Today is the last entry from my 50 Stories in 50 Weeks project. One year ago, I turned fifty and ended a fifteen year career in advertising. I’d left so I could focus on my writing, and this little project was a first step. Then a global pandemic hit, everything shut down, and these weekly…
I’ve been practicing yoga now for thirty years and while I have some level of muscle memory, I still have a beginner’s mindset. As a child, I remember watching tv while bending myself into a pretzel. I often wanted to show my parents how I could put my legs over my shoulders and balance on…
When you are the last of five children with a Catholic family background, chances are you’re going to have a lot of nieces and nephews. I have nine, plus six greats ages two to 12. I was only 11 myself when I first became an auntie so many of them feel more like friends, and…
A short, short story. Today I finished my first MFA Writing residency – ten days of intense learning and workshopping before jumping into the first term. Then we do this all over again four more times. Words used regularly that I had to google for definition: Ekphrastic, Perspicacity, Magical Realism, Peripatetic, Belies, Frowsy, Obsequiousness, Autofiction,…
Lately I’ve been thinking about the journey from where I began, when I was first able to grasp the concept of working for something, to where I am – having left my career mid-March (conveniently in line with a global pandemic) and about to embark on graduate school. Some people’s paths are clear from day…
Nine years ago today, I was contemplating whether or not to meet up with the brother of an old acquaintance on a blind date at a bad Mexican restaurant. 2011 thus far had been monumental. Early in the year, I finished my yoga teacher training and volunteered in Brazil. In the spring, I was on…
A SHORT STORY… When I moved to San Francisco in 1994 to finish college, I lived by the skanky strip clubs on the edge of North Beach where it meets Chinatown. My boyfriend Richard and I shared an apartment that belonged to the owner of the Green Tortoise hostel, which was across the street. Richard…
From a work-in-progress, The Mechanism of Injury. It was an unusually hot day in San Francisco. A freak heat wave amidst a spring of near constant rainfall. The realization that I had to do manual labor when I went inside was daunting, so I stood in the entryway between the gate and our front door…
Failing better. 