Evan is the Digital Director for Atmosphere Press.  Atmosphere Press published The Refuge, the first book in The Refuge Trilogy. 

Evan lives in the pacific northwest and raises boys and plants.  He’s absurdly talented and does things I can’t, like build the website you’re surfing and explain words like ‘metadata’. 

When Evan was building this website, he recommended I start a blog, nodding to the ample benefits of connecting with one’s readers.  I told him not to utter the ‘b’ word.  “Too many people have a blog,” I said.  “I don’t have enough to say,” I said. 

That was one of the twenty-four times I was wrong that day.  I’m good at being wrong.  I don’t mind it, really.  It feels like abandon and pop rocks. 

Four months later, I told Evan he was right.  For sixty-one minutes I sat on this dock and watched the water ripple past while we talked about travel, eating sting rays, beating family members to remote locations, and the origination stories of superhero stuffed animals. 

We talked about the blog for three minutes. 

The blog is simple.  I click ‘add post’ and moments later I can converse with you – the readers.  I choose not to use social media (more on that in a future post), so this will be a great way we can connect for now. 

And though the blog part is simple, blog content is more like the other fifty-eight minutes of Evan and I’s conversation. 

Blog content happens in the living.  Because travel comes with a dollar sign and stupid amounts of hours spent in a four-sizes-too-small plane seat.  It comes with an iffy “I ate sting rays for lunch” stomach and cancelled trips because Covid doesn’t care about your travel plans.  Blog content comes with redundant bedtime routines and exhaustion by 8:30 PM because that’s how kids thrive and when you love kids well, you love your bed well-er. 

Sitting on the end of this dock I watched the ecosystem under my feet go about its nature without a thought for me.  It works flawlessly (unless/until humans mess it up, of course).  The ecosystem of the lake doesn’t need me and neither do you.  With or without this blog, this voice, this journey, your life will continue.  I don’t offer magic, but I do offer an invitation.

I don’t do a lot well.  I make a lot of mistakes and have to learn lessons an embarrassing number of times before I get them right.  I say the wrong thing sometimes, get selfish sometimes, and constantly have to ask for forgiveness.  What I offer is an invitation to work on sanctification together.  I am both okay with the brokenness and seeking to repair it – one crack at a time. 

So, this blog thing.  Though it started with me being oh-so-wrong, I’m thankful for an alternative way to be journeying with you. 

And I’m excited by this very weird, but great, unknown. That is what pop rocks taste like, after all, is it not?