Losing

I’m someone who is fairly accustomed to winning things. Debate rounds, scholarships, jobs, contests. Not NCAA March Madness pools, perhaps, but a lot of other things. Late yesterday, it was announced that I will not be winning the Amazon Breakthrough…

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A Fresh Start

I don’t want to talk about healthcare today. Not much, anyway. It’s weird to be in a maelstrom of euphoria that seems so unwarranted and unfounded, touched with a counterpoint of ludicrosity almost as bizarre. It’s a little like the…

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A New Hope

Two days ago, I was falling apart. Now I’m putting it all back together. In fact, I started writing a post called “Disintegration” around this time on 3 March. All I could get through was a single line. It read:…

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Wildly Content

Waking up to a snowstorm, with a tournament ahead and yesterday’s great news behind, I find myself to be wildly content. It may seem like a strange state of being, to feel such a passionate sense of a relatively dispassionate…

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American Dream On Advances in ABNA!

About an hour ago, it was announced that American Dream On had bested 80% of its competition in the General Fiction category of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award and has moved on to the second round. Given that was based…

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Snow Days (or: Why New Jersey Isn’t So Bad)

We are living right now under a swirling Nor’easter that reminds me why Emily was able to convince me to move back to the East Coast. My love for snow simply can’t be underestimated. Really can’t. I am just walking…

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Inspiration

Rarely do I feel as inspired in my life as when I’m just starting out on a car trip (of almost any length), looking forward to where I’m going, with music blasting. Life is just good under those conditions, but…

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Soup Can Labels Can Be Interesting

When I was enrolled at Clatsop Community College in the fall of 1990, I took English 101 as one of my three classes. And in it we had one of these dismal textbooks that was about writing and the writing…

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Experimentality

I have been having a tough time the past 60 hours. Not really bad, just weird. It’s mostly the result of trying to figure out how to approach the next writing project, Good God. As my first non-fiction effort longer…

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