distraction no. 99: 2006 in Review

I started posting sporadically in this blog in 2006. I started by carrying some older posts from another anonymous blog over here as a tease. Then I deleted that anonymous blog and stayed here for good. Now, apparently, I can’t stop. So here’s to a new addiction, or, I should say distraction… I tell you—it’s [...]

On the Last Day of the Year…

I slept in.
When E suggested this idea to me last night—to go to bed without setting an alarm clock—I’d looked at him in confusion. What, like sleep IN? I’d asked.
Yes, he’d said. Sleep in!
The thought balloon above my head looked like this:
?!%&%%@$%(*(&*%&%???*&!##!@@@!!!&%!!?
But still I made a good effort. I did not set the alarm. [...]

Faint

When I was very young I was prone to fainting spells. I have multiple memories of standing upright one minute, fighting that dizzying wind that fogged out all feeling above my neck, thinking I could do it, feeling the hot and the cold and the pins and needles crawling upward until they blotted out my [...]

Crawling into the New Year

I haven’t been feeling too well physically. Combine that with my usual aversion to the end of the year + the impending start to a new year makes me maybe a little moody. I’ve started three posts here that I haven’t finished. I’ve stared at a blank white screen for many minutes and then turned [...]

Home

We were upstate for the holiday, there where the road signs were hard to find, where the directions to the house included such gems as “this road twists and turns a lot” (huge understatement) and “the road sign says the road ends, but don’t believe it—keep going” (true). We’d picked up the car left behind [...]

Read Me (or maybe you’d better not)

The short story that recently got accepted to a lit journal had me thrilled, as you know, and pretty much bouncing off the walls for a few days, but there is also a sobering detail to the whole happy-dance. You see, the story is about my mother. It is fiction. (It is! I swear!) And [...]

Clean

Yesterday was a day in which I didn’t write. Not a single word. I didn’t think of writing, didn’t even make an attempt. I was another person yesterday, one who slept late, who shopped, who cleaned, which involved getting rid of the old manuscript pages that had been clogging up the bedroom, and putting clean [...]

Yes

I got a yes on a short story earlier this week, and here was the moment, a physical memory, and this one good:
The day at work was long over, but I was still in my office. The cubes outside my office were dark, the cleaning people had already dropped the plastic bag outside my door, [...]

Inspired by Openings

I love the “Shelf” section on W’s Loud Solitude.
There is something so tantalizing about catching a glimmer of a book from peeking at its first line. This is how I usually decide what to read in a bookstore or a library. My first influence is, of course, the title on the spine. But once the [...]

Words to Describe What Happened Yesterday

Embarrassing.
 
 
 
Depressing.
 
 
 
Demoralizing.
 
 
 
The suck.
 
Basically, a freelance project I wrote just got rejected by the people who own the product. Like really rejected. Like they know their product better than anyone else and so they’d rather totally redo it themselves. Makes sense, yes, but unfortunately the insults were passed on to me, too.
I was reeling. I’m still reeling. [...]

Distractions from Distractions

The practical thing would be to revise my novel. Or, I have a big project coming up, one I’m working on with another writer, and which I will be focusing on with great intensity the rest of this month. I should be getting a jump on that this morning, instead of residing in my usual [...]

A Day off from Work: Like Chocolate Ice Cream*

One day just isn’t enough, like one spoonful of chocolate ice cream isn’t enough (especially when it is chocolate-chocolate-chip). And this is why I am not allowed to buy pints of Haagen-Dazs. I shouldn’t have taken today off, because now I really, really don’t want to go in tomorrow. To make matters worse—because I am [...]

Not Saturday

Today feels like Saturday. I could’ve sworn it was, when I awoke this morning, when I heard our upstairs neighbor stomping in her heels in her early-morning relay race to find a suitable outfit to wear (the girl wears her heels even to brush her teeth at night; I imagine them to be fuzzy-toed and [...]

Physical Memory

I have a physical memory when it comes to rejection. Reading a writer friend’s post on her own recent rejection sent my memory soaring back to the lobby of the Loew’s Village VII movie theater, the one with the narrow staircases between floors, and of standing in a distinct spot near the water fountain on [...]

Open Letter to People at Work

Dear Coworkers:
I’m not sure if anyone from work reads this blog. I mean I hope not, but you never know. So if you do happen upon this post, please note that I WOULD PREFER IT IF YOU DID NOT TELL ME YOUR SALARY and/or how much your raise was. I really don’t want to know. [...]

The Perfect Day

The clocks stop. For breakfast I write a short story in one sitting. For lunch I have raspberry pancakes, write the first line of something new, fold it into seven sections, and put it away for tomorrow. After lunch I nap—it doesn’t matter how long, the clocks have stopped. (E is there; he’s finished his [...]

Lost Weekend

The weekend spun out of control. No—no blackouts; I didn’t steal a car. More like I just lost the weekend to work: a freelance project due Monday, and not of the writing flavor, either. Let’s just say my red pencils are worn down to dull nubs and I have pink eraser dust all over my [...]

Lilya 4-Ever…

I first saw the movie Lilya 4-Ever by myself in a practically empty theater in the middle of a weekday, on a whim—knowing nothing of what to expect, just that it was about a girl, and there would be subtitles, and was showing at 1 o’clock. I sat toward the front. Two men were in [...]

Hypothetically

Say my lease renewal for my teeny-tiny but perfectly located apartment arrived in the mail today. And say it noted a rent increase. And say that rent increase was way, way, way more than what I expected, and that it starts April 1 and I have to sign it within 60 days of receipt to [...]

Ambition

I expect so much of myself, always have. I’m not sure where this drive came from… Growing up around people who had little to no ambition, combined with always wanting to be opposite to everyone else, perhaps? It was common in my circle of family and family friends for people to have dead dreams they [...]