What's all this about? ~~~~~~~ / \ | .---. .---.| |( o | | o )| | `---+-+---' | | ^ | \ ___ / `--.___.--' /| |\ My name is Devon Koren, and I live on a family farm affectionately called "The Ridge" in a sort of no-man's land between Halls and Gibbs on the border of Knox County, Tennessee. I share my home with my husband, Thomas; our dog, Yami; and our three neurospicy kiddos -- Aisling (27), Kes (12), and Kye (9). I'm 47 years old (how the hell did THAT happen?!) and my forties have been ridiculously eventful. I started performing burlesque and drag, realized that I'm non-binary (I use they/them pronouns), survived 2020 while homeschooling my children, had a midlife crisis where I quit my corporate job for two years and became a Montessori teacher (I ended up going back to the corporate job), and finally received my diagnoses for both ADHD and autism. Needless to say, my forties is when everything started making sense. Prior to this recent decade of my life, I became a later-in-life mom, published a novel, ran a half marathon, found my husband on Twitter, earned my Master's in English, earned my Bachelor's in English with a minor in Appalachian Studies, lived a decade as a young single mother, and cultivated an obsession with US Route 11. In hindsight, I suppose I've always been busy. I've come back to the gopherspace after a long hiatis, mostly because I want a place to record my thoughts, reflections, and musings. I'm out of practice with the written word -- a byproduct of an intense season of parenting, the demands of capitalism, and more of a reliance on AI in my daily life than I'd like to admit. I'd also like to compile everything in one place, so that one day if my kids get curious about who I was, it will be (relatively) easy to find -- as long as they can navigate and find a gopher-enabled browser. I'm also disenchanted with the state of the Internet in general. I grew up falling in love with the Internet in the 1990s, but my Internet is not the Internet that exists today. Everything monetized, full of ads, and filled with people sharing harsh, cruel, and divisive opinions. It's become a place I don't really like to go anymore. So I've come here, to a quieter corner. It's me, and this could entirely be yet another AuDHD hyperfocus phase. But, we'll see how it goes. As my history should make clear, I don't mind to experiment. And you, if you happen to be reading this -- thank you for coming along for the ride.