When I was five, if you had asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you that I wanted to be an artist or a writer. Now I see that a writer is an artist, but back then I viewed them as different things. Back then I also thought I could draw. Which I can’t. But I did always love to write, and I’ve done a lot of it over the years—from keeping journals to writing this blog. As a child, I was also a writer of stories, but that pursuit fell quickly away as I grew, replaced by the much safer whimsies of theater and, later, guiding costumed tours. For a very long time, I have found interpreting other people’s words and relaying facts to be infinitely less risky than inviting people into my imagination. It seems so much more personal there. 

But I’ve always loved fiction and vaguely dreamed of one day sitting in my little attic library, at a desk facing a window under the eaves, building worlds on paper. This past year of quarantine and unemployment has shaken loose a lot of things in my life, and one of the long-dormant dreams that has found its way to the top of the rubble is the dream of writing stories. My own stories. Because, really, I’ve been a storyteller the whole time, haven’t I? Like the Irish Seanchaí, the cultural keepers and tellers of histories and legends—onstage, backstage, on buses and the streets of Boston, on this blog—I’ve been telling stories. I owe a lot of the reanimation of my imagination to Dylan, his penchant for D&D, and our habit of playing many board games, but that’s a reflection for another, longer post. Today, all of this is to say that, in my ongoing career -shift odyssey, I have found a new platform for sharing stories and decided to give it a try. The following is my first attempt. In my mind, a brief beginning to something potentially much longer. If you are inclined to accept the invitation, welcome to the threshold of my imagination.