How do we take advantage of the love, wonder and belonging available on the internet without being crippled by the anxiety inducing whiplash of an algorithm that wants to show you Pumpkin Spice Latte memes followed by images of war?

I was shocked when I found out that the movie E.T. the Extra Terrestrial wasn’t actually about an extra-terrestiral.

Or at least, the original idea for the movie didn’t have an alien in it at all.

Something I loved was destroyed, and my reaction completely surprised me.

I went to the beach last week alone. I’ve been doing trying to do that at least once a week lately. I talked about why on Instagram, but ultimately, it’s been so grounding in the way anyone who’s touched the sea likely knows.

While I wrote in my journal, small rain drops started wetting the pages and sprinkling my face, light at first and then so steadily that I gave up my alone time, threw my things into my bag (thankfully waterproof) and made my way through the windy rain back to the car. …

You can order my book, Leap, right now. Right here.

This is my dream coming true. And for you, this is the story I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time.

I agonized over the title and some of you actually saw a few of the working titles I gave the book in earlier days. But despite spending so much time thinking about it, willing it to come, this book title came in like the perfectly timed bloom of a flower, simple and independent of how much I wanted it to arrive.

Leap. By me. ME. (STILL A SHOCK.) I can’t wait for you to read it.

Have you ever had a mountain top experience? You know the kind where you arrive at the place you’ve worked to get to, and for the first time in days or weeks or months or years, you can finally set down your pack and catch your breath and look at all of it. In your lungs and your heart you breathe in oxygen and awe and gratitude.

I love those moments. I’m not in one now. I’m in the climb.

It works this way, I guess. The alchemy of turning dreams into reality is still so much of a mystery, but part of the magical recipe is this - just keep doing it. Just keep believing in the dream, damn the torpedoes.

The time. Is FINALLY. HERE!!!!!!

I am officially announcing the launch of my presale for my new book!

Mark your calendars for… APRIL 10.

There is a kind of love that travels, you see. Across states, across borders, across oceans. It’s not bound by time or conditions. It’s a kind of love that’s passed down and that, if you are so lucky, you get to receive from someone far, far away.

Here is the quote from my book about how queer art helped me before I came out:

Before I came out, especially in college and beyond, I quietly sought out gay stories. Alone in my apartment, I watched Milk and Philidelphia and Angels in America. I read Me Talk Pretty One Day and I Am Not Myself These Days. When I couldn’t answer the survival question for myself, the stories of queer people have helped make me more brave and less alone. I’m adding my own story to the centuries of stories of queer people in hopes that when you, dear reader, look yourself in the mirror, you might feel more brave and less alone. If you’re gay or trans or different or are simply looking in the mirror having a hard time making it, borrow bravery.

What is home?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question, because for me, when I think back to my cottage in Serine and Artur’s yard, my one bedroom, size-of-my-current-livingroom, house felt like home, like my safe place, like a place I could go where I knew everything was going to be ok, at least for the night, and for a long time.

I lived there for two years, and when I remember it, I remember it with a feeling that wells up in me, so much the same as the feeling that comes up for me when I think about the house I grew up in or the house I live in now.

What is it that makes home ‘home’? I’m not sure. I’m working on that. But I can tell you how home feels.

From Zhasmina and Aghavni I learned more about how to learn a language, of course. There were new letters to learn, new sounds to make. Twisting and manipulating air in new ways in my mouth reminded me of learning to whistle, if whistling could be a letter in a word. I learned about noun declensions. I learned that every language has rules and that every language eventually breaks all its own rules.

I’m in the weeds of editing, and I’ve focused a lot on the beginning of my book in which I come out and then leave for Peace Corps. Coming out didn’t go well at home. Pain all around. Fear that caused painful words to be said. Hurt that I carried across the planet.

I started thinking about things that helped me get through that. I asked myself, “What did I do that helped me then that still helps me when things are bad?”

So, wherever I am in my heart and mind, when I am in a desperately hard place, there are three things that always work for me. I thought I’d offer them to you, in case you need them.

“The hills weren’t always there.”

This is a truth I first learned from Ms. Frizzle and her Magic School Bus, my little elementary self looking a book about a class who goes into a volcano to learn about plate tectonics and how the earth is actually CHANGING ALL THE TIME. Like, from the inside.

Did you forget that? I forget it all the time. I go to the grocery store and pick my kids up from school and stay up too late watching my shows, and I totally forget that the earth is alive under our feet. That it always has been. And that it was growing and changing way before a human being stood up and made a meal or held a baby to their breast or certainly well before there were any jobs to do or lists to finish or achievements to achieve.

“The dark parts of your past are lit up now.”

These words, given to me during my first Armenian coffee ground reading, have been on my mind now that I’m editing my finished first draft. All of those memories are laid out in chapters along a golden thread I can see now that I didn’t see before. I’ve been thinking about the year ahead, the year in which you’ll hold my book in your hands. I’ve also thought about the immense amount of work I’ve done to get here, and the years before that of living out these stories, all of them seeds in the ground now starting to bloom.

Sometimes I try to imagine the lives in the homes we pass. I imagine moms and eldest daughters who must have pinned up the clothes I see waving in the wind from outdoor clotheslines. I imagine the men who visit the odd church off on the distant hills made of stone, empty of ceremony save the yellow candles with soft wax burning quickly, momentarily wafting with the prayers of those that lit them…

In my first Armenian family’s kitchen, my host mom Arpine invited me to play a game she knew would help me feel welcomed, seen and loved by her and her family…

My upcoming book is filled with people who helped this little gay bird find his wings.

After I came out, I arrived in Armenia with an unknown future in front of me. I had no idea what I needed and had anyone specifically asked me in those days and weeks, “What do you need right now?” I would have… shrugged, I guess. Now, over a decade later, I can think of a few things I needed right after I came out…

Christmas traditions make me feel deeply connected to my immediate family and the family that ripples out beyond that to cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great grandparents. So I carry those traditions on every year, setting up the decorations, putting on my favorite Christmas songs (which are all on this list).When I moved to Armenia to start a two year stay, I brought some of that love and those memories with me. This week in a reading on Instagram I shared a piece from my upcoming book…

When I’d packed the last of everything I’d take across the world into my bags, I had just an hour left before I would leave for the airport. I walked back through the house again, touching the walls, running my fingers over the pictures of my family all together. My parents’ light was off. So was my sister’s.

I felt a roiling in my chest. An anxiety I couldn’t name, like a yell that hardened into an immovable lump in my throat. I wanted to do something, anything, to feel better, to calm myself. In the same way that you might say things just like your family without realizing it, I thought of what to do. It is what my mom had done for me so many time, in lunchboxes, in books she’d know I’d later read, in my top drawer when I moved into my freshman college dorm. I went to the kitchen I found a stack of pink post-it notes and a pen. I put notes everywhere.