(Be warned: if you send me a picture text, I’m likely to use it as a writing prompt. After asking permission, of course – I’m not a monster!) This picture was sent to me one early morning by Janet, a fellow writer who most likely knew this type of image would inspire a story.

I’m up too early. Unable to sleep. I step slowly through the house as if seeing it for the first time. It looks different in the morning dark. It looks different with no one else awake.

I grip the doorknob as it turns so it will not jangle and wake the others. It may sound like I am so thoughtful, that I want them to continue sleeping uninterrupted. I just don’t want them to be alerted to my presence. I need to be alone.

The backyard is draped in fog, giving the impression that it goes on for miles. It doesn’t, I know. Everything has a limit.

The fence is distinct, even in the haze. It looks spindly but sturdy, which is a stark contrast to how it looks in broad daylight. How it looks in daylight is janky and broken down, and it makes him rant about how much a new fence is going to cost us and how I should go ask the neighbors to chip in.

I unfocus my eyes as I stare into the fog, past the walkway behind our house, so far beyond that I can imagine anything I want back there. A quieter home, a bigger yard, a different world.

I sit on the grass and feel the cool dew on the back of my legs. I lie down and my shirt gets damp. I press myself into the ground, my legs together and arms stuck to my sides. I pretend I am in the bottom of a canoe, floating away on a vast body of water. I hear waves pounding the boat, but I know it must be the rumble of my house waking up. I need to get my canoe back to shore, climb up and out and into the house before they wake up and find me gone, or peer out of a window and see me out here. Here, where I can still manage to find a sense of peace, an escape, however imaginary it may be. This is mine, they do not need to know about any of it.

I push myself up from the ground and pad back into the house. My feet are still slightly damp, leave vague footprints on the wood floor. I know they will dry up before anyone notices them, faint as they are.

From 2008 to 2017 I had a personal blog called Allison Writes. It was initially allisonwrites.blogspot.com, until someone convinced me to buy AllisonWrites.com. I did, and I blogged thrice a week for many, many years, until it fizzled out. To be fair, “fizzling out” coincided with having a toddler and my dream job, so blogging didn’t seem as vital as it was in, say, 2009, when I was an MFA student in a new city desperate to connect with someone, anyone. Or in 2011, when I was traveling alone and wanted to keep everyone updated about my whereabouts (oh, and safety) so I didn’t have to email them directly.

A year or so ago, I thought I might take up some form of personal blogging again. I had been book blogging since 2014, and, let’s be honest, for a writer and booknerd, book blogging is pretty damn close to personal blogging. But I yearned for the heydays of blogging, ala 2008-2012, when you could be open and honest because no one you actually knew would read unless you sent the link personally. (And sometimes, not even then.) I typed in “AllisonWrites.com” to see about renewing the domain, and was alarmed to see it was going for over $2,000. (I used to pay $100/year for the privilege.) True, I had a few sponsorships in my day, and well over 100 (did you gasp?!) subscribers. But having my trusty ol’ domain name was not worth the price, so I pushed blogging to the wayside and did… whatever I have been doing for the past year or so.

Cue writing a book (did you gasp?!) and having it published and getting active in conference life once again. I was again thinking “Maybe I should blog. But not personally. Professionally.” AllisonWrites.com was still too expensive, though as I look at it today it is a mere $395 (via Huge Domains.com, which made me snort), though I’m not sure if that’s ownership or rental. Still, I figured I would start somewhat fresh with the more professional AllisonRennerWrites.com – using the last name shows that I am no longer a 20-something blogging about the attractive plumbers that came to my apartment and drinking beer flights in Minnesota. No, now I am a published writer, a “grown-up” who merely thinks about the attractive plumbers that come to her home (see the callback to ownership vs rental) and pretends that a six-pack from Kroger is as exquisite as a beer flight from another state.

If any of you have found me here from the glory days of AllisonWrites.com (stalkers), you will be pleased to know that I still love listening to music, taking random adventures, and find myself to be funnier than I actually am. If you’re new here, then Hello! Please disregard everything you’ve just read, and stay tuned for more “grown up” writing to come.