Muses, Mandates, and Putting Remotes in the Fridge

A year and a half has passed since the last blog.

I have struggled to maintain a regular journal, and I have completely fallen silent on the blog-front. What started in 2023 as a secret outlet to practice my casual, non-narrative voice very quickly (in typical perfectionist/first-born/type-A/pick-your-descriptive-adjective-poison-here fashion) devolved into a task to be completed each week. And just like that, the joy evaporated and muse became mandate. 

So here we are again. Because being back is infinitely better than being perfect. Plus one finished manuscript (currently out on submission), plus one baby (whose cheeks are the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted), and plus 24 rejections. And one full request!!! 

Time has passed like an eon and a blink, and I am sitting at a desk in a new city with a tiny human in a bouncy chair beside me. And yet, opening this blog I felt myself whipped back in time to December 2023. 

If I could go back and tell 2023 Reagan that I would finish my novel, that I would figure out how to query, and that I would be sitting at my kitchen table and staring out at the Batman building, I would have felt…a lot. Elation at my ability to follow through, pride in a completed manuscript, disappointment that things are moving more slowly than I (naively) hoped they would, gratitude that I am still doing the thing I love most. 

Being a parent is exciting, and incredible, and exhausting. You give everything you have 24/7 to this little potato with the bones of a bird. You can’t sleep because they are hungry, and then they have a full diaper, and then they can’t soothe themselves to sleep, and then they’re asleep but making angry goat noises at 3am. And one morning you open the fridge looking for a yogurt and find your TV remote sitting on top of a block of monterey-jack cheese. 

Then you have two double-espressos and the baby is finally quiet and happy, and you get 200 words in and they actually aren’t all complete trash. 

The road is long, and there are many more steps to go before I reach my goals. But the Reagan of December 2023 kept walking, and so did the Reagan of January and February and March and April and May and on and on until she was sitting in this chair in July 2025, taking a break from writing queries to reflect on what the view looks like from up here. 

Above me the road stretches on: wins, and losses, and days that feel absolutely stagnant. But every day is one day closer. 

I have no idea what the next stop will be, but I can’t wait to see the view.

Until next time, 

R