I don’t look like a professor, or so I’ve been told in my almost 13 years in, or adjacent to, academia. Usually, that message is sent indirectly: a casual comment in the hall, a smirk, or a nicer-than-nice question regarding my hair, clothes, or tattoos. Other times, the message is direct and clear.
I Look Like A Professor Read More
When I have to describe the kind of writer that I am, I most often say I’m an essayist. Before I claimed the mantle of essayist, I read other writer’s bios and lingered over those who proclaimed to be essayists. What a bold claim. What a sense of knowing what you do and who you
I started writing my Grace Period series over two years. The first essay in the series was an accident. I just wanted to let people (friends, family, colleagues, and the random readers of my blog) that I was taking a year off to figure out what to do with my life. I had quit my
I slipped into a funk about my writing, especially about writing a book that no longer had a home, and about my life more generally. I decided that I hated writing, even as I continued to write columns, personal essays, pitches, and blog posts. I wrote and wrote and wrote. So maybe I didn’t hate
“Coffee. Mama coffee. Hot. Burn baby,” my toddler says to me while pointing at my plain white mug. “Mama’s coffee,” I respond with a smile. He often pretends to drink coffee from his older sister’s pink Barbie mugs. My almost-two-year-old associates me with hugs, kisses, cuddles, and coffee. This is not a surprise really, because
I started a TinyLetter in June. I’ve written two letters so far. I imagined that I might write a letter weekly, but my imaginings don’t often sit well with the reality of day-to-day life. Part of my slowness to write these letters is to figure out how they are different or similar from my other writing.