 

I’m now realizing that I don’t really have to ask questions about what comes next—I just have to be ready to accept the answers when they reveal themselves. 

This really, all started with a New Year’s Eve tarot reading. A friend of a friend doing the reading was, I think/hopefully, also fucked up on mushrooms and champagne, alluded to this growing space in my life during the reading. They saw me breaking a pattern—one of my most hardened and deeply internalized—and investing in myself in new ways. Getting past some kind of final boss, in so many {{slurred}} words. {{btw I’d like us to start using these to indicate invisible ink}} 

He said that it would come down to me and my willingness to listen to what the universe was trying to tell me, and to lean into my own agency. To actively choose. The cards told a story more about movement, action and courage than they did realization. We were giggling and laughing but it did honestly feel serious!!!

The reading felt like a faint promise. Potential. The kindling for a fire that I have been wanting to light for years. It was like the cards winked at me, daring me to remember their message when I woke up on January 1. 

So, I’ve been listening. I’ve been observing, collecting data, doing research. I’ve been putting together some clues, licking a finger and testing it against the wind of conversations I’ve found myself in across facets of my life — the shit I see online, the chatter over lunch at work, the liquor-laden monologues shared between friends at the bar. 

I just feel like I’m getting old enough to finally name some patterns, to understand where my stories weave into the stories of so many places, people and things. I want to tell more of these stories and maybe this is silly, maybe its my journalism mind, but I just don’t know how to publish something without grounding it in reality in some way. Hey, maybe I’ll get into fiction. But for now we’re aiming for that narrow space between personal essay and researched article. And then yeah, maybe one day I’ll write enough of these to put together a book. {{recently a voice in my head tells me i want to write something that gets adapted into a tv show}} 

I mean shit, I (and many of my friends reading this) turned 18 in 2016 (multifaceted significance, needless to say). Pretty much everyone I knew turned 21 right before the pandemic. I feel like we still got just enough of a taste of adult life that it hurt that much more when it was ripped away. I’ve been privileged and lucky enough to live in 3 different cities during that time. I have collected a lot of data, honestly. And right now I feel like I’m working through that data, filing through my stories and digitizing them, putting them in a timeline of some sort. 

My hope certainly is this can all move towards a much longer, larger project in a way that has really always been what I want it to be. Maybe a book? Maybe something else? I wanna get back into a little personal podcasting? Maybe even get some of yall in the mix?

So maybe this — the patterns I’m describing, my direction with this new writing endeavor — is just about growing up. Maybe that will resonate with you all. And maybe it’s not even worth drawing the line between what’s about me and what’s about Everything Else. Our generation knows better than anyone else that truth is but a concept, seeing is believing, and narrative is everything. All we’re really left with is our intuition and our people.  

What does all of this mean for this space? Free play zone. True blog, honestly, with some structured essays in the mix. 

I’m gonna drop my first actual essay very soon. A kind editor friend of mine saved you all from my attempt to say far too much in one introduction! 

LOVE Y’ALL<3 

FRAN