Category: Month in Review

Hey 2017 — Later, As in, Later Much

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2017 should not let the door hit it in the ass on the way out. I think most people feel this way. The world feels depleted right now.

A friend of mine posted this fun cover on her Facebook page recently, and I admit to watching it with something close to obsession. It’s a little hit of joy each time.

The last week of each year, I hunker down and reflect on the past year. Here are some random thoughts:

  • I didn’t knit enough.
  • I baked more than enough cookies.
  • The nice thing about being the age I am is how much more I respect myself and my boundaries. “No” is a complete sentence and one I owe it to myself to say as needed. I gave love as freely as I could to the wonderful family and friends in my life who took that and held it dear.
  • I have writing ideas now, which for the longest time I yearned for. Now I just yearn for time, and, when I have that, skill.
  • Professionally it’s been a wonderful year, although I still crave quiet and regularity in the process. Soon enough. Soon enough.
  • This year I co-wrote and produced a short film (you can see the trailer below). Never has such a steep learning curve been so much fun. I know for sure that when you work with quality people, work doesn’t feel like a burden.
  • I read 53 books this year – I’m probably going to add one or two more by year’s end. Many were significant and important. My favorites were a slim volume called Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly and Circadian by Chelsey Clammer. Both are literary rides that challenged and delighted me.
  • I read a lot of nonfiction. I am cycling back to fiction now, for no reason other than I want to.
  • I have a deep affection for John Oliver. I have an equally deep and entirely different affection for Gumball.
  • Have you seen this Ted Talk with Joshua Prager?
  • Indecent, one PBS’s Great Performances, should be required viewing. I am haunted by its truth and its form and its beauty weeks later. Unfortunately it does not seem to be available on the PBS website any longer, but if you can catch it on demand or indeed live, please do so!
  • My husband and I are in the middle of The Zookeeper’s Wife (I fall asleep during almost every movie we watch at home, no matter how great the film.) It, too, should be a reminder to any fool who forgets that Nazis are the bad guys.
  • My writing had an acceptance rate of about 20%, which is pretty great. I am proud of all the publications which honored me by including my work, especially the second Multiples Illuminated anthology and The Sun magazine’s Readers Write section.
  • One of the highlights of my year (and a true bucket list item) was being part of the Chicago Listen to Your Mother show. When I was submitting and auditioning, I was told that being cast would be life-altering. And indeed it was.

 

2018 holds promise. I am attending the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop this spring, another bucket list item. My film will be screened publicly. There are some announcements I cannot yet make, but you know that I will return and spill the beans here.

I’m going to start working on a book. Terrifying, that. But it’s time.

And I will continue to enjoy my friends and family, all of whom have wrapped their arms around me this year as needed and have honored me by trusting me with their hearts and experiences as well.

I wish you all a happy remaining 2017 and a joyful, peaceful 2018. I’ll see you here soon!

In the immortal words of Colonel Potter —

 

November in Review

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Can I start you off with the best thing?  I dare you not to smile.

You guys, I’m tired. I’m on doggy hospice duty these days, and the ol’ Fuzzball has been needing a lot of middle-of-the-night tending for weeks now. But it’s the greatest gift I can give him these final days. It does make me foggy the rest of the day, though. We push through, don’t we?

It’s also been a month of tremendous work output – I somehow finished NaNoWriMo in eleven days – and now I am retreating a little to take stock and refocus on next steps.

I rarely wait for New Year’s to start a new goal. Heck, I won’t even wait for a Monday. I’m finalizing some plans and will share here when ready. I also have some very exciting news to announce shortly.

I do know that I want to write one essay a week starting this week. I have no end point, no plans. There is no “1 Essay a Week for the Next 100 Weeks” type thing. But if NaNo taught me anything, it’s that I like being motivated by a goal that has a tight timeline.

I had a semi-momentous birthday in November, which may be contributing to this deep-seeded need to get grossly introspective. I feel sometimes like I’m Konmari-ing my own damned mind and life. All good. All good.

I’m not sure what it was about late October through November, but I sure pulled some great reads off my shelf.

Beth Ann Fennelly’s Heating and Cooling packs a lot of emotion in  a slim volume. Outrageous, hilarious, painful, and poignant.

Chelsey Clammer’s Circadian is a breathtaking and bold piece of art that merges and weaves together various forms and styles to try to arrive at understanding what may never be understood fully and to stumble upon truths that are often hard to accept.

Maggie Smith’s Good Bones. Breathtaking poetry about motherhood and middle years with strong, hearty through lines and themes.

I posted this review of Michael Ian Black’s Navel Gazing: True Tales of Bodies, Mostly Mine (but also my mom’s, which I know sounds weird):

Reading Navel Gazing was like discovering an up-and-coming band on a college radio station that you want to run around and tell everyone about and force them to listen. Not in a hispter way, really, but more in a "This guy gets it" way that made me go back through old yearbooks and double-check that we hadn't gone to school together back in Jersey.

Michael Ian Black packs a lot into this book -- health, aging, relationships, genetics, ancestry, mortality. It's surprisingly existential at times, rich, full, and just snarky enough to avoid being saccharine.

And funny. Did I mention funny? I literally was chasing people down to read them quotes from the book. And they don't hate me for it!

Highly recommended and truly appreciated.

Here are some fun things I ran across on the Internet this past month.

Here’s why you’re bored after you accomplish something.

Speaking of Konmari, can watching Groundhog Day make you a better artist?

Always time, always hope.

And now? I read, write, and figure things out. It’s a good end-of-year task. Something about low light and angles of things. Asking and truly answering “What do I want?” is an act of courage…and a lot of fun!

Month in Review — Probably Shouldn’t Have Woken Me Up When September Ended

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Usually, I type up the Month In Review posts either the last day of the month or the first of the next month. And here I was all fired up about Hugh Hefner and the hero treatment the man is receiving …

then Las Vegas.

So. Here we are again. My words on this topic won’t matter. We’ve shot people every day. We’ve not stopped it. Not after it happened in a club, in a church, or in a classroom.

I am in perpetual mourning. For victims of hate, victims of catastrophe, victims of senseless violence. Victims of ideologies. Victims of climate change deniers. Victims of the NRA.

My sorrow is deep and the reactions are predictable.

I will act, and I will donate, and I will put my feet to the pavement.

…And I will share what helped make September bearable, or at least escapable for bursts:

 

Maybe this is the only instruction guide we need to be happy, even at times like this.

I’m a big ol’ nerdball when it comes to documentaries. Makes sense, I guess, as I also tend to gravitate towards nonfiction writing. But it’s the weaving in of storytelling craft that makes for an outstanding piece of nonfiction, and Ken Burns is the master. I was riveted from moment one. I’m only on Episode Five, but this is not a series to binge watch so much as to take in and digest before moving on to the next part.

Oof. Why it’s so important that we study history. It is because of this that I hope we can scrub all the faux news and the equivocating and the creative silent editing and the “butwhatabouts” from the record. Not an easy essay to swallow, but there’s some pretty disgusting stuff in world history and it would be nice to not have to repeat it. Unfortunately, we are a stubborn species, determined to live repeat rather than shuffle.

Sometimes, especially when life gets mired in ugly small indignities – a turned back, a cruel word, an untruth, a passive-aggression – or just the daily grind, it can be hard for me to access creativity. I will be turning to these strategies as needed. Hopefully, they won’t be needed often!

Maybe this is just the answer to it all. 

I wish you good friends, a nice cup of something warm, hugs, a sense of history, a creative spark, and dessert.