Jetty lag, laggy jet, i.e. my circadian rhythm is all out of whack.

I have a couple of really good reasons why I haven’t updated in so long. They are the following:

a) I finished the first year of my MFA in creative writing!

Suffice it to say the end of the spring semester was hectic and a little bit exhausting, but only in the most wonderful of ways. It’s a little hard to believe that I’m now a second year, halfway through the best thing I’ve done in my life so far.

b) A week after my last class of the year, the boyfriend and I flew out to Shanghai, China.

We had multiple purposes: research, vacation, change of pace, but the most important one was for me to renew my inspiration, and I got exactly what I needed. At the end of the spring semester I was so sick of my novel-length project and ready to shut it away in a drawer for a long while.

After being back in China for a bit — hearing the Shanghainese dialect everywhere, watching skyscrapers and night lights fly past my cab window, smelling the salty temple incense, seeing old friends, remembering the spices of the street kebabs, bargaining at the markets — I feel re-energized and ready to pound out some new chapters.

Here are a handful photos out of the 4400-something I took in the past two weeks.

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