STILL: 31 days of 5-minute free writes

I’m reading “Maid” by Stephanie Land right now.

I have about an hour left to go in the audiobook, so I’ll know how this all works out pretty soon, but at the point I’m at right now, she is stuck in an unhealthy, small, moldy apartment in Washington state that is making her and her young child sick. She dreams of going to Missoula, Montana. This is a dream she has had for much of her life.

For a variety of reasons, Land is struggling to get by, working as a maid, using aid from seven government programs to supplement her meager wages.

She got $4,000 from the IRS for earned income tax credits and the child tax credit, and is down to having $1,000 left. She tells one of her clients (who is very friendly/empathetic) that she doesn’t think she is going to be able to take a road trip to Missoula, something she considered when the $4,000 first arrived. This idea is a bit of a precursor to the idea of relocating to Missoula (partially because it has a writing program she’s interested in).

So many times in my life, I’ve said, “I made [x] mistake, yet I still think I deserve [insert wanted thing].”

Land (at this point in her book) is quite poor, but still wants and — somewhere deep in her soul — needs to go to Missoula.

My “still” thing is Valencia, Spain (and/or an immersion program in Spain, but Valencia got stuck in my head from one of my best Spanish classes in college and — for reasons I barely remember that appealed to…