It’s been one year. Every morning as I get dressed and ready for whatever my schedule has in store I look at this picture, which is hanging on the wall in my closet. On some days it’s just a quick and meaningful glance as I walk out to my bedroom: I do the mental equivalent of football players jumping up and smacking a motivational sign on their way out of the locker room. On other days I stand under the picture, which hangs just above my eye level, and think about a conversation she and I once had or silently let her know that she’d love what I’m doing that…
-
-
Protecting My Peace
I want to tell you about a new writing project I’m very excited about: I got started over on Substack so I could connect with a lot of my writer/OG blogger friends: it’s easy to read and comment on each other’s posts because they’re all under one umbrella. I started a publication over there to claim a little more world wide web space but I have NO plans of giving up this site, my little corner of the internet that belongs to me and me only. I’m sure you’ve noticed that I don’t write nearly as much here as I used to, and it might bug you…or it might not.…
-
It Just Seems Write.
Let me take a second to congratulate myself on a clever title for a post about writing notes to friends. See what I did there? Go, Melisa! When all of the self-isolating (or social distancing, physical distancing, quarantining, or whatever we’re calling it these days) started a couple of months ago, the vast majority of us resorted to doing whatever made us feel better. That is to say, in a time when we’ve had (and continue to have) to do something that is for the most part extremely uncomfortable—staying home most or all of the time—it seems only natural that we would choose to spend our time doing the things…
-
#NaBloPoMo 2018: Check!
Today is the last day of November, and that means National Blog Posting Month, or NaBloPoMo, is drawing to a close. I have attempted to blog every day in November for the last decade. I think I only “failed” once, though I don’t really count it as a fail since I tried my best and I was my only judge and jury. I thought this month was going to be really tough since I was traveling for 14 days out of 30, but I was wrong. I pre-scheduled 3 or 4 posts ahead of our Maui trip because I didn’t know what to expect as far as writing time, and…
-
The Lost Craft
Did you know I used to be a crafting wizard? It’s a fairly well-known fact among those who know me that I’m very creative and know my way around a wide variety of supplies from any arts and crafts store, but most of the friends who I’ve met in the past decade have no idea how big my obsession was. (I did craft shows, for goodness’ sake!) I come by it honestly; a love of creating with our hands runs in the family. I vividly remember following my mom into Lee Wards Craft Store when I was very young. At every visit she picked up the supplies she needed for…
