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It’s finally summer! Chicago is looking lovely these days, and a few days out of the week are warm enough that people can escape to the beach or wear shorts downtown. It’s awesome! My favorite part about summer is that it allows me a lot of time to write.

On May 30th, I was able to perform a piece I wrote in a class I took at Columbia. This piece was told at a show called You’re Being Ridiculous held at Mary’s Attic in Andersonville. All stories had the theme of “Change,” and mine was about learning how to be an adult while feeling like a teen still. It told the story of my first year teaching on the college level while living with an undergraduate and how a student saw me misbehave in public, making me realize I needed to change my attitude. It was a great venue with stories ranging from a man who decides to convert to Judaism and undergo a ritual circumcision to a woman that worked as a theatre set designer in a job she thought she wanted but hated.

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In addition, work has been a bit slow, so we entertain ourselves at the Writing Center by playing a game we like to call “Murderman.” This is a version of “Hangman” where, instead of hanging a man when incorrect letters are guessed for a word or phrase, we kill the man in many different ways. The other day, we had my favorite Murderman death, which was to kill the man in a way that was reminiscent of a recent death on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Finally, I’ve committed to writing 500 words a day. It’s been going okay—some days, I don’t write, so I’ll make the words up on another day, but right now, I’m current with over 7,000 words for the summer semester. The goal is to have 50,000 by the end of summer, so I’ll keep you guys updated. Join me if you’d like!

That’s it for now, MarginAliens. Have an awesome one!