Last night, in a bout of writer’s block/what am I doing with my life despair, (after spending the evening complaining to Tom about not writing and then watching two hours of Sci-Fi TV (“The Expanse”), I logged onto the New York Public Library website and downloaded two books to my Kindle: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, by Haruki Murakami.
Continue reading “Two great books for when you’re feeling down and useless”
Category: Writing
Onward and Upward: A Thank You
It’s a good a day as any to share the news. And no, I am not engaged. Continue reading “Onward and Upward: A Thank You”
Tuesday
A few nights ago a friend from home called to catch up. She’d just come back from a three week trip in Southeast Asia and was met with news of not one but two engagements of her closest friends. In a week she would travel again to Canada to cheer her husband on in his Ironman, and after that, enjoy the three weeks left of summer vacation, courtesy of her Master’s program, to which, summer plans all said and done, she was looking forward to returning. Continue reading “Tuesday”
A Conversation With Hemingway*
A few weeks ago a coworker and I headed back to the office together after an offsite meeting.
His name was Hemingway*, after the writer he said, but his livelihood was in film. The short, thirty second variety – TV Commercials – TVCs or “spots,” as the industry has designated. He was an accomplished but not quite famous freelance director. Continue reading “A Conversation With Hemingway*”
Thoughts After a Long Day at the Office
Before you get too excited and congratulate me for my overdue re-introduction to society as a productive member, let me just say, I’m only halfway there.* Continue reading “Thoughts After a Long Day at the Office”
Book Radar: The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
Came across this essay in the Financial Times by Alain de Botton on how fictional representations of love can potentially ruin the real thing.
I didn’t date until I was 25, mostly because my years before were filled with crushes on celebrities and fictional characters ranging from Edward Norton to Anime cartoons. I’ve come a long way…I think, except for the moments during certain arguments with Tom, when I backtrack and think, “If Tom and I are meant for each other, why are we having another argument about _(insert topic here, involving anything from domestic inanities to personal values).”
Because, as Botton points out, very few people are “meant” for each other.
“…for most of us, our life’s problem isn’t finding a partner (that’s just one very important and at points thrilling phase), it is tolerating the candidate one eventually finds, and being tolerated by them, over time.
“A wiser culture than ours would recognize that the start of a relationship is not the high point that romantic art assumes; it is merely the first step of a far longer, more ambivalent and yet quietly audacious journey on which we should direct our intelligence and scrutiny.”
Makes sense to me, which is why I like Botton and why I’m marking my calendar to preorder his new book, an un-Romantic novel, The Course of Love, out on June 14th.
Starting Again.
A few days after I was fired, an ex-coworker I was just beginning to get to know and like reached out to me on LinkedIn: Continue reading “Starting Again.”
What I’m Reading: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.
Two years and forever ago, I took a “master class” with Zoe Heller, who wrote What Was She Thinking: Notes On a Scandal which was then adapted into a movie I loved called Notes on a Scandal, starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench. Continue reading “What I’m Reading: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.”
Moving Into My Upper West Side Studio: A New York Memory
My furniture came in two separate shipments. Continue reading “Moving Into My Upper West Side Studio: A New York Memory”
Six Years of Very Highbrow Resolutions
So this is a bit late. Who writes a resolutions-themed post in February? Continue reading “Six Years of Very Highbrow Resolutions”
