Finding the rhythm of “enough" and “try harder” has always been a difficult balance for me.
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An overdue realization hit me: The day when I became Craft Girl Fantasy was never going to come. My precious stacks of scrapbooking paper weren’t doing anyone any favors in these forgotten drawers.
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The small things you can do (make caramel! make sushi! fix bikes! fix pipes!) to make your life feel more interesting and valuable.
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Honestly, there’s really nothing better than when someone asks me to draw something for them. Drawing makes me feel good; it makes me happy. When I don’t have to think of something to draw myself, because someone gives me a photograph to work off of, it is a huge relief.
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How one of the worst days of my semester became one of the best days of my life.
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The comically terrible culmination of an unbelievably rough semester.
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This little literary journal became a home for an unbridled fury of cat drawings.
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I've been working on this essay about owls for over a year now, which means I've cut almost everything I had written at first out of it completely.
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I can't get water to sit still.
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If I could have made Ben's wedding all about me and spent a full hour giving a toast, it might have gone like this.
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With one eye closed, measuring the beak, she said, “Daniel asked me earlier, ‘Why does it have to be right?’ And I think that’s a very good question.”
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Someone hacked into my account. I spent hours trying to get it figured out. Now, Google is charging ME MORE money.
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When I got home, I wondered if the coyote crossing my path could have been some kind of omen or symbol or indication of what I ought to expect in my life.
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Saturday — the day of Chicago's Bud Billiken Parade — was a cake-taking day of sorts; one of the best days of the entire year.
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Oscar Wilde said, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”
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I’m sitting in a corner at the Portland International Airport getting ready to fly back to Chicago, Illinois.
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Recently, my mom dug up her high school diaries. She left one out on the counter in our kitchen next to the toaster; this morning I read it over breakfast.
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Actually, as I am reflecting now from my high “I’m-a-real-writer” perch (on which, it should be noted, I am perfectly terrified), I think that maybe I just needed to be writing.
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I am on a train again. A train is my favorite place to be in the entire world. I know this now for sure because we just set out and my heart crushed in on itself and now I’m sitting at a booth in the lounge car smile-sobbing so hard someone came up to me and said, “You seem like you’re at a wedding, but I just wanted to check and see if you are ok.” I hugged that person. She left quickly.
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My friend George did an artist talk for our writing class last week in which he said something along the lines of (and I will not be able to write it as eloquently here), I understand that this is not fate; that this is a normal coincidence. But I don’t understand why one is considered more incredible or important than the other.
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