Don't worry, this is coming. I just want to correct some obvious problems first.

Edit: I'm putting together a "director's cut" of the book, which begins with this introduction and concludes with an additional essay about what this means to me. That second essay is written for an extremely challenging audience: my parents. I'm aiming to have this done in time to give it to them for Christmas, so expect the final thing sometime early next week.

Ordinarily I would say "you shouldn't have to explain your art," but the art is essentially for people who already understand certain things, and there's a huge amount of inferential gap I'm trying to cross. (My goal is not to "convert" them so much as for them to understand the person I've become in the past year).