Well, I'm back :)

Actually, I've been back in the States since April 30th. 

Yes, it has taken me almost a month to type up a post. Such is my life at the moment.

I am hoping to will post more pictures and/or stories sometime this summer, either on this blog, or the new one I'm working on that will be devoted to my time in Italy. In the meantime, I wanted poke my head back into the blogsphere and give you a bit of an update. 

I've had the time of my life over the last three months. I toured Venice, Florence and Rome. I saw Michaelangelo's David, Pieta, and Sistine Chapel. I stood in the center of St. Peter's Square and sat on the balcony of St. Mark's Cathedral. I went to Paris and stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower at night. I stayed in an apartment in Trapani, Sicily, where I could literally take two steps out my door and be in a bread shop. I took a train to a town in the Dolomite Alps and spent ten hours walking around the most breathtaking landscapes with two people who I didn't even know existed last year, and are two of my favorite people in the world now. 

I could go on and on. And I will. Later. For now, I only  have a few minutes before I have to get back to my summer to-do list. It looks like this:

- Learn Italian

- Learn how to play the guitar

- Get all the documentation to file for dual citizenship

- Raise support to move to Italy for (at least) the next four years as a missionary

Yes, you did read that right. I'm moving to Italy! Lord willing, I will have everything in order to put myself and my life on a plane to Venice by September. From Venice, I will return to the sleepy little town of San Lorenzo, where I will take up residence at Saints Bible Institute as a full time missionary under SEE. 

I never expected to be returning to Italy for missions. I was never the kid who wanted to be a missionary growing up (and even if I had, Italy was never a place I thought of as needing missionaries). I was the girl who just wanted to see the world. I had thought that, maybe, I would get a job in Italy and stay because I loved it. I didn't really think that though. My plan was to spend a semester in Italy, come home and be with my family, and write full time while training Jiu-Jitsu four nights a week. So much for that ;) 

I'll have a more full-fledged update/explanation for the drastic change my life-course has taken soon. At least you now have an idea why my blog has been so dormant: my focus changed. I'm not giving up on my writing, by any means. I will write on the time I have off (which isn't much, but it'll be enough if I have a story). And I'm hopeful that, as I get into the routine of my new duties, I'll be able to find time on at least a semi-regular basis to start writing again. If not though, I figure I'm following Benjamin Franklin's advice:

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." 

Escape Artist?

You know how people talk about how they love to escape into books?

I always squirm a little when I hear someone say that, or read it in an interview, or see it in any other format. It makes me really, really uncomfortable. I finally figured out why: I don't like having books - wonderful, marvelous books - equated with escapism. I don't like the idea of reading being a way for people to avoid or neglect their lives. And the idea of enabling escapism scares me as a writer.

I don't want my readers (assuming they actually exist at some point) to escape into the words I write. I don't want them to grab up my story as a way to run away from their problems. I don't want my books to be the fantasy they turn to when a stressful situation arises. I know I'm not responsible for other people's behavior. If someone uses books as a form of escapism, I can't change that about them. I know that. But I think when writers talk about loving to escape into books we're inadvertantly condoning the idea that escapism is all right and that books are a way to accomplish that escape.

When people use food as an escape, it's perceived as a negative thing. When people use drink or drugs to escape, it's seen as a negative thing. Why is it that when people use books to escape, it's perfectly all right? Sure, it's not physically destructive. You won't end up in the hospital from an overdose or morbid obesity if books are your escape. But when people use books as an escape, it's fundamentally the same as any other form of escapism. It's just dressed in a lovely cover.

Escape is temporary. I don't want to provide my readers an escape. That probably sounds callous. I mean, what if someone has had a horrific, terrible life? Isn't it OK in that case? I don't think so, especially if a reader is dealing with some sort of trauma. I don't want to help them escape it. I want to help them conquer it. I want to help them overcome it. I don't want to give them some sort of fleeting reprieve from their troubles. I want to give them something more permanent. I want my books to foster courage and hope. I want my readers to come away from my books armed with something that goes beyond "The End." I want to give them the inner strength to face the trouble and pain in their lives, because the trouble and pain will still be there after the last page has been turned. I want to give them a quiet place - a place they can leave with a fresh perspective, an idea for how to deal with the difficulty before them, or even just a confident hope that change and goodness and beauty is possible.

I want people to take books off the shelves to enrich their lives, not escape them. I want people to use books to explore new places and perspectives, and through that exploration, to expand their own view of our world and all the complexities of it. I want people to pick up a book when they're upset or depressed, not to escape, but to be encouraged that there is good in this world and it's worth fighting for. I want people to open the cover when they're bored, not to escape the boredom, but to find something to inspire them to action.

Now maybe I'm overreacting. Maybe people don't really mean that they escape into books. Maybe they're just lazy in their diction. But if you don't actually view books as a means of escape, don't describe them that way. There are thousands of words. Find some that acurately describe what books are to you.

I read to improve not just my mind, but my character, my being. I write to the same end. I write to make beautiful minds - minds filled with whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or worthy of praise. Because beautiful minds make beautiful people and beautiful people make beautiful lives and beautiful lives make a beautiful world.

That's what I want to be a part of.

"The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That’s the only lasting thing you can create."

~ Chuck Palahniuk