All posts by Jackie Pick

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About Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

2018 — Rise, Shine, and Toss the Uns

Year in Review, , , , ,

That’s the bracelet I wore every day I worked this past year. Every day. You can’t look at something every day and not have it sear into your soul, good bad or otherwise. I chose that word because 2017 was a shitshow and I could have chosen to splash around in a wading pool of my own tears, or I could rise.

I refocused and recommitted. I did the work. (I say that unapologetically because I was just completely blown away by Shondra Rhimes’s Year of Yes [more on that later] and we all should be bold if we’ve done the work. ) Continue reading 2018 — Rise, Shine, and Toss the Uns →

Here Be the Mighty Yawp! or I’m Done. It’s Time to Start.

Books, Fiction, Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book

Both times I gave birth, I did not fall in love with my children right away. Maybe it was the drugs, or the hormones, or the exhaustion, or some form of shock, or some combination of those, but it took a while for my heart to catch up with my head. I wanted to be one of those mothers who cooed and snuggled and felt that some form of destiny had been fulfilled in one messy whoosh. But I was more “Oh. Babies. Cool. Can I hold them and sniff their heads?”  Continue reading Here Be the Mighty Yawp! or I’m Done. It’s Time to Start. →

Scooby-Dooed, but Shapelier

Parenting, Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book, ,

The beauty of the ThighMaster, if Suzanne Somers is to be believed (and I’ve no reason to doubt her), is that you can squeeze, squeeze your way to shapely hips and thighs (and stop going to aerobics classes.) Bonus feature? You can multitask! Master your thighs while you watch television, read a book, or, play shuffleboard, probably. I don’t know. I assume if I tried it, I’d manage to harm myself on the ThighMaster the same way I harm myself on nearly every other piece of exercise equipment known to man. Maybe I’d pinch large chunks of my tender thigh flesh in the hinge, or pull out my leg hair, or launch the thing into my crotch.

Just like on the treadmill.

Continue reading Scooby-Dooed, but Shapelier →