I’m writing this on the road south from San Sebastián. I’m wearing jeans that button all the way up, though right now the top button is undone, because in the hour before leaving this goodie bag of a city — small, cheap joys on every corner, wrapped up in a bright cerulean bay — I left no taste untasted. That’s...
I am behind on things that I, if not the U.S. government, recognize as entirely arbitrary. My tax returns. (I filed for an extension though, don’t you worry!) Getting my gallery wall framed and up in my new house. (More on that in a second.) Writing and posting this Q1 2022 goals check-in. I’m embracing being behind. It’s the Spanish...
There is a phrase I have been embracing in my own life, and, by definition, have repeated to several people around me, because I am an external processor who needs to say things out loud for them to feel real: “Strong opinions, loosely held.” I didn’t make it up. (It seems like a strategist did in 2008.) But I saw...
Hullo, friend. Here are some things that have not changed in the last four years: my love for public accountability and periodic self-reflection,my belief in building the life you want,my appreciation for all the lives I get to live,my trust in my own self to know what’s right for me and to make mistakes and to keep trying anyways,and my...
Sunset in Lisbon is earned. I have seen it only after climbing up steps and navigating clanging yellow trolleys and slotting myself in between a pair of Spaniards preening for a photo and a Dutch couple with their faces pressed into each other’s necks. I have stood there, catching my breath, as I watched it start: saw it throwing light...
You know that feeling when you realize you’re close to the end of a book and you’re not ready to finish it? When you’ve sat yourself in the sun porch and made yourself close the book on your finger and wait a few minutes to prolong the inevitable? Or metered out chapters like doses, one every few hours? Or savored...
I leave for Lisbon tonight. It’ll be my first international trip in well over a year. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m ready. I don’t know how to answer them. Am I ready logistically? I suppose—I have a new suitcase and a renewed passport and two weeks of accommodation booked. Emotionally? Also yes. I’m sad to leave New York, but...
Hello from the passenger seat of my beloved (and newly reconstructed) Penny as the valleys of central Pennsylvania rush by my window. Smoke hangs in long coils above the copses of oaks and aspens. Blue-grey clouds, long and low like train-flattened pennies, crowd in the rearview as raindrops splat and shake their way up the windshield. I’m on the road...
Welcome to New York (It’s Been Waiting for You) A fun little essay in which I tell you my life philosophy and how it served me as three (okay, it was actually four) very unpleasant things happened to me all at once. Blood (not mine), penises (also not mine), and vehicle damage (sadly, mine) are all involved; take this as...