I’m thirty-something years old, born and raised in North Carolina, but my people are buried all over the U.S. I went to college in Pennsylvania, and then returned to teach humanities to teenagers at the same school which was home to me for all my growing-up years. Eventually, I left all that and, with my fair share of fear and trembling, moved to out to British Columbia for a masters in theology and the arts. After graduating, I took a grown-up gap year in Wisconsin living in some friends’ basement and working as an in-home caregiver, so that I could focus on writing. By 2022 I was home again, living three blocks from the house where I grew up and teaching literature back on that same familiar hallway. This blog is usually about me, but on occasion it’s about better things.

From Fall 2010, when this began:

I just read the phrase “life of the mind” and smiled. Because my mind has a life. In the past few hours it has only occasionally sat still between the dry pages of a book. It has been racing up and down my hall, making speedy trips to Ireland, France, and Africa to visit friends, and continually running home to North Carolina to smile and sigh. It has not stayed in Now either. It has been all over Today, into the weekend, briefly into 2002, and delved deep into fall break. My mind likes to entertain itself by shape-shifting—it is one moment cuddled in my top drawer with my jelly beans, then, suddenly, it is running down the halls of my high school. It sits on shoulders, and often cheerfully whispers into strange ears to no effect whatsoever. It is not always quite kind, but it makes up for that with liberal doses of charm. Now, it is blatantly flirting with the boy in front of my face, but a moment later it is nearly running over my brother with a car and driving off in tears. Oops. I once asked it how it keeps its energy up, and it told me it eats the jelly beans in my top drawer and often also consumes the omelet Sherry makes me before I even get to breakfast. It also reminded me in rather condescending tones, that it does lots of flying about which is good for circulation. Well, shame on me for asking. (I can’t quote directly, of course, because it speaks with very poor grammar, and sometimes slight profanity.)

I love my mind. I really do. While I sit in class it dolls up, goes to a party, has a tremendous time, gets drunk, then skips the hang over and still makes it to church on time. All in one page of notes. But it is not quite presentable, if you will understand. It does not have very good manners, and takes even longer to get ready in the mornings than I do. Though I am proud of it occasionally, I know it puts too much stock in glamour and comfort, and not nearly enough in mercy and selflessness. Mostly, though, I wish that just once it would consult me about its schedule. I simply cannot have it sulking on my top shelf behind Cold Comfort Farm the night before an exam!

But then again, my mind has been given to me for a reason. I like it, and it likes me. It runs off and lives life, and I sit here and smile. We make it work.

You can contact me at missalicehodgkins@gmail.com. If you want.