Okay, first post. So much pressure. Sum up my person, my interests, my reasons for blogging. Make it simple, readable, but now shallow or forgettable. Sincere. But not too personal, not too weird. The internet can sense weakness, smell fear, so always be bulletproof. Personal and vulnerable, but also definitely bulletproof.

Yeah, too much pressure. How about a list? Lists are good. The internet loves lists. Here goes:

Ten Things About Me:

1. I am and have always been a literature geek. Not just an avid reader, but someone who actually likes the stuff they shove on you in English class. The Brontë sisters (all three of them), Tolstoy, Stephen Crane, Willa Cather, J. D. Salinger, whoever. If the author is dead and Historically Important, I’m interested.
2. I am and have always been a goth. Gothic. Darkly inclined. Goth-adjacent. Whatever. Even as an oldster (I’m 45) I wear a lot of black, listen to old goth music, watch horror movies, and love true crime and spooky occult stuff.
3. Turns out there’s a name now for spooky nerds like me. I just found out about Dark Academia and holy crap, where has this been all my life? I mean, I’m not a 20-year-old Insta model in tweed but the deep spirit of it speaks to me. Roaming a dark gothic building at night, frantically searching for a place to curl up with a good book? That’s me.
4. I love literature and goth stuff, but I also enjoy philosophy, history, a bit of science, all sorts of things. I love museums of all kinds, from formal art museums to quirky roadside collections. I also love book shops, antique shops, libraries, botanical gardens . . . .
5. I have an undergraduate degree in literature with a minor in philosophy, but since then life has taken me pretty far from the student life. Life has also surprised me with three budding teenagers who would rather climb walls and throw footballs than read a book or stroll through a museum. Life has a weird sense of humor.
6. I’ve been blogging on and off for years about various things, always on a strictly amateur basis. For the last couple years I’ve been writing about my spookier interests over at Cauldron Comforts, and I still plan to write about life and post pictures of my craft projects over there. I’m starting this one because Cauldron Comforts is already perilously close to becoming a blog about obscure Victorian authors and discovering Dark Academia has ignited even more passion for that type of thing. I decided it might be better to create a home specifically for my more nerdy DA pursuits.
7. I just moved from Utah to New Mexico last month. For you Europeans, that’s about the distance from Paris to Salzburg. For Indians, that’s about the distance from Agra to Kathmandu. Google Maps is fun. But seriously, I don’t know anyone here and with COVID still an issue I’m not particularly looking for a job right now (my husband can work remotely, I can’t). With kids in school all day and nowhere I need to be right now, I might be blogging a lot. Yay!
8. I have some depression and anxiety issues. Who doesn’t these days? The pandemic has made those issues much worse than usual. Of course it did! I’ve had to do some therapy and really step up my self-care game. Lucky for me, writing really helps pull my brain away from anxious thought loops, so I might be blogging a lot. Yay! But also, if people leave mean comments (or if my real life throws me a curveball) I might have an anxiety attack from behind the screen and drop out for a bit. Anxiety is fun!
9. This blog probably won’t be super woke. I’m reasonably aware of woke issues and try to be sensitive and respectful, and I don’t have major disagreements with most social justice positions, but my obsession with “western classic” things means I read a lot of dead white dudes who have problematic old-timey views on all sorts of issues. I try to take each thing as a product of its time and place and appreciate it for what it is. Sometimes the problematic stuff seems important and worth addressing, and sometimes it feels like “well, Victorians were just like that” is enough. I also read a lot of gothic horror and sensation fiction, which means sometimes chracters get murdered and plagued by demons and stuff. Some people just don’t expect graphic violence out of a book more than a hundred years old, but graphic violence is surprisingly common in old stories. If a book has something particularly violent or offensive to modern readers I try to start with a content warning, but I’m just one person and I’m certain I don’t catch everything. It’s fair for sensitive readers to find a blog with more suitable content or a better warning system.
10. I owe a lot of my interests and attitudes to my dad. In one sense, being a straight white male made him inherently priveleged, a part of the elite establishment that many in Dark Academia worry about liking. In another, he was the embodiment of DA. He never got to wander the halls of Oxford or spend evenings at the opera. He didn’t get to talk philosophy all night over coffee or wine. He didn’t even get to travel much until later in life, and he never became a professor. But he dragged his kids to every museum and historical site within driving distance, watched opera on PBS, wrote articles on local flowers for his office newsletter, and read books on Japanese history on quiet evenings. And in the process, he taught us that classics aren’t just for the priveleged, they’re also for poor farm boys and soldiers and even brooding little goth girls like me. He died suddenly a couple years ago and I still miss him. He didn’t approve of all my views and life choices, but he’d be happy I’m still visiting museums and curling up with the classics.