Things have been a little quiet on this site lately, and I’d like to tell you why.
I try to write one new blog post per month, at least. And I have been writing, but it’s been focused away from this site and onto our project, now into its ninth month, The Savannah Post. And I have found a newfound thrill for rejection!
Each month that I publish a print article in The Savannah Post, I’ve been submitting that article to various publications with some foggy hope of getting it published in a “real” journal or magazine or something. So far, no dice, but I do have a special folder in Gmail dedicated to the rejection replies, and its filling up quite nicely! I recently wrote a piece called “The Multitudes” (if you subscribe to The Savannah Post you saw it), and it’s sure to drum up a few good rejections soon! Since it is currently under review, I blurred it below as most publications don’t allow submissions to be posted anywhere else.
I’ve included a little slideshow below of the July edition of The Savannah Post. It is $10 per month, and we’d love if you signed up so we can mail you some good mail! In our August edition, we featured Lanier Ivester. She is published by Rabbit Room Press, among others, and was kind enough to rework a piece especially for us to publish! In September, we’re working with Ellis Rosen to feature one of his comics.
Aside from all that, summer is ticking along, and part of me is afraid it will be over too soon. We have been included in a little group of families who try to get out to the beach each Sunday after church – this our dream! We wake up, pack a lunch, put swimsuits in a bag, empty all the freezer ice into a cooler, throw the surfboard on the car, and head to church. From there, straight to the beach!
We are expecting our second kiddo in February! Ava is just certain that it will be a baby girl for her to play with – we’ll see. We are overjoyed to welcome this new part of our family next year! We’re currently turning the spare room into a nursery, and on Friday we painted it a honey-yellow color. Aleisha found a beautiful wooden rocker at the thrift store where she works on Saturdays. Her shifts there give me and Ava a chance for some daddy-daughter time each week.
For the last two months, my sister, Aleah, stayed with us in the spare room. She took some time off from her real job at the Anglican church and changed up the pace as a server at a diner in Savannah. Now it’s August, and she’s back to South Carolina. Before she left, we had a manna from heaven experience! One night, while Ava was going to bed, a Door Dash driver delivered $160 worth of Chinese food to our front door. After calling the restaurant and checking with the neighbors in vein, there was only one thing to do! And we did.
Miss Ava Li turned three years old this morning. Although she is adamant that she remains two “until my birthday is over.” So I suppose tomorrow she will consent to being three. Ava chose a magical unicorn birthday theme, and she is rocking her new DIY haircut from Aleisha. She loves playing outside each time it rains, making artwork with glitter, watching Tom and Jerry – she laughs and laughs, and she is learning how to be brave with other kiddos, share her things, and pronounce the “s” sound.
Right now, I’m sitting in my office waiting for a young man who was supposed to be here for his therapy session thirteen minutes ago. I don’t think he’s coming today. He’s one of the 53 clients on my caseload, most of them teen and pre-teen boys. It is a gift for me get to do this work, see these patients, have this as my daily routine. It could pay more, sure, but it’s a good place to start. Over to my left is a fantastic row of plushies, one of the best birthday gifts I’ve ever received! Luke, my brother, had my aunt, Gina, handmake each of the emotion characters from “Inside Out.” Already, it’s been very useful having them around.
For my birthday in July, we took a day trip down to Jekyll Island. We played on the beach, drove the loop around and around the island while Ava napped, saw the driftwood beach, and then did dinner in St. Simons. I have officially entered the last year of my twenties.
For the last month, I’ve been using a flip phone! After talking about making the switch for a long time, I finally decided to take the leap. There is something nostalgic, and a bit frustrating, about hammering out terse text messages with T9. Still, it’s been worth it. While I am still certainly distracted from time to time, I didn’t enter the black hole of social media at all yesterday! This morning, rather than scroll through reels while I wait for that young man (I’m now certain he is not showing up), I am typing this blog update. Nokia to the rescue! *if you have recently included me in a group text which I seemed to ignore, this is probably why – the Nokia doesn’t get a lot of group texts.
These are some of the contours of our first summer in Savannah, GA. We have much to be thankful for, and there is much to anticipate: the new baby, the storage shed I am forcing my extended family to help me build over Thanksgiving, a family vacation to Florida, a camping trip with our dear friends, the spikey balls falling by the millions off our tree and into our yard this fall (yay.). I look forward to writing some more articles this year, to be read by our mail subscribers and rejected by journals. And I always love hearing from folks – just know that if you text, I’m at the mercy of T9 and a 2.7 inch LCD screen over here.
Peace.
javen.bear. 