Hey everyone.

Hope everyone is doing well, as well as we can under the circumstances. From what I hear conversion therapy is no longer considered child abuse in TX, although maybe they finally outlawed underage marriage? I think it's pretty safe to say that I definitely have serious doubts about the overall sanity of the country right now.

Of course, there are bright spots, like Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and Cory Booker and AOC, who have been standing up for the people and common sense. A lot of the things that are happening now are pretty bad, and what's worse is that most of them were preventable. They did not need to happen. There is food rotting in warehouses that was meant for starving people that they don't have the money to distribute because of the USAID cuts. The new COVID vaccine that's been proven safe, is heavily restricted.

I've never felt more like I'm on my own in my life. And being in a red state hasn't made that better.

For right now, I'm staying put. But, depending on what laws pass and how things go, I am strongly considering relocating somewhere else in the US. For now, I'm holding out hope we'll outlast this. And for now, I'm staying here because I simply don't have the capability to pick up just now. But I also only want to move once, if I have to. For now, I'm just gathering info, speaking out when I can, and trying my hardest to stay level.

It is not without irony that two of the books I am reading are about the effects of a large group on a smaller one. Star Trek : SNW - Asylum talks about the larger Chionians trying to force the nomadic Euxhana into state sponsored schools, forbidding them to speak their language, and so on.... And The Time He Desires is a story about the gentrification of a neighborhood, people coming in and changing what it was to something that to them is better, bringing in people that extinguish the character of a place...

I don't know what my original intention was when writing this, I've been trying to be optimistic and do what I can, as much as I can, while I can. I have a lot of dreams, and if I have to I'll keep making them until such a time that I can share them, but for now I hold out hope that we will get through this.


As for me, I am working on some short stories for a special project, and then I am back full speed on editing and other such things. I promise my next journal will be more uplifting.

Stay well.

 laurenrivers