I went to Northern Arizona in June for six days, and I went alone. I wanted to take a break from the verdant Pacific Northwest and gorge myself on big, flat, red, dry, hot land. I wanted to spend a few quiet days not doing anything with anyone. I wanted to write. Mostly, I wanted to…
How’s the book going, they ask me. They always ask me that: how’s the book going. I shouldn’t’ve mentioned it in the first place. Now everyone just wants to know how the book is going all the time. It's fine, you can keep asking me, I like the attention, I love that you care, it's…
“Do you believe this?” My family went to Israel. It was a great trip. I mean great like fun, and great like eye-opening, and great like broad in scope, and great like significant. We drove the width and breadth of Israel, from the Negev Desert to the Syrian border, from the Jordan River to Tel…
I'm finishing up the edits on the draft of my book because I'm writing a book about my experience on the World Race in 2014. It's so much work and I'm still chugging, I've been chugging since it was dark and cold and now it's hot and light and I'm still chugging. I still don't have…
I boarded the 40 around noon on Thursday and there weren't many people on it, but there was a woman with sensible pink lipstick and cropped gray hair and a pleasant demeanor speaking with a man across the aisle who had a red beard and a dirty reusable grocery bag full of old things and…
Invariably, when I go on a run, I put on running clothes, sure and lace my Camino shoes tight. I find the earbuds that don’t fall out and I take the house key off my keychain put it in the tiny pocket in my shorts and bolt out the front door. I run for two blocks…
Continue reading ➞ What I Actually Mean When I Talk About Running
Today is April 5, 2018. On April 5, 2017, my grandma, my dad’s mother, died. On December 5, 2016, when she was sick, I wrote this letter. I wish I had given it to her, but I can still give it to you. Dear Grammy, Tonight I put lotion on the burn that the angry…
It is seven o'clock on Sunday night and I have been on the couch since two o'clock with a mild case of writer’s block. Which is annoying because I'm writing a book. I say "mild" because it’s not that I can’t write. It’s just that I can’t write anything that's not crap. I was trying…
Twice a week, I babysit for an Israeli family. My job is to pick up their six-year-old son and take him home from school and play with him for two hours. This kid loves lavender. He grabs fistfuls from the bushes on the Queen Anne sidewalks and puts it in my face, then in his pocket.…
I'm writing a book. It's about... just click that link. I'm halfway through a painstaking round of edits: so far, I've got through Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Bulgaria, Albania, and Zambia. I'm keeping a list of everything I've fact-checked. why scary airplane landing tegucigalpa la ermita meaning honduras how dangerous ranking what's up with rebar cinderblock…
"Do one thing every day that scares you"? Eleanor Roosevelt didn't say that. It was probably Mary Schmich, a Chicago Tribune columnist who wrote it in a 1997 essay. Whoever it was, the point stands. Last week I noted four times I did something that scared me. None of them, I had done before. Some…
When you eat alone, and the restaurant is empty, you can type on your laptop and eat a whole pizza. And drink a beer too. I drink the Umbrella IPA, which I read on the wrinkled tap list is redolent of “gooseberry and bright fruit... balanced by a pale malt character.” After it's gone, I’ll…
Chelsea the Writer 