(Un)Favorable Conditions.

*Angela Lansbury in “Murder She Wrote” via Pinterest*

Welcome to Office (After) Hours, a work-in-progress project that took on extra urgency when Instagram added the “instants” feature that almost certainly was the cause of my second-recorded gray hair and nearly the proverbial nail in the coffin of my relationship with that app (but I still have it because did somebody say “toxic”?).

Anywho, this “blog” has realistically been in the works for quite some time. I bought the domain in 2020, and have been paying the annual fee for the past 6 years with nothing to show for it(which is just one of a handful of questionable financial choices I’ve made as an adult).

Writing is hereditary. It’s in my blood, it’s a calling, destiny, prophecy, whatever. When I tried to pull a Jonah in college, it chased me down in the form of my quirky English 111 professor who moonlighted as a bassist in a jazz band. Towards the end of the semester, he asked me what I intended to get my degree in, and when I told him American History he scoffed and said, “you have a God-given gift that’s too damn important to waste on dates and facts and wars”.

And that was that.

So in 2014 I graduated from UVA (go hoos) with my degree in English Literature, and as the science nerds predicted, I did not secure a job with it. And I was ok with that (and still am). All that mattered was that I had a reliable vessel I could pour myself into. Writing has healed the trace amounts of social anxiety in me that never knows the right thing to say. I feel like my mind is never quiet, nor is my nervous system (working on it), so writing helps me organize the fraying threads of my thoughts and weaves them into something that resembles the tapestry I see in my mind.

The problem is that writing is an art, and art is more than just raw inspiration; it’s discipline and skill and devotion.

Not to sound like one of those Christian pseudo-intellectual a**holes who always quote Lewis or Willard or Bonhoeffer, but C.S. Lewis is actually my favorite author and he does have a quote that’s been ricocheting around my brain for the past couple of months:

He’s right. I’ve been waiting to be less busy, more skilled, more inspired, less jaded, more holy, more polished, more “up to snuff”, less anxious before comfortably hitting “publish” (I’m a recovering perfectionist; what gave it away?). But to paraphrase Lewis: that ain’t gonna happen.

The hourglass of my avoidance has run out. I’ve been waiting for favorable conditions that likely will never come. I thought I could put all these “trivial” ideas that require grunt work on the designated “ For Undefined Future Use” shelf, but I looked up, and damn, I'm out of shelf space.

There's no more room for all the "I'll do it later" stuff, and the Holy Spirit’s gentle nudges have been getting increasingly aggressive.

So I’m letting you in on this journey because I need the accountability. This is not a curated space. This is writing in the raw, an exercise in discipline, and a reminder of what human writing looks like (brace yourselves as I occasionally rage against the machine).

The vibe is office hours meets happy hour with your slightly emo, millennial, unfiltered (ok some filtration), very religious (it’s not a dirty word), non-academic advisor who is heavily influenced by the sitcom Frasier, Lucille Ball, BBC, and the 90s.

I’m claiming no expertise about anything. Themes will vary from silly to serious, testimony to trial. I’ll occasionally wax too existential for some palates, but the merry-go-round is free and you can get off at any time:). I’ll find the boundary-line between honesty and discretion. I won’t be fake, and I don’t know how to sugarcoat to save my life. I will often be long-winded (as you can tell), but the plane will eventually land…unless it doesn’t.

And that’s ok too.

Because write I must, however clumsily it goes.

- Christina

(Un)Favorable Conditions.

-Logue.