A quick hello

Just so that you don’t forget me.

My backyard “office” on a Spring day

My dearest Readers,

I hope you are doing well and that this late Spring is helping to heal hearts, minds, and, yes, the anxiety.

I’m writing this missive from the table in my backyard on a warm Spring day. It has been (gasp) more than a month since my last missive. Though I’ve been sharing notes within Substack and have been somewhat active on my Twitter and Facebook, I have spent these weeks focusing on teaching my classes at one of the local community colleges here.

And it’s May, so you know what that means? Finals.

And if you know me any amount of time, you know that I have piles of papers to grade and final exams to prepare. That means that my silence has been a ball of meetings, grading, more meetings, teaching and prep for what the summer will bring.

So, until the next missive, here’s a bit of a catch up:

• I was accepted into the Yale Summer Writer’s Workshop. I’ll be working on my memoir for a week in June. In fact, add prepping my workshop materials to my ever growing list of things to do because it’s due on Sunday.

• I will be teaching some creative writing classes in the summer. The first one, “A Workshop of Unusual Texts” is a generative workshop. If you’re in Houston, this may be a great time to take an afternoon and write for fun. It’ll be on June 10.

• I’ll be teaching another writing workshop in July, I believe. It may be online. Stay tuned for that.

• May 11 I’ll be one of several readers at the final event for the Texas Poet Laureate. I’m excited about this reading!

• Travel will be part of my plans but I don’t know in what context yet. Stay tuned.

So, how am I doing? How am I healing? Well, that will have to be another topic for another day. So much to tell on that front as well but I’d like to reflect on it more if that’s okay, Reader.

What am I listening to?

I have been living my best podcast listening self. One that I really enjoyed as of late is White Lies from NPR. After listening to both seasons variously, I can say, without a shadow of a doubt, I miss enterprising and investigative journalism. The premise of the show is to investigate some lesser known mysteries like the death of a civil rights activist or Cuban prisoners in an Alabama prison in the 90s. It’s about following the little white lies (get it it?) that have been told and exposing the truth.

Highly recommend.

What am I reading?

Can you believe I found time to read? Actually, I’m audiobooking it more often these days. Two memoirs have had my attention on long drives into work. Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking is playing in my car stereo at the moment. Previous to that was In Love by Amy Bloom. Both of these memoirs have to do with grief and death of a partner. While my former partner is still among the living, I am still in grief. Listening to these books have been like a handbook to me. There’s an odd comfort and a kinship. Different kind of pain but pain nonetheless. This, along with journaling, has kept me grounded.

Until the next time, Reader.