Blogging is dead but here I am. It's fourth of July 2026 and I'm off from teaching (well, sort of. I did teach an online zoom summer camp for high schoolers for the Kenyon Review and I am also teaching two online asynchronous classes for college students so I guess I'm working?) but there's less pressure, a bit more breathing room, and I can just do some things.  But what?

I am a very bad "get published" writer. I'm a very good writer. I write every day. I revise. I reflect. I read work by friends. I never send my own stuff out and when I do, it's late, or in a spurt of energy and things have typos and mistakes and I'm just UNNNHHH. 

I guess that's fine. It's about the love of the writing for me, and in my younger days I might have felt a little "less than" but not now. I love to write and share what I write. I do miss going to open mics and readings. I miss the excitement of sharing something with someone and them sharing their work with me. 

I love reading work by other writers. I love editing. I feel like if I were more organized I'd be dangerous.

A friend asked me to send her some poems (for like a week and a half!) to be considered for a BIG publication she was editing. That's called AWESOME. Still, I didn't send until this morning after her post yesterday that "today will probably be the day I make final decisions" so there's that. 

I guess this post might be about self-sabotage or maybe it's actually "who cares?" 

I've been thinking lately about a couple of mentors of mine who passed away before they really and truly got a lot of their own work out there. One was a novelist and fantastic editor who won a couple of book prizes and had publications and a great reputation but could've been SUPER famous and successful. The other was a wonderful actor/acting teacher professor who was working on a book about acting but died before it was finished or published. 

I do sometimes think of the importance of sharing our stories and our experiences, though there's also something to be said for just evaporating into the star-filled sky, right?

Someone will discover a poem you wrote or an old book of yours one day and be in awe of you. 

I do that all the time. I'm like "why have I never heard of X before? OMG this is amazing." 

Yeah. There's that. 

Go out today and live your life. Write. Sing. Dance. Life is short. Getting your work out there is good but it doesn't have to be published to get out there. 

You can make stickers and put them in bus stops. Make flyers and stick them on cork boards. You can write a blog no one reads, like this one. 

I love you, artist creative nuts person. 

Keep going. 
xoko

​That was going into a political rant so I stopped it there for my own sanity. There are beautiful people on social media too, and I often go to their accounts, like the one above, to remind myself it's ok to be having these feelings right now, and it's ok that my mind and my body are tired. And sometimes ill, like today. And I feel bad because I had to cancel a class that I was looking forward to teaching today - and it's only Week 3, but one of the things I like to model for my students is SELF CARE and balance. Yes, we all have commitments and responsibilities, but OURSELVES should always be at the top of the list. This is not a lesson I had learned when I was younger (or even five years ago). I remember working sick and people applauding my "commitment." Gross. I remember saying yes to SO MANY THINGS I should've said no to, because my time and energy mattered but I never put myself first. 

I do now. Bandwidth is important. Burn out is something real. PTSD and Trauma Response are real, and you don't have to have gone to a horrible war to get these things. I had ten years of everyone I loved dying in succession every six months. I had miscarriages. I adopted my nieces and raised and was guardian for them after my sister's stroke. I set aside my big dreams to support other people reaching their big dreams. 

My biological father was a worrier who was constantly trying to impress his dad (who I found out later was a sexist misogynist who had life-long affairs with multiple women and fathered children with multiple women and even paraded one of his long-time affairs at holidays in front of my grandmother.) I loved my grandfather, but NO. Why would my father want to impress someone like that? I don't know.  My dad died of a Heart Attack at 64 never really doing what he had dreamed of doing. 

My step father died at 54, the same age I am. He, too, tried to impress his father his whole life. He divorced my mom and remarried another woman who was REALLY DIFFERENT from my mom, but he was able to achieve a few dreams with her (buy a house, open a restaurant that later went bankrupt, etc.) But he died of Pancreatic Cancer. 

My mom  -- same story. Breast Cancer, then a really bad heart attack and then a stroke during surgery that took away her ability to communicate clearly (and she was ALL ABOUT storytelling), eat solid food, and be mobile. She, too, died never having felt she achieved any of her dreams. 

These are sad anecdotes, but they're here for me to remind me to take care of myself. There's NOTHING so important that can't wait. And if you have friends who don't understand when you cancel, if you have family that want all of your time, if you have colleagues who shift the work bulk to you , I am giving you permission RIGHT NOW to say NO. 

And also, don't wait until you're sick to take those sick days. That's what I'm going to remember after today. 

There's a movie I love, Cousins, where one character talks the other into calling in "well" because it's a beautiful day and life is short. 

Call in well. Do it tomorrow. You're allowed to LIVE.

It's been a long (last) week and a long few weeks and a very long few months and super fxcked up long year. We all know why. So -- with all the stuff going on in my life, I feel lucky that I'm able to have a "bed day" to address those "bad days."  Yesterday my sweetheart and I splurged on a big meal out at one of our favorite restaurants, and it was good to get out in the world (since I so often am house-bound due to anxiety). 

And today I am off work, so I slept in very late and then woke and decided that it's a good day to cocoon a bit, do some writing, reflecting, maybe clean my room, hang out in a small, quiet space etc. 

I find that having a bed/room day is a nice thing! This is why hotels are appealing. It's a single room with all the nice amenities and room service! (And I'm lucky to have room service today courtesy of my sweetheart who gets to work from home today, so I have hot coffee, company from my cats, a beautiful view of a grassy, bush-filled, tree-lined, gnarly, wild green hillside, and bright light from my windows. 

I've only been up an hour as I write this and it's nice I get to close the door on the world and not worry about some of that stuff and just read and write and scroll videos and do what I want. 

Some people go outside and take hikes and walk. I like the relaxation of that as well, and also of the ocean, or a good coffee shop with nice tables. But sometimes the quietude of the bedroom is where it's at.