Aly Hawkins

[Previous entries in the 423-part "where I am with..." series: church, theology, politics.]

I am 33 years old. In April, I will have been married for 8 years to this fascinating guy. We are kid-free, unless you’re one of those people who thinks that pets count (we have two cats and a dog), and we live in a Barbie-sized duplex in Ojai, CA, a funky community largely comprised of genuine, real-live hippies and Hollywood bigwigs—most of whom smoke weed, so everyone gets along swimmingly. (In case you are wondering, we do not smoke weed. But don’t let that stop you.) The people who live on our road (it’s not really a street) coexist with horses, goats, chickens and various forms of undomesticated wildlife, including raccoons, opossums, the occasional coyote and a viral epidemic of maniacally laughing squirrels filled with evil intentions.

The guy who lived in our house before us, Lars, made methamphetamine in the garden shed. When we cleared out the shed to use it for storage, we found all kinds of science-lab paraphernalia—glass beakers, rubber tubing, Bunsen burner parts—as if Lars was practicing to host his own after-school edutainment show. But he was not. Lars was making meth. Lars was also using—smoking? freebasing? whatever one does to get high—meth, if the backyard is any indication. Bryan has uncovered some creepy treasures—doll heads and blood-encrusted gym socks, anyone?—in his valiant effort to reclaim the fenced-in hazardous waste dump behind our house.

I did not graduate from college, which until recently was a source of great shame for me. I’m okay with it now, having decided that prolific underachievement in the past does not mean I have to be a disappointment in the future. I’m in the process of applying to attend seminary in the fall. I’ve got some still-amorphous ideas about spiritual formation and storytelling (if you think you can escape me working these out on this blog, you are delusional) that I think could be helpful for some faith communities. I hope seminary will help me crystallize and refine my crazy notions.

What else? Hmm. I make a living by writing and editing, two activities I greatly enjoy. I work at home, which rocks. I am uncommonly blessed with good friends (chief among them, my husband), and there’s nothing I enjoy more than cracking a bottle of mid-priced malbec or dirt-cheap Cabernet and breaking it down with one or more of them. I hope to be a mom in the future (but not in the near future), and I will finish the screenplay that’s been wasting away on my hard drive for more than two years. I’ll read pretty much anything with words, even if it’s terrible, and I am mildly OCD about cleaning my ears.

I love being alive.

Filed under: life Tagged: | married life, ojai, pets, seminary, spiritual formation, storytelling, wine