Most of us know how to listen to our surroundings or other people. Few of us know how to actively listen. And even fewer know how to listen to our bodies.

There’s a stubbornness or lack of intuition that surrounds our bodies. It may be due in part to society’s construct around how our bodies should look and feel, even if those habits aren’t healthy.

So why am I bringing this up?

It’s been six months since I decided enough was enough. Since my body gave me undeniable signs that where I lived, where I worked, and who I thought I loved were not healthy for me. Since I discovered that ignoring my intuition, the one that I’d been told was irrational/wrong/too much, was in fact prolonging pain and stifling my healing journey. Since I decided that no amount of effort or change can force the life you’ve created to transform into the life you want.

No amount of growth or ambition can make people who never loved you love you.

Something I’ve struggled with pretty much my whole life is being present.

If there was a degree in fearing the future, I’d have several. If there was a world record for most time spent getting lost in the past, I’d win that too.

This ties into my writing. Regardless of genre, my characters or speakers struggle with using the past and future as tools to create their most fulfilling present.

That’s what fuels my current poetry collection (unnammed so far) and my YA contemporary fiction novel Strangers. This discontent also sparked the idea for my nonfiction narrative “In the Know,” Harpur Palate‘s Creative Nonfiction Award winning piece.

Writing can be healing, invigorating, and profound, but it isn’t all of these things often, and usually, it’s not all of these thing at once. Writing can be like pulling teeth or doing the dishes. For me, it never feels like a literal chore because I find the challenge of writing to be valuable whereas never having every dish in the house clean for more than 30 minutes just isn’t. But sometimes, even when we have larger-than-life goals and dreams, we still find ourselves not feeling motivated to write. Or not having the energy to write. Or being afraid to write.

So yeah, this post is about that.

This was supposed to be a post about coffee: a post about my thoughts and opinions about the brand of coffee. In particular, it was supposed to be a post about the coffee mi abuela drank every single day of her life. It was supposed to be an experience that made me feel closer to her and to the stories I hear about her that are centered around coffee.

This post, however, will be not be about those things.

There are two camps in the world of writing frequency: 1) write every day even if it’s trash and your heart isn’t “in it” or 2) write only when “inspiration hits.”

Like most things in my life, I can’t find myself doing one or the other.

Many of us inside the writing community require writing fuel. For some of us, that means gummy bears or a scone. For others, it’s the big debate: tea or coffee.

I love both, but in order to function as a human-adjacent creature, I require coffee. Every morning, I roll out of bed, hobble down to the kitchen, and grind some fresh beans. I tend to prefer medium roasts or dark roasts that taste like chocolate.

For those of you who have been following my blog for a while now, you know that I’m descended from Puerto Ricans who moved to the United States during the Puerto Rican diaspora movement of the 20th century. My blog posts generally surround my personal exploration of Puerto Rican culture, as I’ve been removed from it almost completely.

What many of you probably don’t know, and what I didn’t know until literally 4 days ago, is that I may be a descendent of Venezuelans too.

“What?”

Yeah, that’s what I said too…

Because I’m not super festive about the traditional Thanksgiving thing, I wanted to cook something not-so-traditional. I wanted to cook something that I wouldn’t normally cook because it takes too much time on any given week night. I wanted something different from the candied yams, green bean casserole, and stuffing. That’s where the empanadilla came into play.

My novel follows Ramona Martinez in her journey to recreate her identity through an exploration of her family’s past and how it ties into her present life. In the book, Ramona has just found out about barrios and municipalities, structures unfamiliar to her in the Pacific Northwest.

As a person who has been geographically removed from all of my family’s Latinx customs, I am working as hard as I can (when I’m not writing or working my day job) to find the tools I need to learn Spanish and about Puerto Rican traditions.

I recently visited with a dietician after struggling with various food tracking apps that claim that 1,200 calories a day is healthy and feasible for a short-statured woman to sustainably lose weight (spoiler: it’s not). She wanted me to keep a food journal to see my current patterns, and last week’s repertoire of meals included arroz con gandules.

This brown bag background and quote from Tiffany D. Jackson’s YA novel Monday’s Not Coming are a combo that punch me in the gut. The quote really hits home about why I’m writing this book, about why I care so much about a heritage that largely wasn’t taught to me.

Almost everybody close to me lives by very specific patterns. Some people must have a cup of coffee before doing anything (me), or can’t leave the house wearing matching socks (also me), but how far do superstitions actually go?

I was first bitten by the writing bug at 12 years old. In English class, we were assigned to write a book of poems based on the forms we learned during the last quarter of the year. This included limericks and haikus, blank verse and free verse poems. Like most things in school, I put my whole heart into this poetry project.

Many authors, aspiring and professional, are asked what inspires their writing. What makes a writer want to share their thoughts/perceptions with the world?

Pollo Guisado, AKA Chicken Stew. This was the first dish. Two weekend prior, I had called my Aunt Sarah for the first time ever.

It all started with a picture. No, not this one, but—