My name is Angela Eloise and I am a freelance writer. That sounds as if I am copping to an addiction. I am. In addition to writing this blog, I also write about social media and am at work on a series of essays that I hope to see in print some day. In a magazine, not at the bottom of my rubbish bin after getting stuck in the out tray of my Epson. I also am willing to write for food. Literally. I like those little olive oil lemon cupcake muffin thingies they make at South End Formaggio.

In her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott says:

Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.

Cloud of Chaos was born out of my desire to dance with the absurdity of life, to create a space where I could write and share all of the gorgeous, fun, snarky deliciousness I find spinning around me every day.

What does a spinning cloud of chaos have to do with writing? Everything, as it turns out.

One day, when I was feeling squashed by life, I went to the Tremont Tea Room to consult a psychic about questions existential with hope he could help me find some sort of clue. Yes, I saw a psychic, get over it. Among other things, the psychic told me that from a center of relative calm I create a cloud of chaos around myself, like Pigpen’s cloud of dirt. Well, just as Pigpen was mighty proud of his filth, I decided to embrace my cloud of chaos as a good thing. To paraphrase a certain fruit salesman: it’s a feature, not a bug.

You see, most creative thinkers rarely get from point A to point E via B, C and D. It’s more likely they’ll get there via point K with a stopover at point X after a tangential run to the third moon of Jupiter. My point being that sitting with a chaotic cloud of cerebral detritus swirling around me is the perfect vantage point from which to view all manner of intriguing things, pull them out of the cloud for examination, and use them in combination or on their own to create new things. Things that will make you shake your head with the with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make you laugh about yourself or life.

Cloud of Chaos is the place where you can find me writing, playing, singing. It is my hope that what you find here, at the very least, will interest or inspire you and, buoyancy restored, that you will keep coming back for more.