If you're reading this, it means that my second poetry chapbook, MY MOTHER CALLED ME A HERMIT, is being released today. Unlike my first collection, which felt like a distillation of a depressed person soaking their brain in the internet during a moment of worldwide crises, these poems are very recent. I spent the last year of my life writing, editing and compiling them together. They are, in a sense, the most present version of my writing, which is a sentence I am typing out right now in this moment, a full 3 weeks before I intend to release it. I've thought a lot about the creative process as labour over the past couple of years. Living by myself, working full time and trying to squeeze anything artful from the few hours I have before I go to bed are all elements in this process, but more than that, they cost me time. Any time I don't spend writing something meaningful and cogent feels wasted. I feel the past on my back constantly and even doing something successfully brin...