I am the worst habit-former in the world. My longest streak on the latest habits-and-routines app I am using (Fabulous is really fabulous) is a whopping TWO DAYS. (And that’s not two days of anything ambitious; that’s two days of waking, drinking water, taking pills, and clicking in the app that I did so. Which, for the record, simply means touching…
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Happy to share this piece from over at my Substack. It’s part of what I think will be a new book, memoir-ish and full of my shitshow trauma learning over the last few years. And, yes, this means I am writing again! Embarrassing stories from middle school are a great way to rip off the bandaid…
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It felt strong. It felt brave. It felt powerful. It also felt sad. Unexpectedly, desolately sad. I’ve always said “When I have an emotion, I’m usually last to know.” That’s not really true of me anymore, but for years I was always reacting to Big Feelings but almost never knowing which feelings, or why. I’m sure the reasons are as…
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I have a writing hangover. It’s that feeling I get when there’s been something I wanted to write, or needed to write, and haven’t been able to, and then I finally do. It felt SO good to complete and send it off, but MAN I feel hung over. Do you get writing hangovers? I do, especially with big and important…
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It’s April Fools Day, and I can’t take a joke. Like, at all. Every time I’ve been fooled or pranked or tricked, the way I feel is not amused, but ashamed. It feels like everyone set against me, like I‘ve brought shame upon myself by falling for it. I know, party pooper, right? I blame long-undiagnosed autism and the aftershocks…
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When I decided in spring 2022 to make sure that the man who had sexually abused me in 1983 had actually been officially reported to law enforcement, I did so for my own peace of mind if nothing else. I had no real sense of the places it would lead. Now Mike Spiller, a gymnastics coach who sexually abused me…
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In conversation today, I heard myself use a line I’ve used about myself many times, a line that feels truer every time I say it: I am great at big things; I’m terrible at little things. I make no claims about the originality of this line, but I have been saying it since my twenties and it’s truer than ever…
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In 1983 and for a while after, the gymnastics center in Northwest Houston that I attended held sleepovers. These were fun extras, like the lock-ins a church youth group might have. But, beyond the normal kid fun of a sleepover my friends, something else happened. My coach, Mike Spiller, whom I adored and whose attention and approval I craved, sexually…
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Do you have a to-be-read list? Or shelf or pile or bags full, like my kids and I do? Are you such a cool reader kid you call it a TBR? There’s an art to the TBR, and I don’t have it. Take for example my friend and colleague Rob, who one magical year actually accomplished the impossible of actually…
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My son has a very, very cheap laptop, and I’ve been surprised how little he uses it. He likes gaming, coding, writing, making videos and podcasts, and all kinds of graphic arts, and this device was a gift for him to expand his skills, to play around in the more powerful and flexible environment of the PC as compared to…