Dear C, Grief is a ninja. Did you know this? I think you probably did, after your dad died. I think behind your teary smiles, then, eventually, your bigger smiles, your trip-taking, dinner-party planning, that the grief ninja was hovering, kicking you in the knees now and then. We knew you were sad, we saw … More Grief is a Ninja
Here’s what I know, today. Leaving a job I hated–after trying so very hard to love it–was something I should have done sooner. For five years, I worked my heart out in the middle of a little island, doing work that felt important at the time. For over two of those years, I had been … More Don’t think. Just do.
There is a man who lives in his truck behind the church near our house. He’s been there since springtime. It didn’t take us long to give the dark-haired man a name: “Walter.” We felt unsettled that he was around, stuck, with seemingly no where to go. This is our neighborhood, our space. We walk the dog in the late evenings, and … More Not Walter
Walter White. If you know this name, you know Heisenberg. It’s been weeks since the series finale of “Breaking Bad.” In this house, we are veiled in lethargic mourning. Evening television is flat, faulty, unsatisfying now that we have finished a month-long Netflix marathon of watching the life of Walter White evolve and dissolve. I miss … More My Inner Heisenberg
said Alice Munro. Then she won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What a beautiful accomplishment for a woman who described herself this way: “I’m not really an intellectual,” […] “I was an okay housewife but I wasn’t that great.” Be inspired to do two things today: 1) Visit your library and take home a book … More “I think maybe I was successful in doing this because I didn’t have any other talents,”
It was a deal I’d made with myself months before and the only thing that allowed me to hike alone. I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a … More It was a deal I…
In late June, I took a Friday off from work and drove 90 miles north from Seattle to the Chuckanut Writers Conference, a two-day event led by some of the Pacific Northwest’s most gifted and influential writers. The days were divided into class sessions, with keynote lectures by faculty in the morning, at noon, and … More Notes from Chuckanut: Inspiration and Hard Truths
