this isn't even my final form

It's easy to get lost in the weeds of a creative project. Running as fast as you can towards the next pulsing map marker, you don't realize that the camera has pulled back to reveal the full extent of the moonlit field through which you run. And there, at the edges of the frame, several more black lines curl inwards like hungry tendrils of smoke, vectoring in as you creep across the center of the frame towards the refuge at the distant upper midpoint. Whether those dark lines indicate the approach trails of xenomorphs, velociraptors, or zombies towards your metaphorical player character, you're guaranteed to be down in the muck with your guts in a twist and any hope of reaching the finish line vanishing as the monsters of creative distraction swallow your eyes and tongue.

That's happened to this project so many times. 

The name has changed. 

The characters and subjects and motivations have morphed until I wasn't quite sure if I was crafting an art exhibit, a semester-long class, or a blog.

The new year came along and began vanishing into the rearview mirror until I found myself sitting on my back porch on the first night of June, listening to blasts from the quarry punctuate the chorus of frogs. 

For the first half of the year the world outside my home has felt like it was on fire, which is ironic because at home we finally feel like we are getting our feet under us. That sort of cognitive dissonance has been a notable part of my existence for most of my life and I still can't decide if that is particular to my own manner of processing the world, my own internal sense of justice keeping a tally of every time the world is unfair. I'm beginning to suspect that the experience of living in a state of perpetual internal conflict is an intrinsic feature of being human. Most people probably just file it under stress and drink another cup of coffee or crack another beer. 

Here's the thing though: The years keep slipping by and I keep getting less and less able to function on only five hours of sleep a night. The hustle of grinding away on another degree, or another lesson plan, or another god damn novel that nobody but me is going to read is getting to me. I can't wait until I'm seventy years old and living in my kids' basement, subsisting on ramen noodles and VR recreations of Our Beloved Leader's birthday gladiatorial fight to stop feeling embarrassed that I have a lot of opinions and even more ideas .  

I've spent the last twenty years developing systems to help learners (including myself) unlock their creativity. Even then, I was forced by circumstance to create systems which could help independent minded learners develop their own mental framework for creativity. From the very first day I set foot in a public school learning environment, my role in the learning process has always been most successful when I provide enrichment, resources, and guidance, then step out of the way. 

And for a long time that's all I felt like I could do. 

I couldn't put out work unless it was perfect and firmly grounded in literary traditions I could point to, because to do otherwise risk expressing my own opinions and perspectives. In a professional context, that was exceedingly difficult, especially given the continual debates around bias and public education. I wrote five adventure novels which were carefully calibrated to the PG-13 action of James Bond and Indiana Jones and three sci-fi novels which veered closer to what I wanted to write, but always pulled back. Then came my own Great American Novel: A story about a girl growing up in a gun-obsessed cult in the mountains of Virginia. I never quite finished that book, or the sequel or my novel about unrequited transgender love on an alien space ship above a land annihilated by a poisoned temple. 

Can you tell that I should have been in therapy?   

Call it anxiety, struggling to think outside the box, professionalism, or undiagnosed but well handled autism. There's a lot of ways to describe my mind and the way in which I interact with the world, but I have always attempted to approach life from a perspective of growing, learning, and improving. 

And that's what In Such Times is about: Growth amidst the destruction. Creativity when all seems derivative. Hope when the world outside your window feels like a dumpster fire ruled over by a rabid raccoon.

-Andrew Linke