Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
09.05.26 [on the F train]
at the risk of getting so meta that i collapse into myself and turn into a zip drive like scarlett johansson's character at the end of lucy, i transferred three of my very old longhand posts from this notebook to my website last night and realized i have got to stop talking about prospective books to be written and/or published. i mean, i still intend for them to exist and am slithering forward, but i don't think blogging them into existence is a thing. so: for my next two tricks i need to come up with a good ice-cream-related pitch for the indie food zine i wrote for this spring, and a good secondhand-clothing-related pitch for a new-to-me magazine now published by the folks who put out the weed/mushrooms/cats/sound/sun-and-moon magazines i've written for in the past. the latter is much more intuitive, of course, i want to do something with mourning garments, i just have to figure out if it's something they've touched on before without buying every single back issue. the former... i would love to do something about southern california's gothic relationship with frozen yogurt and how i have come to find comfort in both it and carob chips as an adult in a way that represents both evolution beyond and a kind of permanent limbo in late '80s and early '90s diet-and-fitness culture–i also have Big Feelings about diet root beer, which is what the therapist i had as a tween offered me from a minifridge in her office before she'd ask me to describe ink blots to get to the bottom of why i was incapable of sleeping alone–but i don't know if touching on Body Stuff is something they're interested in doing. i mean, they probably are if i can thread the right needle on it, but i have this maybe-memory of reading something in one of their pitch calls about how they weren't interested in diet culture. am i just making it up? i very much enjoyed how my first piece for them ended up being about my family, at least in part, though it ended up being about a family member who's dead, and that's quite unlike talking about people who can still decide to correct or resent you. i checked in with my mom before writing about her father, though, and if i get the chance to go forward with this i'll consult my sister and dad before braiding them in. i'll be seeing both of them soon, on a trip back to northern california to help my mother move and for thanksgiving, respectively. the holiday is a surprise: [as i mentioned a few posts ago, whoops] i haven't spent it with my father since before trump was elected the first time, as my shitbird stepbrother ended up supporting him after rubio dropped out and went on to be a member of both administrations. i think said shitbird has finally given up his apartment here in new york; maybe it's simply that he'll be out of town? could it possibly be that my dad has officially stopped coinciding with him? we only talked about it in person once and i didn't (yet) have the nerve to ask what changed, but i'm curious enough that i'll push it, maybe after i've gotten his blessing to talk in print about how he feels about fat people (spoiler: it's weird).
07.18.26 [on the F train]
yesterday i asked my cashier at trader joe's if he was having a lot of danger-lettuce conversations in light of the cyclosporidia situation in the midwest. EVERY OTHER CUSTOMER, said he, but he himself wanted it; how else to lose those last 30 pounds? i told him i preferred victorian tapeworm pills but a staycation is a staycation and we wished each other well on our journeys. it's still canadian-wildfire hazy this morning, though not as peachy-apocalyptic as it's been this week, and i think the AQI is around 170, which my soccer teammates and i would have killed for in southern california in the late '80s and early '90s. i sincerely hope the anti-abortion protesters at the clinic don't bring actual infants as props this morning, as they are wont to do from time to time. i appreciate a good prop, i do, but you don't have to make it so obvious that you don't care about babies once they're born. on journeys, we'll be seeing the odyssey at our favorite indie theater tonight; i saw that it got a rave in the new york times and is nearly three hours long, so i'm both hyped and thinking strategically about my beverage consumption. if memory serves, les misérables remains the only movie i've ever had to dash out of for a bathroom break, and i was only seeing it as part of an oscars-related feat of endurance/completism; little was at stake here, what am i talking about, but even so.
we're leaving for something like two and a half weeks in california and alaska on wednesday and i've bought my first john mcphee for the occasion; i might also take the closet apart for the occasion, as i would like to bring a backpack for hikes and feel sure that i caught a recent glimpse of the one i used to take to volunteer at the wild bird fund. would my smelling like new york city pigeon poop and chicken dander increase the odds of being mauled by a bear? would wearing a WHAT WOULD HERZOG DO? tee? hard to say.
i just finished janet malcolm's the silent woman, which my past self seems to have added to my library queue so i'd have to think about biography theory (it's about the first half-dozen sylvia plath biographies and assorted plath-adjacent memoirs and, among other things, what it's like to engage with what she left behind when the people she left behind are alive, litigious, and epistolary freaks). the book i want to write about the overlooked aviator won't have the same concerns, exactly–i think most of her children have died and i am in no danger of being a post-structuralist–but i certainly picked things up and have been thinking about how mealy-mouthed i would rather not sound. in malcom's telling, (plath's sister-in-law) olwyn hughes was a hydroelectric dam, ted was a manic pixie dream dude, and everyone else was either attractive or portly. i guess when you don't want to make assumptions about your subjects what you see with your own eyes when you have, like, pizza and olives at their acquaintances' houses becomes extra important? i am also technically reading a book about how to write and sell nonfiction, but the 5%-10% i've gotten through so far leads me to belive that the nonfiction writing i'm already doing is serving me there. part of me is interested in a creative nonfiction MFA, it would be nice to have that community and those contacts, but maybe i should just pitch more and trick myself into picking things up on the job again? it turns out that a lot of being a writer is tricking yourself into doing things; maybe all jobs are like that. the book doesn't recommend an MFA, mind you, it's just a thing that sounds attractive.
we're leaving for something like two and a half weeks in california and alaska on wednesday and i've bought my first john mcphee for the occasion; i might also take the closet apart for the occasion, as i would like to bring a backpack for hikes and feel sure that i caught a recent glimpse of the one i used to take to volunteer at the wild bird fund. would my smelling like new york city pigeon poop and chicken dander increase the odds of being mauled by a bear? would wearing a WHAT WOULD HERZOG DO? tee? hard to say.
i just finished janet malcolm's the silent woman, which my past self seems to have added to my library queue so i'd have to think about biography theory (it's about the first half-dozen sylvia plath biographies and assorted plath-adjacent memoirs and, among other things, what it's like to engage with what she left behind when the people she left behind are alive, litigious, and epistolary freaks). the book i want to write about the overlooked aviator won't have the same concerns, exactly–i think most of her children have died and i am in no danger of being a post-structuralist–but i certainly picked things up and have been thinking about how mealy-mouthed i would rather not sound. in malcom's telling, (plath's sister-in-law) olwyn hughes was a hydroelectric dam, ted was a manic pixie dream dude, and everyone else was either attractive or portly. i guess when you don't want to make assumptions about your subjects what you see with your own eyes when you have, like, pizza and olives at their acquaintances' houses becomes extra important? i am also technically reading a book about how to write and sell nonfiction, but the 5%-10% i've gotten through so far leads me to belive that the nonfiction writing i'm already doing is serving me there. part of me is interested in a creative nonfiction MFA, it would be nice to have that community and those contacts, but maybe i should just pitch more and trick myself into picking things up on the job again? it turns out that a lot of being a writer is tricking yourself into doing things; maybe all jobs are like that. the book doesn't recommend an MFA, mind you, it's just a thing that sounds attractive.
07.11.26 [on the F train]
i'm getting close to accepting that i've established a personal time zone that doesn't match my spouse's or my friends' for any meaningful length of time; over the last month or so i've been up until dawn finishing work at least three times, and while it was a little upsetting at first it's easy enough to nap most of the discomfort away? i have been making weird typos every now and again in emails to my editors, which i don't love, but that might have more to do with transcribing much more than i usually do than with being sleep-deprived most of the time. i imagine i'll reset when we go to alaska with family for a few weeks; we'll be on a boat for half of the trip and i sleep well on the ocean, and i won't be able to eat dinner in the middle of the 'night,' so.
i deleted my garbage stepbrother's number from my phone the other day. it's been in a little digital cyst in my contacts for more than a decade; as i recall his mother gave him my number when his now-wife's dog had cancer and he wanted my advice about specialists and treatment. i haven't had any communication with him since shortly after the 2016 election when it became clear he was going to go work for the president-elect and i sent him a plea to reconsider; we were disinvited from family thanksgiving that year and ever since, and i saw him at his sister's wedding last year and that's it. his mother intuited, correctly, that i would tell him what a sack of shit he is if we coincided. (i did not do that at the wedding, as i am not a monster, but thanksgiving is manifest destiny's special day, not my stepsister's.) i've always figured i had the opportunity to send one salutation before he blocked me and i've written and rewritten it over the years as i watch cable news while running–so much anger when i run!–and i polished that prospect in my head like a worry stone. when he legitimately pulled the same shit as a member of this administration that his mother pulled on his behalf when he got kicked off a team in college and i very nearly sent him an actual message about what a waste of protein he is i finally decided, for no reason that would make a particularly compelling anecdote, that i would choose my own adventure at last and forever. then i sent his mother and my dad a petty text about the world cup anyway.
i've been thinking about ways my sister and i can hype ourselves into progress on our picture book and abruptly wrote to a photographer last night about taking author photos. she is pretty expensive, i gathered when i googled around a bit to try to get a sense of what others charge, but i have a hunch that she could crack my awkwardness in posed shots, and the photo of me that's currently on my professional website is very nearly old enough to join the army, so maybe investing in someone who would do a really fantastic job is the power move? there are plenty of newer photos of me online and i don't feel like i'm putting one over on anybody, but it's probaby time to have something out there that isn't a bathroom selfie. she wrote back like 10 minutes later and i like her, i'm hopeful about this. a little part of me wishes i could ask my ex-friend the publishing juggernaut about her experience prepping for this, she's literally the only person i've ever talked to about head shots, but if we saw things the same way, or in complementary ways, i guess, she wouldn't be my ex-friend, now would she. she donesn't seem to be doing very well, but it's hard to know, and i won't ask.
i deleted my garbage stepbrother's number from my phone the other day. it's been in a little digital cyst in my contacts for more than a decade; as i recall his mother gave him my number when his now-wife's dog had cancer and he wanted my advice about specialists and treatment. i haven't had any communication with him since shortly after the 2016 election when it became clear he was going to go work for the president-elect and i sent him a plea to reconsider; we were disinvited from family thanksgiving that year and ever since, and i saw him at his sister's wedding last year and that's it. his mother intuited, correctly, that i would tell him what a sack of shit he is if we coincided. (i did not do that at the wedding, as i am not a monster, but thanksgiving is manifest destiny's special day, not my stepsister's.) i've always figured i had the opportunity to send one salutation before he blocked me and i've written and rewritten it over the years as i watch cable news while running–so much anger when i run!–and i polished that prospect in my head like a worry stone. when he legitimately pulled the same shit as a member of this administration that his mother pulled on his behalf when he got kicked off a team in college and i very nearly sent him an actual message about what a waste of protein he is i finally decided, for no reason that would make a particularly compelling anecdote, that i would choose my own adventure at last and forever. then i sent his mother and my dad a petty text about the world cup anyway.
i've been thinking about ways my sister and i can hype ourselves into progress on our picture book and abruptly wrote to a photographer last night about taking author photos. she is pretty expensive, i gathered when i googled around a bit to try to get a sense of what others charge, but i have a hunch that she could crack my awkwardness in posed shots, and the photo of me that's currently on my professional website is very nearly old enough to join the army, so maybe investing in someone who would do a really fantastic job is the power move? there are plenty of newer photos of me online and i don't feel like i'm putting one over on anybody, but it's probaby time to have something out there that isn't a bathroom selfie. she wrote back like 10 minutes later and i like her, i'm hopeful about this. a little part of me wishes i could ask my ex-friend the publishing juggernaut about her experience prepping for this, she's literally the only person i've ever talked to about head shots, but if we saw things the same way, or in complementary ways, i guess, she wouldn't be my ex-friend, now would she. she donesn't seem to be doing very well, but it's hard to know, and i won't ask.
06.06.26 [on the F train]
it's been so long since my last clinic shift that it's now full-on daytime when i leave my apartment in the morning, a vile scenario that benefits no one. did i fall back asleep after the cats woke me up at 4:45? will i end up cross-eyed because i forgot my readers and am writing this while squinting? will trump's appearance at the next knicks game doom their championship run? no one knows, internets; no one knows.
i actually purchased a basketball-adjacent ZOHRAN shirt from the guys at union square yesterday in a fit of hometown groupthink. when i rolled out at ten thirty last night in a fruitless attempt to score eggs for my half-made lemon bars, like 40 of my neighbors were watching game two at the basketball courts across the street from the grocery store. i was charmed.
my one half marathon of the first half of the year is done and dusted, and i'm thinking i might play it cool until the fall; we're missing a bunch of the cutesy midsummer races when we head to alaska with my family in july and august, and i end up with weird welts when i get athletic outside this time of year anyway. the vendors at the street market we visited years ago in southern india had me pegged: i miss my icy russian homeland. bless, there seems to be a race on this morning; folks in bibs were waiting on the platform at herald square just now.
i filed a second draft of my latest piece on death-positive practices this past thursday and ended up getting lyrical in the final paragraph about how i'd like some of my remains to end up with the raccoons in central park. the first draft had ended with death metal and the idea that my greatest fear is that people will think i'm afraid of dying, which my editor didn't get at all. in these more fanciful, passion-project essays i have like a 50% success rate when i just end a piece abruptly and mysteriously, which is maybe a better reception that i deserve. i was shocked when the team wrote to say they liked my pitch; while i like the subject and think it's a good, weird take on their issue's theme, i had been much more confident about the one i sent them a year or two ago, and also this one had a nine inch nails dad joke at the end, and also also i didn't hear back for a long time. but here we are! i fired up my nearly-cancelled zoom subscription to conduct a couple of interviews, i have now visited a cemetery in a professional capacity, and i'll have one more client to list when the horrible contractor-payment company that processes my invoices for my biggest client demands more proof that i have a nominally diverse income stream. much has been written by folks who know a whole lot more about capitalism than i do about how regulations intended to protect freelancers invariably end up punishing them, so let's simply say that i've started making regular donations to the DSA, which has totally torched my inbox in re: solicitations from everyone imaginable. speaking of, i ran into brad lander at a march in times square a few months ago and told him i was looking forward to voting for him, an interaction that felt like the first step on the path to healing after i spaced out and high fived chuck schumer at a half marathon before the last election. lander was also at this year's half marathon and a second hello would really have been progress, but i managed consistently negative splits and a pace that was more than 30 seconds under what i ran on the same course last year, so i'll settle for those gains, i'm not greedy (about this).
i actually purchased a basketball-adjacent ZOHRAN shirt from the guys at union square yesterday in a fit of hometown groupthink. when i rolled out at ten thirty last night in a fruitless attempt to score eggs for my half-made lemon bars, like 40 of my neighbors were watching game two at the basketball courts across the street from the grocery store. i was charmed.
my one half marathon of the first half of the year is done and dusted, and i'm thinking i might play it cool until the fall; we're missing a bunch of the cutesy midsummer races when we head to alaska with my family in july and august, and i end up with weird welts when i get athletic outside this time of year anyway. the vendors at the street market we visited years ago in southern india had me pegged: i miss my icy russian homeland. bless, there seems to be a race on this morning; folks in bibs were waiting on the platform at herald square just now.
i filed a second draft of my latest piece on death-positive practices this past thursday and ended up getting lyrical in the final paragraph about how i'd like some of my remains to end up with the raccoons in central park. the first draft had ended with death metal and the idea that my greatest fear is that people will think i'm afraid of dying, which my editor didn't get at all. in these more fanciful, passion-project essays i have like a 50% success rate when i just end a piece abruptly and mysteriously, which is maybe a better reception that i deserve. i was shocked when the team wrote to say they liked my pitch; while i like the subject and think it's a good, weird take on their issue's theme, i had been much more confident about the one i sent them a year or two ago, and also this one had a nine inch nails dad joke at the end, and also also i didn't hear back for a long time. but here we are! i fired up my nearly-cancelled zoom subscription to conduct a couple of interviews, i have now visited a cemetery in a professional capacity, and i'll have one more client to list when the horrible contractor-payment company that processes my invoices for my biggest client demands more proof that i have a nominally diverse income stream. much has been written by folks who know a whole lot more about capitalism than i do about how regulations intended to protect freelancers invariably end up punishing them, so let's simply say that i've started making regular donations to the DSA, which has totally torched my inbox in re: solicitations from everyone imaginable. speaking of, i ran into brad lander at a march in times square a few months ago and told him i was looking forward to voting for him, an interaction that felt like the first step on the path to healing after i spaced out and high fived chuck schumer at a half marathon before the last election. lander was also at this year's half marathon and a second hello would really have been progress, but i managed consistently negative splits and a pace that was more than 30 seconds under what i ran on the same course last year, so i'll settle for those gains, i'm not greedy (about this).
04.18.26 [on the F train]
i have a final stanza! a final stanza has been written by me! (passive voice feels important there, since i've been hanging around like a chump waiting for something to occur to me and only managed to toothpaste something out in utter desperation at a library shift this week because i had absolutely nothing else to do instead.) i think it's pretty good; maybe a little treacly, but this is a book for young children and the editor asked for something explicit, and joe says it feels like an ending, and so. i think my sister has been waiting for me to get this out to make her own final push with our illustrations, and i'm hoping i can focus this lovely having-written energy on infusing her with confidence even though we could easily go back and forth even more with the editor, in theory, it feels like something is coming to a head here. surely she too wants to see if something tangible can come out of all of this time and talk–even at the glacial pace that that these things happen, as i've come to understand, who wants to take zoom meetings for a year with someone who won't make them any money?
as if something had actually shaken loose, i then immediately heard back with a yes from a new-to-me print magazine i'd been hoping but not expecting to write for this spring. i haven't pitched a passion project in a really long time, one half-baked idea to a local newspaper notwithstanding, and knowing i'll be part of this weird ambitious collective, a bit like the one for which i've been writing cat and mushroom and bird stories for the last couple of years, feels wonderful. now i have to line up interviews with some old friends and unfamiliar cemeteries before pauline and i head down to puerto rico next month. did i mention this? we have lodging, a car, and a ferry to vieques and back booked, but otherwise–oh, and an evening on a bioluminescent bay, which is my big activity priority for the whole trip, other than figuring out how pauline and i can save the world–we're just going to walk the earth and deepen our respective relationships with bad bunny? consume at least one beverage apiece (one has to pay to bring things on the ferry, and i got round-trip fares for our totes but one-way tickets for drinks)? i was hoping for some inside dope from my therapist, who revealed in our second-to-last call that she lived there for two years, but in our call this week she mostly went on about how misogynistic puerto rican men are. it sounds like she got a pretty extreme experience of that, as she lived there with her husband who was researching schistosomiasis on the naval base during the vietnam war and, in addition to teaching history classes, she spent a lot of time horseback riding in the mountains by herself, but i concede that there's a part of me that's been expecting some kind of weirdness re: two women traveling together. i could draw a little pocket knife in one of my owl tattoo's talons? i wondered if we should look into something like a casual guide for exploring the rain forest, as i have a dreadful sense of direction and utilities on the island are notoriously inconsistent, so leaning on my phone will likely not be a thing, but pauline feels pretty good about catching as catch can, it seems, and if our three-decade friendship culminated in being mugged and eaten by a golden mongoose, that feels pretty good to me.
as if something had actually shaken loose, i then immediately heard back with a yes from a new-to-me print magazine i'd been hoping but not expecting to write for this spring. i haven't pitched a passion project in a really long time, one half-baked idea to a local newspaper notwithstanding, and knowing i'll be part of this weird ambitious collective, a bit like the one for which i've been writing cat and mushroom and bird stories for the last couple of years, feels wonderful. now i have to line up interviews with some old friends and unfamiliar cemeteries before pauline and i head down to puerto rico next month. did i mention this? we have lodging, a car, and a ferry to vieques and back booked, but otherwise–oh, and an evening on a bioluminescent bay, which is my big activity priority for the whole trip, other than figuring out how pauline and i can save the world–we're just going to walk the earth and deepen our respective relationships with bad bunny? consume at least one beverage apiece (one has to pay to bring things on the ferry, and i got round-trip fares for our totes but one-way tickets for drinks)? i was hoping for some inside dope from my therapist, who revealed in our second-to-last call that she lived there for two years, but in our call this week she mostly went on about how misogynistic puerto rican men are. it sounds like she got a pretty extreme experience of that, as she lived there with her husband who was researching schistosomiasis on the naval base during the vietnam war and, in addition to teaching history classes, she spent a lot of time horseback riding in the mountains by herself, but i concede that there's a part of me that's been expecting some kind of weirdness re: two women traveling together. i could draw a little pocket knife in one of my owl tattoo's talons? i wondered if we should look into something like a casual guide for exploring the rain forest, as i have a dreadful sense of direction and utilities on the island are notoriously inconsistent, so leaning on my phone will likely not be a thing, but pauline feels pretty good about catching as catch can, it seems, and if our three-decade friendship culminated in being mugged and eaten by a golden mongoose, that feels pretty good to me.
03.21.26 [on a train i forgot to ID]
I HAVE FOUND IT! the ratty old notebook in which i wrote a couple of my posts from last year IS REGAINED and you will know of, probably, some more excuses for why i haven't pitched my rambling creative nonfiction book yet! very exciting stuff.
yesterday was the first day of spring, and i have a gentle hope that the absolute mountains of shit that have accumulated outside the clinic have melted back into the universe. this week i set off for the farmers' market in head-to-toe malachite to signal that i was in a good mood and was open to longer days, the circle of life, etc, and was asked if i'm irish. it's just the best color, clipboard guy.
the self-imposed deadline of the end of march draws nigh for me and my sister and our goosebook, and i still haven't figured out what the devastating final section will sound like. we have the visual and i know what i want to say, but the part where the actual poetry comes up and out of me in the middle of the night is yet to come. i don't mean to abdicate responsibility for it, i don't think the muse is rooting around in the bottom of her tote bag for me, but there is an extent to which trying to force it just...i mean, you see what i sound like when i'm forcing myself to put pen to paper.
i have a truly massive stack of aviation-related books next to my bed. their titles are all combinations of like a dozen words, the muse is not speaking through whoever is finishing these things up, but i'd like to think i can do better with my own version (even though it's entirely possible it won't be my call). joe and i went to a new friend's birthday on the upper west side a few weekends ago and i met a woman who publishes nonfiction with a big old entity down in DC after years of being in magazines up here (we had several colleagues in common from my days at the ladymag), and in attaching myself to a wall and nattering at her for what felt like an hour about the size of early planes' fuel tanks (she just published a book about another luminary from the same time period) i think i might have accidentally networked? she offered at the beginning of our interlude to hook me up with her entity's magazine, and it's a great one, i'd love to write for them, and maybe i should be trying to do it now. i've mostly been treading water with day-job clients as we wrap the big goosebook pitch, though i did realize yesterday that i very much want to write for an indie mag that almost bit on a pitch of mine last year(?) and it's about time to do another piece about death...that they might want? some interesting legislation has come through recently and local corpses are doing spicy new things, surely that's something i need to cold-call people about.
i have finally been allowed to go back to the blood bank after three months in the wilderness, and they have made up for lost time. at my appointment this past tuesday the gal who stuck me hit the one part of my vein that isn't prolific and it was clear that hijinks would ensue; a more senior tech was hyping her up as she worked, she was new and looked nervous, and when the apheresis machine started whistling and singing about how my pressure was too low she panicked and mashed its buttons until it was barely running at all. the run time recalculated and i was going to be there for...145 minutes. i tried asking, gently, if the pressure might be revisited, but i think the system locks after it's been adjusted a few times, and it's not like i didn't have a good book with me. i was sitting in front of the center's biggest TV and caught two segments of syfy's st. patrick's day leprechaun marathon (bewilderingly, not called LEPRETHON), including leprechaun in space, my franchise favorite. trying to explain '90s horror boobs and the cronenberg and dune jokes to the bewildered gen z techs wasn't especially successful, but i was where i was supposed to be, probably.
pauline and i are meeting up in puerto rico at the beginning of may; i've booked us a rooftop in old san juan and a secret jungle fort near el yunque, as well as an evening of kayaking around in bioluminescent plankton. i have leaned into assembling the wardrobe of a monied septuagenarian widow for this trip and am soliciting tips from both a mexico-based guide i befriended in yucatan a few years ago and, apparently, my therapist, who lived there for a while. i don't trust most people's travel observations, but they're both real ones and i feel the island has plans for us. i am your tool, puerto rico! if your vengeance could involve a golden mongoose that would be especially grand.
yesterday was the first day of spring, and i have a gentle hope that the absolute mountains of shit that have accumulated outside the clinic have melted back into the universe. this week i set off for the farmers' market in head-to-toe malachite to signal that i was in a good mood and was open to longer days, the circle of life, etc, and was asked if i'm irish. it's just the best color, clipboard guy.
the self-imposed deadline of the end of march draws nigh for me and my sister and our goosebook, and i still haven't figured out what the devastating final section will sound like. we have the visual and i know what i want to say, but the part where the actual poetry comes up and out of me in the middle of the night is yet to come. i don't mean to abdicate responsibility for it, i don't think the muse is rooting around in the bottom of her tote bag for me, but there is an extent to which trying to force it just...i mean, you see what i sound like when i'm forcing myself to put pen to paper.
i have a truly massive stack of aviation-related books next to my bed. their titles are all combinations of like a dozen words, the muse is not speaking through whoever is finishing these things up, but i'd like to think i can do better with my own version (even though it's entirely possible it won't be my call). joe and i went to a new friend's birthday on the upper west side a few weekends ago and i met a woman who publishes nonfiction with a big old entity down in DC after years of being in magazines up here (we had several colleagues in common from my days at the ladymag), and in attaching myself to a wall and nattering at her for what felt like an hour about the size of early planes' fuel tanks (she just published a book about another luminary from the same time period) i think i might have accidentally networked? she offered at the beginning of our interlude to hook me up with her entity's magazine, and it's a great one, i'd love to write for them, and maybe i should be trying to do it now. i've mostly been treading water with day-job clients as we wrap the big goosebook pitch, though i did realize yesterday that i very much want to write for an indie mag that almost bit on a pitch of mine last year(?) and it's about time to do another piece about death...that they might want? some interesting legislation has come through recently and local corpses are doing spicy new things, surely that's something i need to cold-call people about.
i have finally been allowed to go back to the blood bank after three months in the wilderness, and they have made up for lost time. at my appointment this past tuesday the gal who stuck me hit the one part of my vein that isn't prolific and it was clear that hijinks would ensue; a more senior tech was hyping her up as she worked, she was new and looked nervous, and when the apheresis machine started whistling and singing about how my pressure was too low she panicked and mashed its buttons until it was barely running at all. the run time recalculated and i was going to be there for...145 minutes. i tried asking, gently, if the pressure might be revisited, but i think the system locks after it's been adjusted a few times, and it's not like i didn't have a good book with me. i was sitting in front of the center's biggest TV and caught two segments of syfy's st. patrick's day leprechaun marathon (bewilderingly, not called LEPRETHON), including leprechaun in space, my franchise favorite. trying to explain '90s horror boobs and the cronenberg and dune jokes to the bewildered gen z techs wasn't especially successful, but i was where i was supposed to be, probably.
pauline and i are meeting up in puerto rico at the beginning of may; i've booked us a rooftop in old san juan and a secret jungle fort near el yunque, as well as an evening of kayaking around in bioluminescent plankton. i have leaned into assembling the wardrobe of a monied septuagenarian widow for this trip and am soliciting tips from both a mexico-based guide i befriended in yucatan a few years ago and, apparently, my therapist, who lived there for a while. i don't trust most people's travel observations, but they're both real ones and i feel the island has plans for us. i am your tool, puerto rico! if your vengeance could involve a golden mongoose that would be especially grand.
09.20.25 [on the J train; out-of-order, found-my-journal update]
i strongly considered using this hour on the dawn train to scare up a first draft of the essay about shoes i told a dear colleague i'd write before labor day, but this whole-blogging-when-i'm-taking-the-train-out-to- clinic-escorting is all i got for the 'champ right now, so i can't hamstring it like that. i was talking to a friend yesterday about wanting to persist and make arm-waves at mental health as we ride this rockslide into authoritarianism, and informal personal writing could be a way to do that, though my tendency of late is to write strident essays about nature that end on elegiac/ambiguous notes. i will tell you how that feels when i get a hard copy of the next one, written last year when this administration was just a twinkle in russell vought's eye, in a few weeks. i think the main way to move forward or at least tread harder is going to be plugging away at the book's foundation. i still haven't found an agent–i haven't queried anyone other than the woman i met at one of these escorting shifts a couple of years ago–and i need to revisit the notes i took on my last feedback call with the prospective editor before they squirt out of my head. a translator friend has been lovely about suggesting jo and i apply to residencies as an author-illustrator team, not unlike how she's done some with poet-partners, and i think something like that would be magnificent momentum. it helped her to think of herself as an artist, she said, she is an artist, she is an artist, and i could use some of that. on persisting, this is also part of it, as are the relatively frequent blood donations i've been making. they're still attractive for all the reasons they always were–an excuse to sit still for a few hours, snacks, community service with minimal conversation–but it also just feels nice to give something intimate away, and to have your humors in someone else's custody for a little while. (i'm still doing platelet donations, since my blood isn't fancy otherwise, so an apheresis machine separates them out and then deposits everything else back in my arm commingled with a bit of anticoagulant, except last time when they took plasma also and i didn't feel the typical lip-buzziness upon return, so maybe the cocktail was a little different?)
i'm headed to mississippi next week for my first press trip in a year and my first visit to the state in a decade. i requested an extra day there and then spaced out and accepted the extra programming they offered me for that day, so i will be lurching groggily between local cafes instead of exploring graveyards, at least unless i pull up my big-girl pants and tell the organizers i've changed my mind. (but what if they booked their flights the way they did because they're showing me around that day? what if i hurt someone's feelings?!) the timing in general is not great, as i'll be home for like a day and then am getting on a boat to canada, but i had been thinking about how i'd like to get back to mississippi, as it happens, and though i have stepped back from most travel writing, i have a feeling i'll want to write out there. emma straub anounced her new novel yesterday and talked about how she saw it coming in the form of a particular trip–that was her next novel, waiting for her. maybe my next elegiac essay about birds is in the south; maybe i can fit in a trip to some extra graveyards after the cafes. i don't know that i'm ready for the next thing to happen to all of us, but i'm ready to talk about it.
i'm headed to mississippi next week for my first press trip in a year and my first visit to the state in a decade. i requested an extra day there and then spaced out and accepted the extra programming they offered me for that day, so i will be lurching groggily between local cafes instead of exploring graveyards, at least unless i pull up my big-girl pants and tell the organizers i've changed my mind. (but what if they booked their flights the way they did because they're showing me around that day? what if i hurt someone's feelings?!) the timing in general is not great, as i'll be home for like a day and then am getting on a boat to canada, but i had been thinking about how i'd like to get back to mississippi, as it happens, and though i have stepped back from most travel writing, i have a feeling i'll want to write out there. emma straub anounced her new novel yesterday and talked about how she saw it coming in the form of a particular trip–that was her next novel, waiting for her. maybe my next elegiac essay about birds is in the south; maybe i can fit in a trip to some extra graveyards after the cafes. i don't know that i'm ready for the next thing to happen to all of us, but i'm ready to talk about it.
09.13.25 [on the J train; out-of-order, found-my-journal update]
i have gotten out from under the absolutely unstoppable avalanche of library holds that all turned up at the same time with an unexpected assist from nordstrom rack; when i was in california with my mom earlier this month i tried on some readers in the sunglasses display and lo, the fine print on the other glasses' tags leapt into almost aggressively sharp focus. turns out my book light wasn't on the fritz and i wasn't dying, or dying significantly faster than most of us are, anyway; i just can't see for shit now. i've kind of been waiting to wear glasses all my life, and i certainly spent enough time wearing clear ones recreationally to deserve this; it's fine. in the zombie apocalypse i would run out of blood pressure pills and go down even if presbyopia didn't lead me to miss a telltale lurch behind a burned-out car, so it's not like my long-term outcomes are super different now anyway. it is a little creepy that text without glasses now looks like pure fuzz–i was compensating enough to be none the wiser until that fateful day at The Rack–but we fall apart very slowly and then all at once, i guess.
it's time to revisit ye children's book draft and come up with a deal-sealing version that will win hearts and minds in the publishing industry and put jo and me on the path to creative nirvana. i have continued to keep my work calendar mostly free of more-creative projects to leave mental room for this, though i'm tired and scattered enough that i don't have much to fill that room with just yet. it's a little scary that i saw my family in california mere hours after my most recent call with maybe-editor (who has also seen the pee-wee documentary and knew what i was talking about when i brought it up!) and had difficulty describing her feedback in detail–but i took notes, so maybe it doesn't matter?
i had my yearly physical last month and received a handy-dandy little chart of how my humors have performed over the last decade or so. i can't say i was surprised, but it was still sobering (no pun intended) to see the dips and spikes in 2021, my first checkup after lockdown, like a tree's ring after drought or wildfire. i now enjoy something like consistent health, the fact that i'm becoming a mole person notwithstanding. i have three more half marathons and a five-miler before the end of the year; i have a novel i don't remember requesting waiting for me at seward park. it's the most wonderful time of the year.
it's time to revisit ye children's book draft and come up with a deal-sealing version that will win hearts and minds in the publishing industry and put jo and me on the path to creative nirvana. i have continued to keep my work calendar mostly free of more-creative projects to leave mental room for this, though i'm tired and scattered enough that i don't have much to fill that room with just yet. it's a little scary that i saw my family in california mere hours after my most recent call with maybe-editor (who has also seen the pee-wee documentary and knew what i was talking about when i brought it up!) and had difficulty describing her feedback in detail–but i took notes, so maybe it doesn't matter?
i had my yearly physical last month and received a handy-dandy little chart of how my humors have performed over the last decade or so. i can't say i was surprised, but it was still sobering (no pun intended) to see the dips and spikes in 2021, my first checkup after lockdown, like a tree's ring after drought or wildfire. i now enjoy something like consistent health, the fact that i'm becoming a mole person notwithstanding. i have three more half marathons and a five-miler before the end of the year; i have a novel i don't remember requesting waiting for me at seward park. it's the most wonderful time of the year.
08.16.25 [on the J train; out-of-order, found-my-journal update]
what i'd hoped would be a neurotic account of yesterday's long-awaited meeting wtih my (and my sister's?!) maybe-editor must instead simply be a neurotic account of more waiting; she had a plausible kid-emergency yesterday morning (and probably the night before) that led her to ask for a bump to this coming friday instead. and that should be great, my sister and i can be more prepared! hell, we're so prepared it might even make strategic sense for me to mention our non-negotiable partnership and send over proof that it's undeniable (i.e. some character sketches to show range and a well-considered mockup of the page-by-page illustrations with my text) before we talk! that's my new hunch, but i'm still so nervous about spooking this editor before she's all in on the project. there's so much i don't know–like, i thought it was a selling point that i wrote the thing in verse (what she'd said in her original note to me was that "it doesn't even have to rhyme," which, since the catchphrase that inspired her reaching out does indeed rhyme, meant that i assumed it was a plus). now as i'm looking up potential agents a bunch of them note up front that they don't want rhyming picture books, and that led me to a bunch of articles about how resistant gatekeepers like agents and editors are to verse. this seems to be because most of it is shitty, but i have a real knack for assuming my own stuff is shitty until i have incontrovertible proof otherwise. oh god, what if it is shitty! but maybe-editor seemed to really like the first draft, and the second is much stronger, and i know i need to push. my sister had a crisis of confidence a week ago when she realized this maybe-editor is with a big-deal publisher and then she checked out a bunch of illustrators' portfolios as linked from their book agents' pages–a classic way to psych yourself out, comparing your nascent stuff to stuff that beat the odds and worked after lots of folks polished it–and i tried to hype her back up with perspective, which she turned around and did for me when i freaked the fuck out yesterday. another reason it's wonderful to work with someone i trust completely!
bearing in mind that this will make me sound like a maniac, i was thinking about our project as i watched pee-wee as himself this week. paul reubens came around to realizing performance art for children was exactly what he was meant to be doing, presenting them with infinite possibilities and influencing how they would grow up and express themselves was everything, and he was unapologetically odd and uncompromising as he made that happen. and he was (apparently incredibly difficult to work with and) right! he had grace fucking jones in issey miyake on his christmas special! (not totally synonymous with anarchic childhood but god i love her.) and the verse is good, it's serious and affectionate and the kind of thing that's a pleasure to read and hear, and this illustrated place that so few people (and pretty much no kids) get to see is so singular in the world we're trying so hard to join...i really hope it's as special as i think it is, on my best days. i really thought my piece about black magic performed with trader joe's products was undeniable as well, though, and it fell completely flat. not the same thing, i know, but i sure do love to revisit my failures. poking old scabs! all the old scabs!
bearing in mind that this will make me sound like a maniac, i was thinking about our project as i watched pee-wee as himself this week. paul reubens came around to realizing performance art for children was exactly what he was meant to be doing, presenting them with infinite possibilities and influencing how they would grow up and express themselves was everything, and he was unapologetically odd and uncompromising as he made that happen. and he was (apparently incredibly difficult to work with and) right! he had grace fucking jones in issey miyake on his christmas special! (not totally synonymous with anarchic childhood but god i love her.) and the verse is good, it's serious and affectionate and the kind of thing that's a pleasure to read and hear, and this illustrated place that so few people (and pretty much no kids) get to see is so singular in the world we're trying so hard to join...i really hope it's as special as i think it is, on my best days. i really thought my piece about black magic performed with trader joe's products was undeniable as well, though, and it fell completely flat. not the same thing, i know, but i sure do love to revisit my failures. poking old scabs! all the old scabs!
01.31.26 [on the J train]
if it would bother you to know about the most notable dream-logic elements of the secret agent, the very good brazilian 2026 oscar contender about dictatorship, stop reading now; if that doesn't feel deal-breaky and/or your memory is bald-tired like mine, know that i woke up thinking about the two-faced cat (conjoined cats?) that move/s through its recife apartment building/hideout. for the most part the filmmakers went with practical effects – there's another sequence where a severed leg reanimates, saint's-limb-performing-a-miracle-style, and kicks a bunch of people cruising for sex in a public park, and that's all stop-motion animation – but the cat/s is/are CGI, i think? there's a blur to its/their face that i associate with the progressive lenses i got a couple months ago and still haven't worn enough to see through without a bit of vertigo. as i was trying and failing to get a good night's sleep before this morning's train ride to clinic escorting, i mused that i'm pretty okay with a bit of dream logic in most movies now; half the time the news reads like something my brain riffed as i nodded off anyway.
i'm starting to wonder if i need to pick a role and stick to it when it comes to...the news? i rolled out for protest monitoring three times this month and feel like i'm finally settling into meaningful contributions; i know what to film and how to make my observations useful, i can be conspicuous in a way that feels like it deters institutional overreach, and i can recognize and work with cops' and protesters' behavior patterns. but i'm also scheduled to train up with a nascent neighborhood rapid-response patrol today, to be more like the observers deterring federal agents in minnesota, and i don't know that i should do both. does it matter that local law enforcement and i recognize each other now, as the anti-abortion haranguers i might or might not see on the sidewalk in 15 minutes and i do? it's way too late for me to wear a mask, and i'm sure i'm on plenty of lists. but i am relatively safe and it's my responsibility to spend down as much of that privilege as i can, right? in any case, more training is always a good idea; i would be the hypercompetent elinor smith of this moment, not the amelia earhart whose bravery and luck become a fatal talisman. that's what elinor seemed to conclude about amelia, anyway. she didn't go so far as to call her intentionally underprepared, but she did seem to think she was performing courage for herself. no, i still don't know if i'm going to write a book about that.
i'm starting to wonder if i need to pick a role and stick to it when it comes to...the news? i rolled out for protest monitoring three times this month and feel like i'm finally settling into meaningful contributions; i know what to film and how to make my observations useful, i can be conspicuous in a way that feels like it deters institutional overreach, and i can recognize and work with cops' and protesters' behavior patterns. but i'm also scheduled to train up with a nascent neighborhood rapid-response patrol today, to be more like the observers deterring federal agents in minnesota, and i don't know that i should do both. does it matter that local law enforcement and i recognize each other now, as the anti-abortion haranguers i might or might not see on the sidewalk in 15 minutes and i do? it's way too late for me to wear a mask, and i'm sure i'm on plenty of lists. but i am relatively safe and it's my responsibility to spend down as much of that privilege as i can, right? in any case, more training is always a good idea; i would be the hypercompetent elinor smith of this moment, not the amelia earhart whose bravery and luck become a fatal talisman. that's what elinor seemed to conclude about amelia, anyway. she didn't go so far as to call her intentionally underprepared, but she did seem to think she was performing courage for herself. no, i still don't know if i'm going to write a book about that.
12.27.25 [on the J train]
our first proper snow of the year, and it's still coming down; the only folks on the sidewalk at a quarter to seven were me and a guy in one of the amazon tuk-tuks. i left the christmas tree lights on so joe will wake up to the cats basking under it like sea lions at the wharf. i have at long last transitioned to reading the new jessica mitford biography, and while it's not especially difficult to tell an interesting story about mitfords it's a relief to be out of the land of shaggy memoir. memoir is hard, turns out! (every version of the nonfiction book i plan and re-plan in my head has a little less of me on the page; it's not that i don't think there are worthwhile braided narratives out there, it's that voice tells a better story than anecdotes do, i think. is this a story, or even a voice? i think it's a ritual.) chances are good, though i shouldn't talk about it, that the anti-abortiion protesters won't be at the reproductive health clinic this morning and we can all go home after chatting about sci fi and knitting in the basement for a while. i have missed that over the past few months; trying to fall asleep in time to get proper rest before one of these shifts is stressful, but it does me good to share space with these people. my social life as a volunteer has contracted since i stopped working at the bird hospital and the bookstore; i spend plenty of time at the library uptown and the atmosphere is wonderful, but i'm mostly in charge of a quiet study room, so i'm not talking to anyone. i get little concentrated bursts of company when i head out to monitor police at protests, but the experience of interacting with that crowd is, weirdly, overwhelmingly negative; as a rule, they're absolutely terrible at following directions or staying on topic (when we're chatting on signal about upcoming trainings or actions, not actually showing up for them). ditto the folks in charge of election protection that i met before monitoring a poll site this november. discouraging if not a little terrifying! but if widespread meaningful change is going to happen, maybe the incompetent need to be part of it as well? i'll be going for an early-to-me walk with my dad tomorrow, our equivalent of a holiday get-together since he's usually spoken for on christmas itself with my stepfamily. i suspect that this year they went down to virginia, where my garbage stepbrother has relocated to better terrify athletes and international fans as a member of the administration. i was too surprised this summer when his mother bragged about the work he was doing to make any kind of meaningful response, and maybe that's for the best, much as i've never decided which one poisonous text i'll send him before he blocks my number and/or changes his own. you'd think that since i now run so often and for so long i'd eventually get to the end of my grievances, but there are so many things to stew about, internets!
i think i've actually found a podcast i can put on instead of cable news as i finish my quilt after joe's gone to bed. i'm a little reluctant to look into how many episodes there are total because it's going to be like five, but what a quintet! it's a former coast guard helicopter pilot speaking with other pilots and authors about women in aviation. everyone is almost painfully competent, and there are no commercials. it's possible that in making my way through these stories i'll find that i don't need to tell one myself after all, but that wouldn't actually be a bad thing, if your point in making things part of the world is that they aren't yet. what isn't yet?
i think i've actually found a podcast i can put on instead of cable news as i finish my quilt after joe's gone to bed. i'm a little reluctant to look into how many episodes there are total because it's going to be like five, but what a quintet! it's a former coast guard helicopter pilot speaking with other pilots and authors about women in aviation. everyone is almost painfully competent, and there are no commercials. it's possible that in making my way through these stories i'll find that i don't need to tell one myself after all, but that wouldn't actually be a bad thing, if your point in making things part of the world is that they aren't yet. what isn't yet?
12.22.25
ah, nothing beats the feeling of sitting down to finally type out the four last posts you first wrote longhand on various early-morning trains and discovering your notebook has been decluttered into functional nonexistence. (it's very likely still in the apartment somewhere, but i'd have to tear at least one and realistically like two and a half closets to know for sure.) and i was feeling so smug about technically blogging once a month all year! i will dig for the notebook, obviously posterity can't be expected to face the future without access to whatever i rambled en route to my volunteer gig, but i probably need to accept that i might not find it for a while. it's okay; i'm okay.
i ran my five half marathons (halves marathon) for the year, and i think i clocked a personal record on the last one; satisfying, that, and i've already booked my first for the new year, which not so coincidentally is the same course. my last 2025 writing deadline was friday, so i'll spend the next week digging around for that fucking notebook, getting ahead for the few pieces i have on the books for next year, and jolting out of bed in the middle of the night to write a heart-wringer of a final stanza for ye children's book. (we're still going back and forth with the prospective editor; she's accepted that jo and i are a package deal and now needs us to submit a few full illustrations and a whomper of a draft that tears her feelings limb from limb.) i've finally started hand-quilting the quilt i started piecing circa lockdown in 2020, and it's not at all what i imagined and very cool, if painful; i need to develop a system that doesn't involving stabbing my leg with each stitch to be sure i've gotten through the top, batting and backing. i'm nearly 200 pages into margaret atwood's memoir and as of today have the prospect of a new jessica mitford biography that just erupted from my holds list at the library to carry me through the remaining, oh god, 300 pages or so; there's a lot of midcentury canada out there. my reading for the second half of the year has been much more enthusiastic, as i realized at a fateful visit to nordstrom rack with my mom that i desperately need readers; in addition to the pair i bought on the spot, i now have a big-ass pair of progressive aviators that i know i need to start wearing but currently fear and try to ignore. the cats are parked under the christmas tree like fruitcakes. i'm forty-seven. there's a breeze.
i ran my five half marathons (halves marathon) for the year, and i think i clocked a personal record on the last one; satisfying, that, and i've already booked my first for the new year, which not so coincidentally is the same course. my last 2025 writing deadline was friday, so i'll spend the next week digging around for that fucking notebook, getting ahead for the few pieces i have on the books for next year, and jolting out of bed in the middle of the night to write a heart-wringer of a final stanza for ye children's book. (we're still going back and forth with the prospective editor; she's accepted that jo and i are a package deal and now needs us to submit a few full illustrations and a whomper of a draft that tears her feelings limb from limb.) i've finally started hand-quilting the quilt i started piecing circa lockdown in 2020, and it's not at all what i imagined and very cool, if painful; i need to develop a system that doesn't involving stabbing my leg with each stitch to be sure i've gotten through the top, batting and backing. i'm nearly 200 pages into margaret atwood's memoir and as of today have the prospect of a new jessica mitford biography that just erupted from my holds list at the library to carry me through the remaining, oh god, 300 pages or so; there's a lot of midcentury canada out there. my reading for the second half of the year has been much more enthusiastic, as i realized at a fateful visit to nordstrom rack with my mom that i desperately need readers; in addition to the pair i bought on the spot, i now have a big-ass pair of progressive aviators that i know i need to start wearing but currently fear and try to ignore. the cats are parked under the christmas tree like fruitcakes. i'm forty-seven. there's a breeze.
07.26.25 [on the F train]
yesterday i turned in an author's note and a new draft of the book i'm writing, internets! i am writing a book and i'm pretty proud of it so far! this progress doesn't mean much in practice to people who aren't me, since my potential editor has yet to present it to her acquisitions team and who knows what they'll think, but the vibe i get from her (and sometimes my vibe-based predictions bear out, it's technically possible) is a good one, and the last time we had a zoom call she said she thought we might be ready to present after this draft, maybe. i addressed her notes diligently, and gave her a version that's nearly twice as long as the previous one and full of the stage directions and hijinks she requested; assuming this is all material we can shape and shape as we go and she's not likely to announce that she hates my face and wants nothing more to do with me, it seems like good things are happening? the x factor now is how she will respond to the revelation (and it will be a revelation, we haven't talked much on this to date) that i must work with my sister as my illustrator-partner. this has become more and more apparent to me as i write and talk with people about the project, of course it has; at first i fixated on what a fellow clinic escort who happens to be a children's book agent(!) that i met like two years ago told me about how writers and illustrators almost never come as a package deal, it's standard practice unless you're some crazy-famous pair for a publisher to accept your manuscript and then look to their own contact list for the second half of the book. but we are a writer-illustrator rather than a pair of nobodies, you see; the idea of handing off my baby and waiting to see if it finds a proper life partner has never sat right with me, this story has a million little fiddly parts that an artist needs to have in mind to get it right. filing text and then just trusting that to fate is nonsensical. jo created our wedding art, she created the portrait of chuck that's on my back forever, and i can't imagine anyone but her telling this story with me; i also can't imagine cannonballing into a subcareer as a children's author without her as my partner. our artist mother was our first teacher (not a metaphor, she came in to teach at our elementary schools); we've been absorbing the world in tandem all our lives, and we share an imagery set that we're already referencing explicitly as we plan out how to make the book-folks see what's plain to us. we want to make a new, magical thing together, and i'm so nervous that being honest about what i want will cost me what feels in my shakiest moments like conditional approval from the powers that be, but what if everyone isn't telling me they like my story just to be nice? what if it's finally time to stop being the formerly precocious child who gets bored and gives up on things when they get difficult and actually fights for something wonderful? what if we had the confidence of a mediocre white man?! poor joe is already reeling from how much i've had to hype myself up to keep going with this, and i think he too is a little afraid that my insisting on working with my sister could cost me everything when it comes to this publisher, but if i let myself be intimidated and don't push for what i know i need to be great then it's cost everything already, right? when did i turn into a motivational poster? watch this space.
12.21.24 [on the F train]
i've been pingponging between books that carry me down history's lazy river like the life preserver i was instructed to turn upside down and step into like a diaper when i was in a biosphere in mexico this past spring (laura maiklem's mudlark, a wonderful long view) and bleeding-edge ones that make me feel abruptly and specifically like shit (paul lynch's prophet song), and that has been a good-enough way to move through the world. (a panhandler on the train is chatting with a woman a few seats down who just gave him some change: "i feel lucky to be in new york, it could be worse: i could be in a different city, in a different state, in a third world country. i could be in detroit." in ian frazier's paradise bronx i just learned new york is only city to adopt constitutional language obliging it to address inhabitants' right to shelter.) i have not been doing a very good job of catching up on the work that piled up before the election; when i get tired of being in my skin i go running or go up to grand central station to donate platelets, which you can do pretty often, since they give you most of your blood back and i have a lot of platelets (i am unironically proud of this). the first time i got settled in my pleather lab-recliner and the tech could see the needle mark from the last time i was there i was a little embarrassed, but now i don't care. i got an email from the volunteer coordinator at the library saying that the guy who'd been flaking out of his shifts after mine had officially flaked off for good (which i thought we'd talked about and determined long ago, but i respect her system), and so now i'm The Study Room Monitor for all of wednesday afternoons if i want. i told her i would rule with an iron fist and am unironically proud of that, also.
i think the work buildup is under control now, or at least the parts of it that call for acute creativity and can't unspool while i'm on something like autopilot. i had an unsettling afternoon about a month ago when i spent an hour working on research for a design story, tried to save the word file, and was informed by my own laptop that i already had something by that name. turns out i'd spent an afternoon at the library the day after the election doing the same work—taking many if not all of the same notes, even—and completely forgotten about it. when i turned in revisions for a big, earnest science piece earlier this week my editor thanked me for taking my time with it, which read not as a passive-aggressive dig but as actual appreciation for not having to deal with it earlier on his end. my other essay editor has made analogous noises hinting at her own lack of peace. i am not glad for that, i want all of us to be living our best and most effective lives, but since the feeling of being a little less alone is going to be there whether or not i acknowledge it i might as well be grateful.
i think the work buildup is under control now, or at least the parts of it that call for acute creativity and can't unspool while i'm on something like autopilot. i had an unsettling afternoon about a month ago when i spent an hour working on research for a design story, tried to save the word file, and was informed by my own laptop that i already had something by that name. turns out i'd spent an afternoon at the library the day after the election doing the same work—taking many if not all of the same notes, even—and completely forgotten about it. when i turned in revisions for a big, earnest science piece earlier this week my editor thanked me for taking my time with it, which read not as a passive-aggressive dig but as actual appreciation for not having to deal with it earlier on his end. my other essay editor has made analogous noises hinting at her own lack of peace. i am not glad for that, i want all of us to be living our best and most effective lives, but since the feeling of being a little less alone is going to be there whether or not i acknowledge it i might as well be grateful.
08.17.24 [on the F train]
chocolate-chip raindrops this morning, the kind that might or might not add up to one wet cookie when i get off the train in queens. i should really start carrying a little fold-up tarp or industrial garbage bag for my tote, which would compact and travel much more imperceptibly than a full-fledged umbrella and protect the only stuff that really can't get wet. i'm semi-paused on almost all work right now, as the new third-party payment-processing contractor that handles compensating contractors like me for my biggest client has now taken almost a week to renew my apparently-expired approval, a slot canyon that seems to have affected me first among the client's freelancers and which seems unbelievable even by generic-corporate-fuckery standards (i am denied access to all of the client's assets and tools, so i can't research or build a damn thing). it's been fewer than 90 days since they approved my initial contract, a process more invasive than the blood and urine draws i underwent for my yearly physical yesterday (a background check, seriously? for a writing-jokes-about-couches gig?). this has meant that i've had luxurious stretches of time in which to run errands (with the understanding that i had to be able to sprint home at any moment) and that my schedule for the next month and counting is absolute hash, as all kinds of stuff has accordioned down the line. i generally don't care all that much about when things happen, despite my procrastinator's fundamental fear-based obsession with deadlines, but i am almost incandescent with rage about this shit; this processing contractor has already demanded invoices from my other clients to make sure my work is diversified to a degree that satisfies them—so infantilizing i don't know what to tell you—and if, say, the most pressing piece i've got pending isn't sorted before tuesday night, its editor is going to have to reassign it and i lose $600 for work that's already taken me more than two hours. i don't have any colleagues in this scenario, not really—everyone's either someone who offers me work or someone whose incompetence prevents me from doing work—so i can but holler here, since anything else would make me a real bummer to hire again. freelancers are supposed to be cool girls.
a friend of ours has taken a full-time gig with the harris-walz campaign and is either moving or has moved to delaware for the next few months. i have a theory that going up there with jigsaw puzzles and snacks would technically be infrastructural, which seems to underwhelm joe. i think we've scrubbed most of our travel plans for the fall—we've both booked solo trips out west to visit family, but he doesn't have the vacation days to really unfurl the way we like to until the end of the year, and we're already committed to a thing with my folks in the spring—so, like: delaware! it would be so cheap, i bet, and i could pretend it's comparable with door-knocking! i know that's not so, at least the door-knocking part, but i'm working my way up to more full-contact election suport.
i took the ferry out to the rockaways for the first time in several years a couple of weeks ago, at the invitation of a friend who rented a place out there for part of this summer. the stretch of beach she favors is vastly superior to the crazy-crowded portion i used to visit, and her car-based setup camps rings around the towel-and-tote situation that was all i was used to bringing out with me. i told her quite a bit about what i called 'the beach companion i lost to her office-based job,' though i didn't really get at all the reasons that relationship fell apart, at least partially because i myself don't know. could she smell the loss on me? i felt like i reeked.
a friend of ours has taken a full-time gig with the harris-walz campaign and is either moving or has moved to delaware for the next few months. i have a theory that going up there with jigsaw puzzles and snacks would technically be infrastructural, which seems to underwhelm joe. i think we've scrubbed most of our travel plans for the fall—we've both booked solo trips out west to visit family, but he doesn't have the vacation days to really unfurl the way we like to until the end of the year, and we're already committed to a thing with my folks in the spring—so, like: delaware! it would be so cheap, i bet, and i could pretend it's comparable with door-knocking! i know that's not so, at least the door-knocking part, but i'm working my way up to more full-contact election suport.
i took the ferry out to the rockaways for the first time in several years a couple of weeks ago, at the invitation of a friend who rented a place out there for part of this summer. the stretch of beach she favors is vastly superior to the crazy-crowded portion i used to visit, and her car-based setup camps rings around the towel-and-tote situation that was all i was used to bringing out with me. i told her quite a bit about what i called 'the beach companion i lost to her office-based job,' though i didn't really get at all the reasons that relationship fell apart, at least partially because i myself don't know. could she smell the loss on me? i felt like i reeked.
05.11.24 [on the F train]
sprang! subway! no one is awake for a good reason! i couldn't fit a volunteer shift in last month and shouldn't really be starting with catchup now, i have a nasty week i should be pregaming, but the cats sense weakness and have been wedging my jet-lagged ass out of bed, so here we are. we did not see any of the solar-storm super-southern aurora borealis last night—even if it had been clear, light pollution is of course dreadful here—but i did see enough of it on social media to wish in the abstract that we were still in scandinavia. in practice i was in stockholm last friday, copenhagen the friday before that, and tulum the friday before that, so i'm pretty okay with never going anywhere ever again (except philadelphia next month for a rolling stones concert? i have no good excuse for that).
mexico was wonderful, the first press trip i've taken in a long time that made me feel like press trips are worth my time—which sounds silly, but since my main travel outlet switched over to all paranormal content a couple of years ago and i'm neither about to start ghost hunting nor especially interested in wooing new outlets, it's tricky to come up with ways to write about the things i'm invited to experience that don't make me feel like a shill. in truth i'm a writer who likes to travel rather than a travel writer, probably—one of the other americans on this trip was telling me about the industry conference i avoid every year and she and many of the writers i meet on these things seem to feel are indispensable, and it sounded like immersion therapy, or enhanced interrogation, or rush week at a southern school—matching with and speed-dating PR reps who then might or might not invite you to fly halfway around the world to spend two days at an all-inclusive resort devoted to steak, everclear, and show tunes, and while i get that this kind of full-body shudder is such niche privilege that i should just offer myself up as the first protein when the resource wars begin (you know they're coming soon, these lisa frank trapper keeper skies last night were no accident), wow, ritualizing what i do in a baldly networky way makes me want to walk into the sea. another beauty of the mexico trip is that for once i knew what (and that) i'd be writing about it before i accepted: a dear old friend from my magazine-staffer days asked if i would go and cook up a piece on solo travel for her new magazine, and that's very much the sort of thing i can get excited about doing. amusingly, though the trip was pitched to her/me as a gender-specific thing, other writers didn't arrive with that frame—and lo, there was a dude among us (two, counting the photographer/influencer who shot us all week). so technically a vagina travelogue it was not, though it functioned that way anyhow, a bit—beyond the collective appreciation of each other's sundresses and blouses that kicks off group meals on most temperate press trips, talk stayed reasonably clear of lady zones. despite my disdain for networking crap and industry gossip, i also picked up some interesting stuff about how other clients and markets work—like, if you're an australian writer it's hard to pitch a trip unless you're the only person in the country writing about it, and though US-based writers almost never feel obligated to promise coverage beforehand (and i can count on one hand the times i happen to have done it), it's standard practice in other places? i still haven't written about the cruise joe and i took last fall and the crazy bahamas trip that happened 16 hours after we got back from paris, and while i plan to get on that, i'm not especially excited about it. it feels significant that i haven't made much of an effort to fold these subjects into my pitches for the outlets i typically save for passion projects. am i quiet-quitting this phase of freelance writing, at least for now? mexico makes a compelling case for keeping an open mind—it was the perfect trip for me to take without joe, given the focus on swimming in caves and waking up before dawn to streak into the ocean. if i can position myself as my friend's startup's tropical goth crone, maybe i can wriggle out of the world of slideshows and bullet points and sing of iguanas in my own dialect. it has a certain something.
mexico was wonderful, the first press trip i've taken in a long time that made me feel like press trips are worth my time—which sounds silly, but since my main travel outlet switched over to all paranormal content a couple of years ago and i'm neither about to start ghost hunting nor especially interested in wooing new outlets, it's tricky to come up with ways to write about the things i'm invited to experience that don't make me feel like a shill. in truth i'm a writer who likes to travel rather than a travel writer, probably—one of the other americans on this trip was telling me about the industry conference i avoid every year and she and many of the writers i meet on these things seem to feel are indispensable, and it sounded like immersion therapy, or enhanced interrogation, or rush week at a southern school—matching with and speed-dating PR reps who then might or might not invite you to fly halfway around the world to spend two days at an all-inclusive resort devoted to steak, everclear, and show tunes, and while i get that this kind of full-body shudder is such niche privilege that i should just offer myself up as the first protein when the resource wars begin (you know they're coming soon, these lisa frank trapper keeper skies last night were no accident), wow, ritualizing what i do in a baldly networky way makes me want to walk into the sea. another beauty of the mexico trip is that for once i knew what (and that) i'd be writing about it before i accepted: a dear old friend from my magazine-staffer days asked if i would go and cook up a piece on solo travel for her new magazine, and that's very much the sort of thing i can get excited about doing. amusingly, though the trip was pitched to her/me as a gender-specific thing, other writers didn't arrive with that frame—and lo, there was a dude among us (two, counting the photographer/influencer who shot us all week). so technically a vagina travelogue it was not, though it functioned that way anyhow, a bit—beyond the collective appreciation of each other's sundresses and blouses that kicks off group meals on most temperate press trips, talk stayed reasonably clear of lady zones. despite my disdain for networking crap and industry gossip, i also picked up some interesting stuff about how other clients and markets work—like, if you're an australian writer it's hard to pitch a trip unless you're the only person in the country writing about it, and though US-based writers almost never feel obligated to promise coverage beforehand (and i can count on one hand the times i happen to have done it), it's standard practice in other places? i still haven't written about the cruise joe and i took last fall and the crazy bahamas trip that happened 16 hours after we got back from paris, and while i plan to get on that, i'm not especially excited about it. it feels significant that i haven't made much of an effort to fold these subjects into my pitches for the outlets i typically save for passion projects. am i quiet-quitting this phase of freelance writing, at least for now? mexico makes a compelling case for keeping an open mind—it was the perfect trip for me to take without joe, given the focus on swimming in caves and waking up before dawn to streak into the ocean. if i can position myself as my friend's startup's tropical goth crone, maybe i can wriggle out of the world of slideshows and bullet points and sing of iguanas in my own dialect. it has a certain something.
03.30.24 [on the J train]
there's an oak leaf pressed in this notebook from the owl funeral i attended last month—along with the zoo photo safari i'd taken just over a week earlier, one of the stranger trips i'd taken for an article, though there's a strong likelihood i'd have gone to the funeral anyway. i've now been writing and/or fretting over my latest Earnest Science Feature for nearly three months, though it feels more like thirty. i haven't begged joe to read any of this one except for the first version of the opening scene (one of my favorite will mcphail panels is the one where a woman asks a spider she's trapped under a glass to read something she's written), but given how much i've bitched and tossed around in bed about it, i'm sure he'll be as glad to see it out of our lives as he was, say, when i finished my orwell essay for the new york times. out, it will soon be out! until i get a big old tattoo of its subject in may, that is. (owl, not orwell.)
a man on this train is snoring the sort of snore that seems like it'd rouse the snorer, or jolt him a few inches in the air, at least, but he snores on, and i wish him well; it would be nice to be flat for a few more hours. i'm trying to get a few more bleary mornings volunteering in queens out of the way early this spring, as i'm going to mexico on assignment(!!) in a few weeks and joe and i are then meeting my folks in copenhagen, where i have decided i don't care if it's touristy to truck out toelsinore kronborg castle. we have planned little else beyond a few meals and a night at the opera and, oh, a shared airbnb i picked for when we migrate to stockholm. will my stepfather, aghast at the way i live when i'm not at a high-end hotel, decide he doesn't love me anymore? will joe out-snore this guy on the train, who sounds with every breath more and more like he's awake and trying to fool schoolchildren? will i join the danish swans and leave my terrestrial life behind once and for all? hard to say. i ended up not interviewing a colleague out in prospect park for the swan essay i sent off to the printer this week, as the thing was short enough that bringing in another voice was going to be kind of weird and she was being flaky enough about meeting that i didn't have the energy to keep chasing. i did send a draft of the piece to my friend R at the bird hospital—not because i needed to check facts, exactly, but because anyone who knew what i was talking about would know where i was talking about, and i wanted her blessing.
she called me from her long-overdue vacation and gave it, and told me Secret Owl Things about my other feature, and let me know, when i finally screwed up the courage to ask, that bird ben, the northern cardinal i've loved for a a decade, died last summer. i don't know how to write about that, and imagine i won't for a long time; knowing ben changed me in a way i might not understand until i'm very old, if i get to be very old. i do know that R's three-part benediction—you've done right by swans, i trust you enough to tell you confidential things about the owl, we can remember ben together—felt a bit like permission to take full height in this version of myself. i wonder sometimes if she knows how badly i wanted her to see this identity all those years i cleaned cages and wrestled geese, and i know that one of her great gifts is to speak to the people we want to be on our best days. i don't mean that i'm a few inches in the air like the snorer uptrain (who's still at it!), but i have had occasion to say yes, yes, that is what i meant.
a man on this train is snoring the sort of snore that seems like it'd rouse the snorer, or jolt him a few inches in the air, at least, but he snores on, and i wish him well; it would be nice to be flat for a few more hours. i'm trying to get a few more bleary mornings volunteering in queens out of the way early this spring, as i'm going to mexico on assignment(!!) in a few weeks and joe and i are then meeting my folks in copenhagen, where i have decided i don't care if it's touristy to truck out to
she called me from her long-overdue vacation and gave it, and told me Secret Owl Things about my other feature, and let me know, when i finally screwed up the courage to ask, that bird ben, the northern cardinal i've loved for a a decade, died last summer. i don't know how to write about that, and imagine i won't for a long time; knowing ben changed me in a way i might not understand until i'm very old, if i get to be very old. i do know that R's three-part benediction—you've done right by swans, i trust you enough to tell you confidential things about the owl, we can remember ben together—felt a bit like permission to take full height in this version of myself. i wonder sometimes if she knows how badly i wanted her to see this identity all those years i cleaned cages and wrestled geese, and i know that one of her great gifts is to speak to the people we want to be on our best days. i don't mean that i'm a few inches in the air like the snorer uptrain (who's still at it!), but i have had occasion to say yes, yes, that is what i meant.
02.03.24 [on the J train]
i've had a run of really wonderful reads at the start of this year: turning into a shark, swapping bodies with your spouse, defeating conversion camps, it's all been lovely. speculative fiction makes me itch to write strange things, though not to write fiction—i have tried that a few times and everything about it feels wrong. which is lucky, really, as i then get to enjoy others' stuff with absolutely no skin in the game. on that, though, i had a funky twinge yesterday that is leading me to look into the possibility of writing a nonfiction book? it would not be a collection of essays, nor would it be a memoir; it would have a principal and lots of secondary subjects that are not me, and you would just smell me in the structure and language, or maybe, maybe i would lean a bit into a framework like the one in preparing the ghost, where the author talks about the first photographer of a giant squid and also, semi-related, about his own working out of an ice cream truck in chicago. i will probably spare posterity stories of my slinging health food in orange county, but maybe other glimpses could end up in there? more importantly, the prospective subject spent significant parts of her life close to new york city, so if i decide i really want to dig in on research—a copy of her out-of-print midlife memoir is on its way to me now*—i could make a lot of initial progress without shelling out for plane tickets or making myself vulnerable in, i don't know, residency applications or whatever. i am still not at all sure that writing and especially selling and marketing a book are things i truly want to do, but i know i want to read this memoir to see if i like the idea of spending a lot more time thinking about this woman, and that's something?
the owl pitch i mentioned last month landed, speaking of writing. it landed this past wednesday because my editor missed my email the first time and then had COVID, so the time-sensitive part of the story is spoiled, but i get to spend the rest of the month thinking about owls—for money, and that's the dream, really. yet another bird pitch flew out of me about a week ago, and before that another about a world war two pilot and candy, and if all of them hit, february is going to be a bit of a shit show—but perhaps it's time for me to develop the ability to juggle passion projects instead of packing them in the tissue of better-paid busy work. the ceramic flamingo i ordered after embracing a flamingo in the bahamas last fall was bubble-wrapped just beautifully, and it still arrived on our doorstep with a broken neck.
the owl pitch i mentioned last month landed, speaking of writing. it landed this past wednesday because my editor missed my email the first time and then had COVID, so the time-sensitive part of the story is spoiled, but i get to spend the rest of the month thinking about owls—for money, and that's the dream, really. yet another bird pitch flew out of me about a week ago, and before that another about a world war two pilot and candy, and if all of them hit, february is going to be a bit of a shit show—but perhaps it's time for me to develop the ability to juggle passion projects instead of packing them in the tissue of better-paid busy work. the ceramic flamingo i ordered after embracing a flamingo in the bahamas last fall was bubble-wrapped just beautifully, and it still arrived on our doorstep with a broken neck.
*ETA as i finally get around to uploading this written-on-the-subway post: it was getting weird that the memoir i mentioned hadn't arrived as of today, so i checked my alibris account and realized i hadn't succeeded in buying it. it's finally en route for realsies! since i'm updating, i can also now report that the other bird pitch also hit and i finally got a weird no about the pilot, like, monday, february 20th. i'm a little shocked at the rejection, as that pitch was really good, but juggling three semi-recreational stories this month would have broken me. i am at peace.
01.06.24 [on the J train]
if eater posts an item about a delicately-braised writer turning up on a platform in queens later today, that's me; i took the clinic-escort volunteer leaders' email about extra-cold-weather layering too seriously and am sous-vide'ing myself in some zippy thing i bought in akureyri last year and snow boots that are bigger than the cat. i am not one of those people, alas, who thinks sweltering one's way to the great mixed-recycling bin would be better than freezing to death.
one of my milder personal nightmares came to life yesterday evening at this off-broadway riff on a mentalist show at which i was singled out for a bit of audience participation. this was my own fault, since the performer was narrowing down his field of targets by telling people to sit down if they weren't left-handed and so on—i could have just done that—but being compelled to lie is also a personal nightmare, so that was off the table. luckily the guy doing the audience work seemed to catch my awkward-collaborator psychic stink and moved on. i told my mom about the show and she sympathized—she once got plucked from the crowd at a penn and teller show in las vegas. my mother is a brutal disappointer of magicians—an occasion on which she did so at a southern california fuddrucker's is canonical in my family—so this fascinated me. are these guys (they are always guys) like cats who know when someone doesn't want them to sit in their lap?
i sent my first passion-project pitches for the new year earlier this week and—you might want to be sitting down for this—they are about birds. it's time to write a weird science piece about birds! the ideal weird piece about birds would be a deep dive on the state of sky burials, as caitlin doughty talked about in from here to eternity (her boss book about death practices around the world and why pretty much all of them are a better deal than what we do here in america); as i recall, it's getting tougher to do them in places like india because the necessary raptors no longer show up (pollution? habitat loss?), whereas here we have carrion birds aplenty but it's illegal. which reminds me: i wrote several pieces for a friend's end-of-life startup (heh) years ago and never bookmarked their eventual URLs; is my relatively mixed-company-friendly explanation of what happens when a body is embalmed still out there somewhere? what about the quaker funeral breakdown? (for what it's worth, i like the sound of quaker funerals: simple, pretty green.)
the bird pieces i pitched are about owls and flamingos, so no human-corpse-eating to report out, probably. if i pitch the owl idea to another outlet i'm considering mentioning that my enthusiasm for them is so consistent that the only smartphone lock screen i've ever had is a grainy old shot of the midtown hooters marquee. a little beside the point, maybe, but it's true, and i eventually landed that piece i wrote about collecting nineteen eighty-four because i emailed a stranger about the time a pigeon threw up in my mouth, so...maybe?
one of my milder personal nightmares came to life yesterday evening at this off-broadway riff on a mentalist show at which i was singled out for a bit of audience participation. this was my own fault, since the performer was narrowing down his field of targets by telling people to sit down if they weren't left-handed and so on—i could have just done that—but being compelled to lie is also a personal nightmare, so that was off the table. luckily the guy doing the audience work seemed to catch my awkward-collaborator psychic stink and moved on. i told my mom about the show and she sympathized—she once got plucked from the crowd at a penn and teller show in las vegas. my mother is a brutal disappointer of magicians—an occasion on which she did so at a southern california fuddrucker's is canonical in my family—so this fascinated me. are these guys (they are always guys) like cats who know when someone doesn't want them to sit in their lap?
i sent my first passion-project pitches for the new year earlier this week and—you might want to be sitting down for this—they are about birds. it's time to write a weird science piece about birds! the ideal weird piece about birds would be a deep dive on the state of sky burials, as caitlin doughty talked about in from here to eternity (her boss book about death practices around the world and why pretty much all of them are a better deal than what we do here in america); as i recall, it's getting tougher to do them in places like india because the necessary raptors no longer show up (pollution? habitat loss?), whereas here we have carrion birds aplenty but it's illegal. which reminds me: i wrote several pieces for a friend's end-of-life startup (heh) years ago and never bookmarked their eventual URLs; is my relatively mixed-company-friendly explanation of what happens when a body is embalmed still out there somewhere? what about the quaker funeral breakdown? (for what it's worth, i like the sound of quaker funerals: simple, pretty green.)
the bird pieces i pitched are about owls and flamingos, so no human-corpse-eating to report out, probably. if i pitch the owl idea to another outlet i'm considering mentioning that my enthusiasm for them is so consistent that the only smartphone lock screen i've ever had is a grainy old shot of the midtown hooters marquee. a little beside the point, maybe, but it's true, and i eventually landed that piece i wrote about collecting nineteen eighty-four because i emailed a stranger about the time a pigeon threw up in my mouth, so...maybe?
12.23.23 [on the F train]
it is too early to make good decisions! the anti-abortion extremists who harass patients outside the far-flung clinic to which i am en route would never yell something like that and i'm not about to suggest it, but–they wouldn't be incorrect? i nearly grabbed the wrong train just now as i was congratulating myself for waking up without my alarm for this morning's escorting shift. of course, i'll never rise naturally because birdsong summons and the sun warms my bones or whatever; worry is the only thing that gets me up without assistance. i don't mind that so much, as it sort of means that the worst moments of my day are inevitably the very first ones. once i know i won't sleep late i can pose for the river with the cats and contemplate late-stage capitalism with my microwaved day-old coffee. we are staying put for the holidays as we usually do, and it's even lower-impact than in previous years: we'll go out to a movie on christmas eve but aren't doing one of the fancy dinners i invariably hate. i still haven't figured out how to strike a balance between joe's interest in complicated-food-and-drink-related celebration and mine in comparative frugality (in that context, at least) and temperance, but i hope we're getting better at meeting each other halfway.
i didn't think i was going to have much free time here at the end of the year, but work is mostly done? i have to turn in a revised draft of my MUSHROOMS IN SPACE! essay back in over the first week of january, but it feels like the tweaks my editor and i talked about aren't going to break my head. i'm hemming and hawing over what my next passion projects (or at least the ones that i pitch instead of just accepting) will be and...meh? it was humbling to eat it with my first new yorker humor submission, though my dad made a valiant attempt to console me with the repeated story of how some friend of his has submitted hundreds of thousands of cartoons to them and is still waiting for a nod. i appreciate his point, but i am a very special girl and this is totally different.
speaking of special girls, my favorite former staffer from the bird hospital, a woman i haven't seen in person since well before the pandemic, popped up in my instagram feed as a full-fledged (heh) urban ranger in central park. i have absolutely nothing to do with that, but hot damn did it activate my proud-auntie parasympathetic system! one day you're swooning at the smell of crow blood in front of a gal and the next she's in your phone delivering a totally polished minilecture about weird duck season. i'm very curious to know if she's blown the whistle on mouse park, i.e. the spot where we'd sneak behind some trees and release the mice we'd caught nibbling on bird seed in the hospital's basement treatment room, but my feeling is that i should let sleeping liberated rodents lie. god i'm happy for her.
i didn't think i was going to have much free time here at the end of the year, but work is mostly done? i have to turn in a revised draft of my MUSHROOMS IN SPACE! essay back in over the first week of january, but it feels like the tweaks my editor and i talked about aren't going to break my head. i'm hemming and hawing over what my next passion projects (or at least the ones that i pitch instead of just accepting) will be and...meh? it was humbling to eat it with my first new yorker humor submission, though my dad made a valiant attempt to console me with the repeated story of how some friend of his has submitted hundreds of thousands of cartoons to them and is still waiting for a nod. i appreciate his point, but i am a very special girl and this is totally different.
speaking of special girls, my favorite former staffer from the bird hospital, a woman i haven't seen in person since well before the pandemic, popped up in my instagram feed as a full-fledged (heh) urban ranger in central park. i have absolutely nothing to do with that, but hot damn did it activate my proud-auntie parasympathetic system! one day you're swooning at the smell of crow blood in front of a gal and the next she's in your phone delivering a totally polished minilecture about weird duck season. i'm very curious to know if she's blown the whistle on mouse park, i.e. the spot where we'd sneak behind some trees and release the mice we'd caught nibbling on bird seed in the hospital's basement treatment room, but my feeling is that i should let sleeping liberated rodents lie. god i'm happy for her.
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