Layla Al-Bedawi

Feels like fall in Houston today, which feels miraculous. Might have to find a body of water to walk near, later today.

💕

It is a somewhat uncomfortable thing, admitting that I miss the Olden Days of Social Media, so/but here I am, giving posting-without-overthinking a go. We shall see if it lasts, and whether my eventual downfall and return to hermitdom will be brought about by my chronic over- or underthinking. Hi!

NYT needs to correct this disinformation right away. Its reporters are apparently clueless about what's actually going on out there. People with valid visas and green-card holders ARE ABSOLUTELY being deported right now for speech, and without criminal convictions.

A discovery in the muscles of long COVID patients may explain exercise troubles Long COVID patients can experience severe energy crashes after physical exertion. New research provides clear evidence that there's a biological basis for the symptoms.

The elevator in our building has been out for 6 weeks. After having to take the stairs daily & the burning in my legs not getting better even a little bit, & knowing how much easier they were before last summer, I’m coming to terms with it really being a long COVID thing. www.npr.org/sections/hea...

T’Ana, the humanoid cat alien doctor on the USS CERRITOS, gestures to a pain chart behind her. On the left is a smiley face above which are the words “I feel good”; on the right is a face with an affectless line for a mouth, above which is the word “Other.”

Finished s5 of Lower Decks recently & have preserved this snapshot of the show on to my phone because it is a visual poem that speaks to me on a molecular level

"No one ever thought this would happen" is dishonest and journalists not pointing that out are doing you all a disservice. Many people said word for word this would happen. You just didn't respect those people. And you need to be honest instead of the feigned surprise for sympathy.

Emailed in a final paper after an all-nighter, almost signed it “Love you”

Thank you! 💕💕

Thank you, I did! 😊

❤️❤️❤️

Will you believe I forced myself to actually write a sort of outline? Your encouragements must be working! ✨

I don’t know anymore how they’re dealing with it these days,
but I deal with it by not picking up the phone, feeling enormous guilt, and writing upsetting fiction.

Living in Texas has completely ruined me: by cold I mean a friendly 48 degrees. 🫠

It is actually cold out! You better believe I’m keeping these windows open until my toes fall off.

Thank you thank you! Hope you’re having a good Monday!

Wow wow wow. It should not have taken this kind of devastation but wow.

It is my solemn duty as someone who also used to butcher that town’s name to mention that—and this makes your story even better—the place is actually called Pataskala. 🫠

I appreciate the novel support! 💕

That’s the conundrum: grad school is often making it hard to work on the novel, but without grad school I would literally not be writing this novel. 🤹🏻

Friday is for novel, and also sometimes grad school is for novel. 😄

On my way to a coffee shop to do novelly things! 🏃🏻‍♀️

All over my home, my phone, my notebooks, my brain, there’s a vast network of fragments, scenes, ideas, snippets of dialogue, character sketches, turns of phrase, obsessions.

I’m writing with full awareness that at the core, every novel I’ve tried to write this past decade has been the same novel.

Joking aside, this current project is the first time (of many attempts!) that I feel a novel *working* for me, and that’s largely due to allowing myself my very nonlinear, disjointed, fluid writing process. And not letting demands for outlining freeze me.

I’m a grown-ass adult & I currently insist on falling asleep with a specific soft fuzzy blanket every night because petting it reminds me of my cat.

Feelings are a riot, grief sucks, be kind to your weird little inner children everyone.

🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

Today is more like go go grad school go… 😭

Whoa.

“Any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be”

… is what I shall yell the next time a CW prof tells me I should try making a linear outline.

Charles, you are a solid one and a half at least!