When I was nine, my mom taught me how to sew.
I don’t know what it was about fourth grade that made her think I was ready. Maybe I’d been asking for way too long already. Maybe she realized I was too cautious to hurt myself. Maybe she was around that age when her own mom taught her. Though I don’t remember my grandma ever sewing anything. She must have at some point, right? Before she was thrust into a world of capitalism and Kohl’s coupons?
Read MoreI abandoned a lot of books in September.
I’m continuing to abandon them now. Just last night, I stopped reading a book 60 pages in to start reading another one. Last week, I was force to abandon the incredible Women Talking by Miriam Toews because of a due date at the library. I was 60 pages in on that one as well, a significant turn in the way I saw the book and how I processed the characters. But that’s this month. That’s another story altogether.
Read MoreIt’s unfair to compare the two experiences, but my brain can’t help it.
While the Rushing workshop was all about resolving the distance between the play that was in my head and what I put on paper — and eventually the stage — the Voyagers workshop was all about creating distance between what I thought this play was and what this play actually wants to be.
Read MoreWhen people ask me what I’m working on, 90% of the time I lead with Rushing.
I’m proud of it, for one. I’m proud of how much work and research I put into this play — and how beautiful the whole thing functioned in my mind for basically the entire writing process. And I’m an insecure writer. I need a lot of outside validation that the thing I’m working on is worth the mental gymnastics that almost always go dark. But it’s also worth saying that this beautiful play in my head just wasn’t making its way onto the actual page. Until literally last month.
Read MoreThis is going to sound super cliché and the furthest thing from genuine, but I’ve missed this space. After writing a new blog post every Monday for months, I just stopped. It started as a pause. And then it became a habit. And now, six weeks in, I’m feeling that itch to check in again. Starting with the books I read in August feels like both a toe and a plunge. There were weeks at a time in August when I didn’t read, followed by days of binging page after page.
Read MoreThe majority of my reading for July was comics and graphic novels. It’s funny how things work out that way, even when you rely on the library for your reading material. Big Questions by Anders Nilsen arrived with plenty of time for our graphic novel book club meeting, but it was followed shortly after by both volumes of Skyward by Joe Henderson & Lee Garbett and The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui.
Read MoreI’m reading and writing a lot these days about a subject that turns my stomach.
Before I go on, I want to say that today’s blog post is about the fanaticism of college football and, more importantly and more disturbingly, the pattern of rape that many Division I teams cover up. I’m not trying to trigger folks. That’s the last thing I want to do. But please know the general outline of this content before you keep reading.
Read MoreLast week I saw a play that got me so riled up and angry.
In fact, when I criticized the play on the way home, my friend said “I’m sorry you hated it.” I didn’t hate it. Hating something doesn’t bring out intense emotions and critique, at least not for me. When I tried to relay my same critique to J, who had not seen the play and didn’t know anything about it. In fact, he’d been at work when I was out galavanting around town, seeing free theatre. He was tired. I was tired. And he said, “I’m sorry it was a waste of your time.”
It wasn’t a waste of my time. It wasn’t.
Read MoreLast night I said something that would have ruined my 25-year-old self.
Last night I got a text from a producer at 9:45PM, a text that the victim-blaming society that lives inside of me would say I asked for. I’d exchanged numbers with this producer at the top of the year, I justified. It made sense that he was using it. But it didn’t make sense that he was using it, not really. Phone numbers are for friends, not for texts from work contacts. They’re for pre-planned phone meetings, not for questions that could be answered in an email. And they’re certainly not for 10PM last minute meetings on Sunday nights.
Read MoreI showed up early to a meeting yesterday.
Like, really really early. Like, it would have been embarrassing if I wasn’t meeting with two of my closest friends, one who I call “best” and one who wears the title unspoken. So instead of waiting in front of our meeting place, head down, thumbs tangled in my phone, I walked. And then I realized I was a block away from a pier. So I walked there too.
Read MoreThis last month was a roller coaster of reading. I read so many books quickly — within a couple of days, within 24 hours — and others took me weeks to get through. Sometimes reading is like that: a breeze, an uphill battle. That’s why I only write about books I love. Because the ones I don’t aren’t worth dwelling in.
Reading should be fun. That’s what I keep reminding myself. Reading should be fun.
Read MoreThere are four plays about the Voyager mission.
The first one is mine, but it clearly wasn’t the first one. Because to be first implies that I completed a draft before anyone else. In November 2016, full of pain and only just finally being able to crawl out of bed — I was freelance, or “freelance,” and in more pain than I had the right to be in — I reconnected with Maureen Monterubio. She wanted to submit something to the Samuel French Off-Off-Broadway Short Play Festival, something with a bite of hope, something to get us moving and creating.
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