Jack Kerouac makes a funny face while walking through the Lower East Side along East 7th Street, past a statue of Samuel Cox in Tompkins Square. (Photo by © Allen Ginsberg/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)On the Road Again

Sorry for the hiatus. I left Florida last Monday, got to New Jersey on Tuesday, and was fairly busy until now. Well, I’m still busy, but there’s more of an order to the chaos now.

When I got back to Jersey, I stayed with close friends until I could move back into my rental. It was a hard and heavy summer, so it felt incredible to cross the state line into Jersey and have my phone blow up with friends asking if I was home yet and asking to make plans.

I used to think I’d wanna just drive and travel forever and ever, amen. For a long time, nothing sounded better than hotels and fast food and logging miles. Life would be one big adventure composed of entertaining anecdotes and scenic routes.

But coming home felt really good.

It would have been even better if I had a more permanent rental instead of just a seasonal one. I might rediscover my love of traveling and being on the road if it was my choice when these excursions took place.

Planning a Road Trip

I’m thinking it’s best if I just make peace with being transitory for the foreseeable future. Despite all my protestations about hitting the road, I’m currently planning a road trip with some writer friends for next summer. In the beginning of July, we want to go from New Jersey to California. It’s about a year away, but I am so excited. These people are sources of support and inspiration and I love them dearly. I can’t wait to spend time with them.

And I’ve finally started a new writing project which predominantly takes place on a cross country road trip. I’m eager to be inspired and give my prose some authenticity.

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

I need to mention a couple of seminal moments that recently happened. One is that I saw Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Metlife Stadium. I missed Jersey so much, so it was one hell of a homecoming. The tickets were a graduation gift from a beloved friend and colleague. It was a beautiful, breezy night and even though it was my ninth time seeing the Boss, it felt just as magical as the first time.

Tattoos

I think it’s fairly obvious that, as a writer and English teacher, I firmly believe in the importance of words. Upon coming home, I got three tattoos, two of which are words: “Where there’s life, there’s hope” (for my niece) and “I’ll love you with all the madness in my soul” (Bruce Springsteen lyrics). I have plans for two more tattoos and have officially embarked on a mission to fill my body with poetry.

I told my writer friend of this ambition, and they said my body was already poetry. Do you see why I need to take a road trip with them??!!?!

Writing Life

I’ve been continuing to be rejected by literary agents, but the other night, I was at a bridal shower for a coworker. Another coworker approached me, somewhat hesitantly, because she’d finished Moody Blue and wanted to tell me how much I’d grown as a writer since Her Beautiful Monster, but she was afraid I’d be offended.

I struggled to tell her how happy her comment made me. I was so worried readers wouldn’t like Moody Blue as much as my first novel, and the opposite appears to be true. I’ve had multiple readers tell me how much better I’ve gotten as a writer.

That takes the sting out of the rejections.

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