Entropical Paradise: reflections on a chaotic life and what it means to be human. A space for grace.

Entropical Paradise is a newsletter/space exploring human nature and experience, as well as the experience of being a writer in the world.

This space is created by me, Anastasia Selby, a queer, gender-expansive human originally from the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. I have lived on every U.S coast (including that of the Great Lakes) and spent some time living in Europe both as a Fulbright ETA and a pet-sitter. I’ve traveled throughout South and Southeast Asia as well as Central America, and have worked in Hawai’i as a teacher and Alaska as a wildland firefighter.

As someone whose path has been nonlinear, I am interested in the boundaries and borders the define our worlds; their geographical, ethnographic, physical, conceptual, legal, linguistic, historical, racial, and ecological.

I am interested especially in cultural conceptions of identity: the powerful stories which envelope us from the outside and internally.

Those interests are reflected here. When you subscribe to Entropical Paradise you can expect a diverse range of subjects and explorations— I write about my own experiences of being a writer with a forthcoming book, I write into and outside of my own personal identities, and I often reflect on various subjects, including Buddhism, self-tending, mental health, finances, friendship, academia, physical health, academia, sleep, cats, nature, books, perfectionism, gender, quiet and noise, art, and music.

Before I went to a four-year university to study English and film, I worked as a wildland firefighter, nanny, housekeeper, stripper, bartender, brake press operator, temporary laborer, and McDonald’s cashier. I have been working since I was eleven years old, when I took my first babysitting job, and was raised by a single mother who hadn’t graduated high-school. My father, who was mostly absent, didn’t make it past middle school.

That is to say: Entropical Paradise is not a space limited to people with specific backgrounds and experiences. All are welcome here.

I spent a lot of my life thinking I wasn’t really a writer.

Now I work and reside in the academic space of an English PhD program. My first book is forthcoming in Spring 2024, from Grove Press. And yet I often find myself in a space of not feeling like a writer.

I am obsessed with dissolving the ways in which artistic, academic, and writerly spaces reject those who diverge from “traditional” ways of thinking, while only embracing experimentation if it exists within the confines of what’s already been deemed acceptable.

I am obsessed with dissolving the ways in which artistic, academic, and writerly spaces dismiss important work on the grounds that it isn’t literary, academic, or artistic enough.

I am obsessed with finding ways in which we, as people who make and create art and ourselves, can continuously free ourselves from the cultures which both inspire and constrain us.

This Space is Always Evolving

Entropy is randomness. Chaos. An absence of pattern.

Our brains seek patterns.

This space seeks to find and interrupt patterns.

To inspire.

To love.

To accept the chaos of the world with open arms.

This space is available to all; unbound by paywalls (but appreciative of paying subscribers).

COME AS YOU ARE

Whoever you are, you’re welcome here.