This site has gone through a few changes recently. Which is a result of me thinking about what I want this site to be and how I want to stop focusing on trying for polished content here. There is this concept out in the circles I follow called “learn in...
When I turned forty-five last year, in late August, I had just arrived home from a week at The Strenuous Life Retreat. It had awoken something in me, and I wanted to move back to...
I’m not much of a bath woman. Soaking in a tub isn’t a pleasurable experience. The bathroom is a utilitarian space: bodily functions, brushing my teeth, doing my hair, putting on makeup when I actually wore makeup
I asked someone out a few Fridays ago.
Now, this is something I never do. In the two serious relationships I’ve been in, I wasn’t the pursuer. It’s not my normal operating mode. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not shy or a wallflower. No, far from it....
There is this imp in my head, who is somehow named Fred, and he’s a devilish, little thing. This is the little demon that screams at me when I feel like I’ve messed something up: the time I made an outburst with a loved one, the feelings of shame and...
I’ve been struggling lately1. My chest seems to cave in on itself, a knotted ball of black wire pulsing at the center, my breath catches, sometimes it’s hard to breathe....
It’s early, just after five in the morning, and I’ve been up since a little after two. In bed, reading, my brain too on fire for sleep to reclaim me but I can still feel the mind-numbing weight behind my eyes. It’ll be an interesting day, for sure,...
A snippet here, a scrap there. Floating slips of a torn up life in the wind, feelings free like confetti strewn on the streets of New York City the morning after New Year’s. Shallow screams, fallow eyes, rings like a mad woman’s eyeliner application. I...
I’ve been watching the first season of Felicity for the past few weeks. When I’m doing some mindless task at work—setting up a project’s infrastructure, copying notes, styling a website—the latest episode is playing in its little video box in...
It’s windy today, the first day that I can feel winter on the edge of the weather, that tinge of raw coldness that marks the depths of the winter season. The weather started last night, wind battering my windows, the draft coming through the poorly...
A coworker recently asked me if I had any advice for her after her first year at our company. Instead of replying immediately in Slack without any forethought, I asked her if it would be okay to write something up. Well, this here is what I came up...
As I’ve already written, I’ve gone through a break-up somewhat recently. The why of it isn’t important but for roughly the first two months, I was bereft. I feel everything deeply: in relationships, in friendships, watching commercials. It has...
I’ve learned that setting intentions at the outset of anything often helps. Before an event, a meeting, a walk in the woods, setting my intention sets the stage for the experience. It guides me when a decision needs to be made or circumstances change....
I’m about 10,000 words into my first full draft. I’m pulling scenes from previous drafts–can you call it a draft if you haven’t completed it yet? I’m roughly on track to finish the first draft by the end of the year. Of this, I am proud. But it’s hard,...
Let’s talk word count. There are quite a few rules around word counts, speficially around genres. I’m working on a historical novel, which puts me in the camp of science fiction and fantasy, although it shouldn’t be as long. In the various searches I’ve...
This morning, I read in Saturday’s Washington Post Lifestyle section that although the pandemic won’t make us nicer people, it may change us1. And that article...
Irish whiskey runs through these canals, the many waterways that power my arms and legs and heart and the two eyes that watch these words fallow out of a chaotic mouth, purple lips in front of my violent tongue. Lowball glass, cool amber puddle masks the...
It’s Saturday morning. I’ve got my coffee, the cold winter sun slanting at a sharp angle on my backyard, stark trees and their thin shadows lay cartographic lines across the grass. Every couple of minutes I look at my coffee cup, take a sip, think about...
What if we just forget the world ever happened this year? What if we eschew the personal hells we endured, together yet separate? What if we think about the year 2020 in much the same way we view the thirteenth floor of a building? Technically both 2020...
When I was a teenager, I would lie in the middle of the street late at night. The roads barely lit at the top of Wawecus Hill, the curve a dangerous liaison that licked at my delicate heart. I’d lower my body to the ground, the hard asphalt biting into...
The rain is slow and drizzly. I can hear it falling on the leaves just outside my open windows. Other than the occasional bird chirp and the small clack of sound my keyboard makes as I write these words, the rain is the only sound I hear. In my kitchen,...
Three weeks ago, I took a train into New York City. Walking out of Penn Station, into the warm, late Summer air, my life felt like not my own. I found the PATH station on 23rd, walked down the steps, and saw a man squatting on the landing, pants around...
Two o’clock in the morning, I’m awake with a back that is convulsing with pain like a man on death row being electrocuted. This largely stems from the fact that I have spent a big chunk of the last thirty-six hours laid up on my roommate’s couch, on my...
I have a fear of getting older, of becoming sick. A fear of my lungs failing, losing my ability to move in this world. A fear of spending my most valuable days wasting behind a screen, wasting my most mobile years sitting at a desk, wasting the vitality...
There was a time in my life where the end of the year would prompt a flurry of goals to achieve in the coming year. How did I want this new year to be different from this past year? What were my dreams and hopes for the future? Two years ago, I wrote it...
When I was twenty-two, I worked on a dude ranch. Powderhorn Guest Ranch1, located ten miles south of it’s tiny town namesake, in a valley in the Colorado Rockies next to...
Maybe it’s turning forty or maybe it’s watching Pugsy grow older each day, his arthritis making it difficult for him to walk down our front steps. Maybe it’s thinking about going back to school and the price tag associated with it. Maybe it’s Trump and...
Since I started this website, almost a full year ago now, I have written under a pseudonym. Selene was my moniker and it really isn’t that far-off from who I am—it is my middle name. But, I used it as a way to crawl into a new identity, one not...
Twenty years ago tomorrow, on October 10th, I killed someone. A woman. A mother. The time was a little after ten pm. It was a Saturday night. It was a stretch of unlit, rural highway. She was walking in the middle of the three lane road in a black...
There is only the mad dash through life, clawing and kicking out of the current version I have created for myself, trying to make it to the next version that I assume will be better than this one. I do not know why this is. I have always felt this way....
There’s a gluttony of run toward something, not away from it blog posts on the web. Therapy sessions, friendly advice, and early retirement extremists seem to pass on what looks to be hard-won wisdom. This pearl of knowledge has been touted as...
On this relatively cool Sunday afternoon, I’ve got my feet up, a Stella Artois on the coffee table, and a content feeling slipping around inside my body. This is not due to the Stella, since I’ve only just cracked it open. Rather, it comes from a feeling...
It’s a few minutes after four in the morning, and I’ve already been up for an hour. The first half-hour was spent trying desperately to fall back asleep. The second half-hour making coffee, firing up the text editor, and drooling over Instagram and...
Have you ever seen Complete Unknown? It came out a few years ago and starred Rachel Weisz and Michael Shannon. The fundamental premise is that Alice, as Weisz is known for most of the...
I haven’t written in ten days.
Not a sentence, nor a paragraph, nor even just a few words. Not here on this blog, or in my notebook, or on my work-in-progress novel (is it a work-in-progress if progress has stopped altogether?). My little
The tattoo I had inked in Prague is just about healed. The memories grow fainter each day. The habits and monotony of pre-Europe continue to fall back into the slots they have claimed in my life. The joyous bits—the bits I wanted to pull from my...
We left Berlin just over an hour ago and are hurtling toward Prague at 160 kilometers an hour on a train. I sit alone, a tiny sliver of the outside landscape blurring past my eyes in the smidge of a window available to me. It’s chilly here on the train,...
In between the staccato voice of the announcer, in between the different languages (of which I only understand English), there is the absolute tiredness that comes from being up for twenty-six hours straight, and the sheer joy of lifting away from the...
I didn’t write yesterday.
I missed another day of writing my three pages or 750 words somewhere. I completely forgot, to be honest. I usually write in the morning: pop up out of bed, make my coffee, and then bang out my words. It’s usually an hour...
This past weekend, I began purging. It started when I was cleaning the bathroom in anticipation of my mother coming to stay here and watch the Pugger while I’m in NYC. I had allergy medicine that expired in 2016, shampoo bottles half empty tucked into...
When I was a senior in high school, the movie Kicking and Screaming was released. My best friend at the time and I went to see it at the Niantic Cinemas in Niantic,...
My grandmother was a devout Catholic. Each morning, she celebrated Mass at her local church. Each evening, she whispered prayers to her God. She kept a rosary in her pocket. Since I was the first grandchild she had, the name I gave her when I couldn’t...
Life is fucking hard. It’ll eat you up like a rabid dog chewing at your exposed ankle. Make a mistake or a wrong choice or find out cancer is riddling your bones and things get really difficult, real quick. God, or whatever fuckery created us, didn’t...
There is an endless number of words in your body. You’ve got tons. When you are born, there is no Word God that christens you with a finite amount of words you can put down on the page. It is entirely possible you could write every hour of every day of...
It’s a black virus wending its way through your veins or a vicious storm on the sea’s horizon threatening the small, wooden boat you just finished building. Silly metaphors for a very real issue that I find myself grappling with on an almost daily basis....
I’ve been quiet here on my blog this week. I’ve needed some time to sort through thoughts and feelings without having to be coherent or cohesive. There is something wonderful and raw in just putting pen to paper, morning after morning, following one...
I know it’s not good to write about politics or religion. These topics are hugely divisive and problematic. It has always been this way. This current administration can be found in McCarthyism and the Civil War and any number of events between now and...
I’ve written a post a day for over a month now. I’m not sure if that’s an accomplishment or it’s sad that I think it’s an accomplishment. It is, however, the first time I’ve kept a commitment I made regarding my writing in over twenty...
I got back on OK Cupid again today. What the hell am I thinking?
It started yesterday. I went to an intimacy workshop that a friend invited me to. I was too sure about it but he said to keep an open mind. I expect other people to keep an...
It’s going to be a difficult night to write here. I should have written this morning but I was busy doing other things. And now, the Super Bowl is on and I’m watching the Patriots lose two minutes from the end of the half. To me, this is a good thing....
Thursday 28 October 1999 8:45 in the morning
Well, I guess I’m in Pioneer, California, sitting at Amador Station off of Highway 88. What a crazy day yesterday…
So began my journal entry from that day a little...
I was going to write about the time I spent on a ranch in California but, as I began to write it this evening, I realized that deserved more time than I want to give to this post tonight. So, I need to think of something else to write about. This is...
There are days when the words won’t flow. Today appears to be one of those days. Maybe it’s the meds I’ve been taking that creates this feeling as if I’m standing on a dock in a dense fog rolling off the water. I can hear seagulls off in the distance but...
There are two fears that loom large in my life. The first is health; so much matters around that. The quality of our life is largely dictated by health first (and then money and companionship and all the other things. But, if you don’t have your health,...
This past week has been one full of movies and television shows. I think I have stared at my TV screen for as many hours as I’ve spent with my face planted in a pillow fitfully sleeping. I don’t often watch this much but being sick and various cold...
Last night, when I came home from meeting my eleven week old nephew for the first time (so small! so soft!) and after I had did what I was supposed to do for work, I was flipping through the television channels. On the local PBS station, I watched Sally...
I almost didn’t write here this morning. I took out my notebook, made my cup of coffee, and was about to put pen to paper when I asked myself why I didn’t want to write on the blog. I told my friend J about this blog yesterday, after we...
Funny story from tonight. I was running around haphazardly this evening, trying to rush back home because the Pugger was sick (I ended up coming home to a pile of warm poo stacked in front of his bed anyway). Running around the local Stop & Shop, I...
I’m up early today. Woke up just after 4:30 this morning. This is when I used to get up religiously but haven’t been able to this past month. Not having a reason to get up in the morning isn’t conducive to leaving the comfort and warmth of my bed. I did...
The start of the week is today, a Tuesday, after having the MLK holiday off yesterday. We’ve got a company wide staff meeting and then I have a smaller developer meeting a few hours later in the afternoon. I slept through my alarm this morning, having...
What to say? It’s a little funny how I was going to write so much. Write about going to see Neko Case last night in Providence. Write about having my water out again and the non-stop banging in my crawl space for most of the weekend. Write about paying...
I think I’m getting sick. My throat has been sore and pasty for the past few days. A couple days ago, one of my coworkers coughed on me; I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t on purpose. I haven’t been sick in over a year. Not a sniffle. Not a cough....
Another day, another entry. It’s earlier today than I have been posting. About 6:30 in the morning. I woke up a half hour ago. Made coffee. Made the bed. Read an email that my sister is coming to visit my parents with their first grandchild. Mom invited...
I work from home on Wednesdays. I actually have a better set-up here at home than I do at the office. It’s warmer and more comfortable. I’ve got large screens and the music playing doesn’t need to be piped through my headphones. Oh, and there isn’t the...
One of the worst things is the blank page. Or a blinking cursor on an empty screen. Filling it without inanity is a herculean task, wouldn’t you say? So, I start with where I’m at: the time; the location; the fact my left forearm is bruised from...
I made a goal on New Year’s Eve to write 750 words (roughly three pages) every day. Either in my notebook or here on the blog or in a lengthy email. Something to just create on a more consistent basis. Tonight I am regretting it.
George...
The bear is awakening again. I can feel her stretching, the restlessness in her extremities, tired of being locked up and in the dark. It’s just the beginning of her stirring and, if I really want to, I could lull her back to sleep, for at least a few...
I’m bundled up—fingerless gloves and an infinity scarf, puffy jacket and heavy boots—sitting in front of my computer at work. Half of the employees are out today. The office is quiet; most of us with headphones blocking our ears and the low din of the...
I bought a frozen pizza at the grocery store tonight.
This alone isn’t all that special. I bought a six pack of eggs, some cheese and flour tortillas. I bought laundry detergent and creamer. And before all this, I bought a bag of senior dog food....
I live about 20 miles outside the center of Boston. My commute into the office is just over 10 miles. This means that leaving home at the same hour as everyone else, the drive into work can be 45 minutes to an hour. For 10 miles. Luckily, I have a...
My memory is a ghost. She flits in, thin and wispy, and flits back out when I try to get a good look at her. I am not sure if this is an inherited trait from my mother or from the years of hard living. Memories come in short clips: a flash from...
A few years ago, I read a book by Stephen Greenblatt called The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. It was the most difficult book I have ever read. Not in the sense of reading ability...
I can’t remember where I heard or read it but disappointment is the difference between your expectations and reality. It’s the same old story, isn’t it? We thought we’d be someone, we thought we’d be more than what we are. Hell, I was going to be a...
I am a roiling sea. I am the embodiment of a tumultuous, frothing storm. I am the physical manifestation of riotousness and disturbance and uproar. I am loud and vocal and loud again. Emotions cause my mood to bounce like a kite, a pinball in the deaf,...
I was going to start off this post by writing about how we live in a pervasive culture of you are better than you think you are and how detrimental that can be. But, why start a post about being better than I currently am by...
As a kid and young adult, I spent a lot of time outdoors. I hiked and backpacked, mountain biked and camped. This past decade, I can count—on one hand—how many times I’ve been outdoors. It has been one the great failings of this life that I’ve created...
If you’re a fan of Casey Neistat, you’ve probably heard of Tom Sachs (Neistat was an intern for the artist between 2001 and 2004). Sachs has a video on YouTube that employees of the studio must watch, titled
I’ve hesitated about keeping a steady online blog because it is at odds with the thinking that A) I’m not special, B) it’s all been done before, and C) I’m remarkably concerned about security and...
I carry a notebook with me everywhere, which even the phone isn’t privileged enough to get (I actually forgot it at home this past Thursday). Inside this notebook, I write my to-do lists for the day, upcoming events, thoughts on life, concerns with work,...
I carry a notebook with me everywhere. It is the one thing that I carry everywhere with me; even the phone doesn’t get that privilege. Inside this notebook, I write my to-do lists for the day, upcoming events, thoughts on life, concerns with work,...
Morning comes early for me. I’m usually in front of my desk by 4:30, protein smoothie and hot coffee in hand. A few years ago, when I was still married and the only alone time I could find was in the morning, I slowly moved from a night owl to an early...
When I was in my early twenties, I worked as a ranch hand at a dude ranch just to the northwest of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range. The hours were ridiculously long and the pay extraordinarily paltry but the experience and memories never-ending. It...
Human nature fascinates me. Our place in the universe fascinates me. On the whole, we’re a fairly smart species. We’ve evolved into complex, innovative creatures that have altered our physical world (whether this is good or bad is a matter of constant...