Category: The Other Stuff

  • I always like how thing come full circle. I like balance and boundaries and movies with unambiguous endings. I wish someone would neatly draw or map the process out when it comes to us and others, or maybe just make it a story about ending up where you started, but probably no wiser than when…

  • I ended up seated across from a reporter.  He asks if he can write a profile on me. I try to be vague and gracious in my refusal, but I know I just sound rude.  The conversation ends there. He pockets his notebook and pointedly turns away. That’s the last I see of him. ***…

  • Eventually, after you are proven wrong many, many times, you stop speculating about the future. You stop trying to fix it in one place as if you’re zippering a wriggling toddler into a snowsuit. You make rough drafts of the best and worst case scenarios, maybe throw in an idle daydream or two and you…

  • What kind of music do you like? Where did you grow up? How was your weekend? There’s a difference between an answer and a response. I confuse them sometimes. People mostly want the shortest satisficing response. The uh huh. Yeah, sure. No, thanks. Of course. They don’t want fulsome. It’s small talk, not a deposition.…

  • I am trying not to be meddlesome. Truly, I am. It is difficult and I’ve probably overstepped already. Me, my magic wand and the horse I rode in on. I am always digging in people’s heads. Compiling dossiers of facts and feelings that I rifle through and mentally update each time we talk. Climbing all…

  • I was a lousy freelancer. At least in spirit. I can really only write well when it comes from the gut, when I feel something for the words and what they represent. The rest always felt, at best, slightly whorish and, at worst, like donating blood that would never be transfused. No wonder I spent…

  • Coworker’s birthday at a local pub. I am overdressed. Low-key by city standards, but too done-up for here. Enough so that I’m offered a gin and tonic while everyone else at the table has beer. I decline. We talk work and foreign language pronunciations and how we came to be here. Either you were born…