Twenty years ago, I drove from Oklahoma to Pennsylvania to pick up my girlfriend, a recent college graduate. On the drive back, I proposed to her in Oklahoma (she said yes). We kept driving west. We arrived in Portland on July the 4th. I sort of registered the significance back then, but we hit the ground running since we didn’t …
I’ve had many blogs over the years. Blogger, LiveJournal, Tumblr, my own domain … I had a blog on each one. When I founded my business, I thought it would be better to have content writing topics at Enlighten Writing, and other topics on a different blog. I joined the Rainmaker platform and then Medium.com for awhile. Neither situation worked …
We’re all drafts. Our lives are spent making notes on the backs of hands, in files, or on scraps of paper, musing on half-finished ideas, starting and abandoning projects, and constantly revising what we do finish. I like to be busy, I like to listen, and I love telling stories. These desires, for a long time, have been mutually exclusive. …
It seems like a social media rite of passage to write about quitting Facebook. Many hate its privacy (or anti-privacy) policies. Then there’s the company’s brazen admittance that it messed with its users emotions. I get it. I’m not a fan (friend?), either. I’ve deactivated my account before, and I haven’t had the mobile app in years. But I still …
The last time I spent time with my Dad, before the end, was around June 5, 2011. He had just recovered from surgery, and I wanted to see him and spend a couple of days with him. We went to Chicago Street Deli in Shawnee, Oklahoma, I took a huge coffee to go. He drove us to the part of …
Whenever I want to type, “last year was challenging,” I always feel the need to write about the year before that for context, because that year was challenging, too. But then that year requires the previous year for context, and so on. I have to go back to when my life went from manageable and relatively calm to one filled …
As a freelance writer near Portland, Oregon, I appreciate songs that are powerful and meaningful. Portland is a music-loving city. And, of all the content in the world, nothing brings people together or tears them apart more than a song. Many of my friends, past and present, would happily classify themselves as music elitists. I’m firmly in the “I …
