I got sober. Life got big.
Elijah Muhammad with Malcolm X. No, it's not random. Patience! Read the post! (Also: isn't Malcolm so handsome?) At some point in this pandemic I lost the ability to carry anything lightly. It's never come easily, has always required effort; yes, I've worked hard at lightness. But now there's no fighting it. Seriousness has descended…
I laughed yesterday at the start of this otherwise long, dark chat with a friend freaking out over, you know, the possibly post-Constitutional state the United States is entering. ‘Don’t drink’ was probably sincerely meant on some level, but hearing it in his sardonic Boston voice—"two words of advice for you, boss," I imagined him…
Last week I was seated at a dinner next to a woman who's writing a recovery memoir. When she found out I'm a published memoirist, she had questions about how I'd structured my book to make publishers like it. "Did you put the message of yours up front?" she asked. "Or tell the story first…
A friend of 20+ years called last night. You could say it's been a complicated relationship, the same way you could say Mt. Rainier is a pretty big hill. We've hurt each other at times like only two people who know each other very well can do. We'll talk every day for a year and…
Continue reading ➞ Day 1,826: In This World, There is a Kind of Painful Progress
I have no particular wisdom to offer you nice people today. Life has been throwing some extra weirdness at me lately, and Seattle is having a heat wave (a Pacific NW "heat wave"=over eighty degrees) that I cannot really cope with. And I got sucked back into the fruitless search for a nude lipstick that…
For several years I've been in this life phase called "friends keep adding me to secret menopause Facebook groups where women gather to share information, vent, and validate the living shit out of each other." I hate it. Sure, at first I was game. I'd jump in and introduce myself and start reading posts and then…
"Why does this never get any easier?" I groaned to my trainer last week in the middle of deadlifting. He looked confused. "Well, because we keep adding weight to the bar. You could only lift half this much a year ago." I had to concede his logic, even if it didn't really answer my question.…
It's New Years Eve afternoon. I'm at a coffee shop working on a commissioned essay about small matters like marriage and sex and desire and monogamy and how I'm a natural at three out of four. The writing is going...not great, okay? Plus I just ate a pretty disappointing croissant and the little boy behind…
Saturday was my fourth soberversary. I went into the archives looking for my third anniversary post, thinking I'd write something about what's changed since then. Turns out I didn't write an anniversary post last year. But I did write one starting like this about a month before my third: "My heart: I’ve been working hard…
Does the phase "Enjoli lady" mean anything to you? If so, you can head straight on over to Medium to read my new essay about women and booze. If the Enjoli lady doesn't ring a bell, watch this, imagine growing up with it embedded in your freaking brain, and then go read the essay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UIktO4Pnlw
Off-Dry 