Are You There Blog? It's Me, Autowin!

+ We had a team meeting tonight. Like a real one where real things happened!

+ For most of last year I'd wake up and for the first hour of every morning it'd be this game of detective trying to figure out what I'd done the last hour of the night before. What I'd written (the typos! what a laugh! how silly I was!) and to whom. Glasses and ashes and lots of open tabs.

It was like the opposite of laying your clothes out the night before school. I talked a lot about purpose but I felt powerless as a concubine; still but swimming furiously. I think those were all things I needed to go through but I'm still not sure exactly what I was doing. You start doing something and then you just keep doing it. Suddenly; then constantly. It kept me safe in a way because I had secrets I had to keep, there was no question.

+ Sometimes I caught myself mattering

+ Sometimes it comes back. One thing will feel wrong and the darkness unfurls enthusiastically from my chest and stomach, like an airy familiar evil pressing out against my skin and brain. It's a fear of losing things that I truly like and love and things that I feel are good for me, which is a different kind of fear than the fear of losing something you love desperately and absolutely despite how clearly rotten it is most of the time.

+ That happens less and less now but when it happens it's not just the fear, but the fear of more fear.

+ I don't want to be the girl who cried let's change the world but I feel whole right now, and solid. No one is crying here, no lies, just love, I mean it, I love it. I love life so much that I want you all to love it too, for all your right reasons.

+ Besides that fear I mentioned before, the crippling panic demanding attention like a child crying in public. Then it passes, like everything does. Sometimes I have fear about money and that's a new panic, like an itchy panic. I try to push it out of my brain.

+ We have this little temporary castle in the sky for another week or so where we can have meetings for Team Autostraddle. It was sweet tonight to talk to Laneia on the speakerphone and talk in real human voices. We talked to our programmer Tess on the phone a few weeks ago which was also awesome. It's been sweet to do things like eat pizza and talk about our dreams. We have like twelve interns which is awesome, and two came over tonight, so it was me, A;ex, Stef, Brooke, Robin, Carlytron, Tinkerbell who I put in the washing machine so now she is really clean and fresh-smelling, and Haviland!! and Intern X and Intern Jessica. If Crystal had been there/in our time zone that would've been perfect obvs.


+ A few weeks ago we had an interview rescheduled but Robin was already in the city and wanted to shoot something and so she was like, let's go to Brooke's, and so I was like, okay, and then A;ex and Carly came too, and it was fun! I look super serious! See:

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+ Anyhow then we got to interview Julie Goldman last Sunday which was awesome awesome -- Robin took photos and Alex video'ed and I asked questions. Also two weeks ago Laneia and I started a feature we're doing about lesbian YA novels which I really love a lot. Also we did a Hot 100 and it was funny.

+ That's all. Just checking in! Hi guys! I just wrote "High guys!" I'm not high. If I was high I'd have a lot more metaphors.