We spend our entire twenties trying to survive. We are trying to build a career, trying to find a partner who doesn’t use a mattress on the floor, and trying to afford furniture that didn’t come in a flat cardboard box. It is a chaotic scramble to check all the boxes that society tells us we need to check to be considered a functional human being.
Then you hit your mid-thirties. And if you are lucky, you look around and realize you actually did it. The bills are paid on time. The job is steady. The relationship is comfortable. You have a favorite spatula. You have strong opinions about dishwasher loading. You are safe. You are stable. You are responsible.
And you are absolutely bored out of your mind.
That is the dirty little secret about “having it all together.” Nobody tells you that stability can feel a whole lot like a cage. You wake up, you drink the coffee, you go to the meeting that could have been an email, you make the dinner, and you go to sleep. Rinse and repeat until you die.
I started feeling this itch a few years ago. It wasn’t that I was unhappy. I love my life. But I missed the adrenaline. I missed the butterflies in the stomach. I missed the feeling that something reckless or unexpected could happen at any moment. I looked at my reflection and saw a responsible woman who flosses regularly, and I wanted to shake her.
I think that is why I started writing these stories. It is definitely cheaper than a sports car and less destructive than an actual affair. But let’s be real for a second about the glamour of being an erotic romance author.
You probably have this image of me sitting at a vintage mahogany desk, wearing a silk robe, sipping expensive wine while I type out scenes of unbridled passion. The reality is usually me sitting on the couch in sweatpants that I have worn for three days straight, with a messy bun that is defying gravity, typing about a billionaire dominant boss while I yell at the dog to stop licking the carpet.
It is a weird dichotomy to live in. One minute I am writing a scene where a woman is being ravished in a semi-public place, and the next minute I am genuinely excited that laundry detergent is on sale at the grocery store. I contain multitudes, I guess.
But writing became my escape hatch. It became the place where I didn’t have to be the responsible professional or the good partner or the woman who worries about her calorie intake. In my head and on the page, I get to be the intern making a bad decision in the elevator. I get to be the woman risking it all for a night she would never forget. I get to be confident and demanding and entirely unapologetic about my body, even if the real me is still trying to suck in my stomach when I walk past a mirror.
We all have that shell we built to protect ourselves. We spent years hardening it so we could be taken seriously in the world. But lately I have been finding ways to crack that shell open just a little bit. It is necessary survival work.
Sometimes it is writing a scene that makes me blush while I’m sitting in a crowded coffee shop, hoping no one looks over my shoulder. Sometimes it is just admitting that I want more than “fine.” Sometimes it is posting a blog like this and wondering if I am oversharing to the entire internet.
I am starting this blog to document that process. I want to talk about the messy, complicated, hot, and confusing parts of being a woman who wants to be good but also really loves being bad. I want to talk about the struggle to feel sexy when you just spent an hour unclogging a drain.
So welcome to my thoughts. We are going to break a few rules here. We are going to laugh at the absurdity of it all. And I promise it is going to be a lot more fun than following the rules.
Now if you will excuse me, I have a very commanding fictional CEO who needs my attention, and I also need to switch the laundry. It is all about balance.