(c) June Perkins

This is a short post, to share the poem above and some brief news.

My Master of Teaching Secondary is finished! The registration process is almost complete and job applications for next year are about to commence.

For the remainder of this year (and when not working next year) my writing efforts are going into several books. They are all at different stages.

One is polished and almost ready to go out on submission to publisher rounds, one outlined and writing draft, one finished and on submission trails, and another in second draft form that is sitting before I begin to polish and possibly being combined into the skeleton draft. And there is another book, not sure where it is in its journey, and am figuring out as it is so precious to finish. This one has been both a series of trials and blessings to work on. One may even have a publisher but can’t say too much about that yet!

This may sound like a lot, but some of the books have been years in the making.

I’ve had, like all authors, a number of promising events became eventual knockbacks, which I call battle scars. Yet my love for writing and its power is no way diminished. I have had a few lovely surprises, one of which was a poetry writing commission.

Presently I dig deeper to understand my identity including writing, cultural and spiritual and the interconnections between them. I’m also experiementing with how to take specific experiences and write them in a way that connect with diverse readers.

I have been deep in decluttering land, and reconnecting with friends after completing my studies – through symposiums, cafe meetings, writing events and creative shows and movies, birthday parties, back yard barbeques, zooms and emailing. It is one of those liminal times.

A couple of months of decluttering has reconnected me with several notebooks, photographs, letters and my written journals of the 1990s. I’ve learnt that chipping away at this mammoth task with mini goals, and room by room has led to an inspiring reinvention of the spaces I work and think in. On top of that my children have left home. I create memory boxes for them and leave them to make their own archival decisions.

I have watched the entire six seasons of Northern Exposure (which I always wanted to watch and just never got around to) and have begun a dream journal. I could devote several posts to episodes of the show. I especially love season 5. Marilyn and Ed are two of my favourite television characters ever!

Whilst my blogs may become interimittent, I feel like this blog was and remains a wonderful tool to create new works. I venture out into substack land and keep up instagram but don’t want to be defined by any of those spaces, but rather like Joel, in Northern Exposure, journey into my inner landscapes.

For anyone else out there, traveling inwardly and outwardly, decluttering, reconnecting and redefining – travel well and remember to wear warm clothes when it’s cold and dream deep to see what will unfold.