Last week, I took two weeklong summer immersion classes at the Second City Training Center in Chicago. The historic Second City theater opened its doors in 1959, and is known for launching the careers of comedy icons such as Bill Murray, Chris Farley, Mike Myers, Tim Meadows, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, and my personal false […]
Quick question: It’s normal to lose friends, right? Not just drift apart over the years, or misplace them in the backseat of your car. Just straight up abruptly lose them in the blink of an eye after certain things were said or done – or not said or not done. If I were to count, […]
Hey, world. Things are pretty bad right now, huh? As a person who measures stress with her body like a barometer, my body says: yes, they’re bad as hell. It’s not that something “new” is happening that wasn’t happening before. Hate, murder, and violence seem to be among this planet’s inexhaustible natural resources. But many […]
Life is full of tough questions, like have you invested way too much money and energy in a career that’s all wrong for you, are you spending enough time with your nieces and nephews or are they growing up without really knowing you as a constant presence in their lives, and should you Facebook friend […]
*I’ve been having my apartment professionally clean (on the CHEAP) by Handy for the past year or so. I live in a studio. I really don’t care how lazy this seems. I know myself, and the alternative is that the apartment never really gets cleaned until I move out and scrub the drywall off for […]
Rise and shine! What a beautiful day you have ahead of you to spend inside where it is always cold. I mean COLD, unlike this pesky comforter, which is pretty much DESIGNED to keep you in a cocoon of warmth not unlike your mother’s womb. Who needs THAT? The last thing you want to do […]
This past week, I traveled to sunny Los Angeles to attend the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ (AWP) annual conference. Now I’m back, and boy are my … ears? … tired? I was anxious before the event — 12,000 attendees being kind of a lot — and mentally prepared for some burnout and possibly a nervous […]
I’ve survived February — barely. Is it just me or does that month have a kind of Napoleon complex? By the end of the shortest month, I’m out of whack. My hair is a bundle of dried wheat. I have scales and flakes where my human skin once was. My body aches all over from trying to […]
I went on an amazing vacation recently. Snow-capped mountains, warm and sunny days, and a new pair of skis for my birthday. And for a not insignificant chunk of that trip, I was unnnnn-comfortable. Everyone has a comfort zone, and I was three nautical miles outside of mine. I was sick with a cold, then altitude […]
Ever had a bad day? Ever felt low energy, or just low? No? Then get off the internet, you charlatan. Seriously, sometimes life hands you not lemons but 10-pound lemon-yellow bowling balls covered in the gunk that makes movie theater floors so sticky. And in these moments, it’s important to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps […]