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I start school (again) in January, which means—before syllabi, before readings, before even opening my LMS—I’m already stuck on the most important decision of all: what notebook system am I going to use? This should be simple.   It never is. On one side of the debate is a very sensible option: a spiral-bound notebook filled with Cornell notes pages . Clean. Contained. Minimal decisions required once it’s chosen. On the other hand? A full-blown trapper keeper , complete with loose-leaf grid paper, Cornell notes pages, and the unmistakable hum of late-80s academic optimism. And I cannot decide. Option One: The Spiral-Bound Cornell Notebook There is something deeply comforting about a single, spiral-bound notebook. No shuffling papers. No worrying about whether I’ve punched holes correctly. No tragic moment where my notes slide out and scatter across the floor of a coffee shop. Cornell notes, especially, appeal to the part of my brain that wants structure: Main notes on t...

Surprise! After taking most of this year off from Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, I’ve decided to tiptoe back in — but with a much clearer purpose than before.  I’m returning to these platforms  only to share the things I genuinely love creating and talking about: planner content, study tips, a little peek into my tutoring life, and updates from my Etsy shop, KaytsPaperTrailPress. That’s it. No doomscrolling, no pressure to “be online,” and definitely no politics. I’ve really missed chatting with people who love planning and learning as much as I do, and social media can be a cozy little corner when you set the boundaries that feel right. So that’s what I’m doing; setting boundaries and showing up with intention. If you’re on any of those platforms and want to follow along, I’d love to see you there. And if not, no worries at all — everything I share will still live here on the blog, right where it’s calm and clutter-free. Here’s to finding healthier ways to connect, cr...

  With the nightmare that is Trump 2.0 I ask myself on a daily basis whether to stay or go.  Honestly, for reasons I've never known, I've just always assumed I would end my life in a different country than the one in which I was born.  Maybe it's a Sagittarius thing.  Maybe it was the faint shadow of fascism on the horizon I detected back in the Dubbya admin.  Maybe it was the fact my mother was in need of a caregiver for the last 25 years of her life and moving to a country where help could be better-afforded looked appealing.  Maybe it was the fact I fell in love with a European.  Maybe it was the fact I love teaching ESL.  Maybe it was all of that. Maybe it was none of it. I don't know. But considering leaving your country, even wanting to leave it, and feeling forced out are very different things.  As anyone who knows me will tell you, I have never (and will never) respond well to being told what to do (particularly by men).  I'm not...

    My word for 2025 is: Connect.  In the last couple years I've let all my human connections wither, and I should really change that!

I've been meaning to post something on here about how amazing the MFA workshop was in LA, but in addition to feeling like I hadn't yet found the right words, time is also something that's been a bit lacking lately. Therefore, I've decided to post my favorite quotes from the lectures. Some of the best scenes are silent. - Jane Anderson  Conflict is not inherently dramatic – a tennis match is a conflict. You have to care for there to be drama. – Paul Gulino Writing is telling lies that speak the truth. – Deborah Starr Seibel If the story doesn’t end when a character gets what they want/need, then the story wasn’t ever about them. – Jon Vandergriff Get yourself in the room – invite yourself to the meeting. - Laura Brennan (good advice for life in general!) Happy to help, not eager to please. - Alex Fernandez We need to push ourselves to show our vulnerability to the point of writing something that makes us want to puke. - Meg Lefauve.

So, I attempted the MA in English Lit program at my beloved NAU this past semester, and it is not for me. I want to create things and teach, but not critique everything to the point of hating reading and literature.  Don't get me wrong I learned some fascinating stuff from my textbooks this semester. But if I ever see anything to do with Alice, Wonderland, or Lewis Carrol again I might have a stroke (never liked them before and now they are on my list of triggers).  This semester has even managed to put a dent in my admiration of Mrs. Dalloway , if you can believe it (but I'm sure after a break, we'll make up). No shade on anyone who does want/pursue an MA in English Lit, but it's just not my calling in life.  I honestly have no idea how I managed to get good grades in this program since I spent most of my time feeling stressed/confused/stupid/full of BS.  Therefore, I'm switching to the MFA in TV and Screenwriting program from Stephens College that my heart wanted...

I'm a month into my MA English Lit degree and to let you know how it's going ... I'm already shopping for a different program to start in Fall. Casting no aspersions on the program, the school, the professors, or the other students (all of which/whom I adore) this is very much not for me.  I feel a bit like I'm losing my mind - the stress, the workload, the lack of direction of statements like 'make a substantive post of what you found interesting' when I found it all too tedious to be of interest - is sucking the life out of me. I honestly can't figure out how I'm getting good grades so far - I have no idea what this crap is, what I'm supposed to do with it, or why I'm doing it.  I feel utterly lost, and that every word I write in these courses is BS. This is just too theoretical and I can see clearly that, for me, this is going to kill my love of reading in general and literature specifically. There is, after all, such a thing as picking someth...

After my last post things got even worse in the form of a fire which destroyed the house where my parents were living and killed three of our dogs. Since then I've been back on Zoloft, my mom has been in the hospital (and a nursing home) trying to heal a broken femur, and my dad moved in here. It's been one of those moments when the entire boat of your life capsizes, leaving you treading water and unsure of how you even ended up in that situation.     That's about all I can manage to say about these past four months right now - I'm not a person who processes feelings contemporaneously - I shut down and go into survival mode (resorting to whatever coping mechanism carries the day). This house here has been coming along, slowly but surely, and I started my final undergrad semester last month - it consists of a required public speaking course and the capstone course. The capstone is covering sacred spaces and places of pilgrimage (instructor's choice) so anticipate (or...

Well, that was a way longer hiatus than I ever intended. Things got chaotic at the end of the Fall semester (as usual), but "thanks" to Covid it ended early (before Thanksgiving!). So, I had the entirety of December off from school, and I think I slept, watched TV, and ate for most of the month, lol. But Spring semester started up in January and by Feb I was flattened by a flare up of my probable Rheumatoid Arthritis (didn't make it into a Rheumatologist for the official diagnosis before Covid made that an impossibility - currently waiting for my new referral to come through). I am still in the throws of whatever this is, though it is improving slightly and slowly with the meds I've been on for almost a month now. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels Spring was not kind. It included putting two of our dogs to sleep (old age). Because I was a wreck all the way around, I dropped down from 4 classes to 2 (bumping my graduation from May to Dec in the process), and ...

Q: Pets and/or service animals: If you grew up with pets and/or service animals, how many and what kinds did you have?   A: I think we had almost every animal when I was growing up. We had a black lab named “Ed” when I was a baby, which I only know from photos of the two of us sitting on a sofa and sharing some ‘Nilla Wafers. Within my own memory we have had dogs, dogs, and more dogs; a giant fish tank; a rabbit named Peter, a parakeet I named Tweety that flew into the backyard with a numbered leg band and wasn’t afraid of people so we kept him; a guinea pig called Nellie I got as a 4H project; cats; more fish; more dogs, and feeding lots of feral cats – one of which will now let me pet it (while it eats).   Q: What was the role of pets in your household?   A: They were ubiquitous, but mostly separate. My grandparent’s generation felt that most pets, but especially dogs and cats, were ‘outside animals’. Actually, it was more my grandfathers, than grandmothers....

So, after two back to back 5wk summer courses - which I am thrilled I got to take, despite the workload, because they were fascinating, my one week off before the early start of Fall semester (thanks, Covid) vanished into thin air for personal reasons. Then there were snafus with publishing my novel - I hired someone to do a final proof because it's nearly impossible to catch all your own mistakes when you know what something is supposed to say - even if you are occasionally paid to proofread for others. It just takes fresh eyes to catch everything. Well, not only did the person I hired have an (understandable) emergency which delayed the process, but after I got it back I still found typos we had BOTH missed, ugh! Now, I'm behind in reading for my fall classes, am still trying to cobble together the right poems for a chapbook competition with a deadline of Aug 31st, am being harassed by code enforcement about some weeds at my vacant fixer upper which is frustratingly still n...

Sometimes saying yes to drugs is the right answer.  So, where the hell have I been (you would be entitled to ask)?  1) In July 2018 the monsoon that tears through Arizona every year, literally ripped the roof off my condo in Phoenix. The roof was pealed back like the lid of a sardine can. The event  itself sounded like a freight train, then there were a few days of leaking and battling my irresponsible HOA, then there was the 8am Sunday morning collapse of a huge chunk of my bedroom ceiling - good times. That day my dad drove the three hours from where my parents live, helped me load up my dogs and crucial belongings, and I was out of there! It took until the end of October for repairs on the condo to finish, then I sold it to my lovely neighbors (whose roof had also been destroyed) in November - deciding I never again wanted to own anything where the maintenance was at the mercy of an HOA I paid every month but which failed to actually maintain the property responsibly....