Writing-a-Book Worries
I’ll give you a moment to digest what it is like for a worrywart to write a book. Try to imagine all there is to worry about.
I’ll give you a moment to digest what it is like for a worrywart to write a book. Try to imagine all there is to worry about.
Recently I wrote a piece called Easy Meditation, in which I shared a method I heard about on NPR. On that NPR segment, the author talked about allowing thoughts to pass through your mind like clouds.
My starter husband Saul and I began dating the week before I entered college; we married after my sophomore year and divorced during my junior year. I emerged from the husband, the garden apartment and the Impala sedan squinting from the sudden brightness of university life. At age twenty, for the …
I have a record of attraction to worn things. Before Kindle, back when I read paperback books, they appealed to me far more after I roughed them up with: dog-ears, notes in the margins and swollen pages from the times I read them in my hot tub.
Casey is healthy, spunky and—at 13 1/2—still learning new tricks, like wagging his tail. Yet today I awoke vocalizing a name for my next dog.
It’s a common occurrence in New York and other cities. You put your key in the lock of your apartment building and someone is about to follow you inside. What do you do? Usually in the interest of security I ask if the person lives there and then request they …
My New Year’s resolution is to learn how to play Angry Birds. But an essay in the New York Times suggests that daydreaming increases creativity. Daydreaming requires time, time I dump into playing Words With Friends. Words With Friends, though, is more than just words. It’s confirmation that my sister, my …
On an ordinary afternoon in 1998, Eliza, my sixteen-year-old daughter, plopped her backpack at my feet, waved a brochure so close it grazed my nose and declared, “I’m signing up for the Marine Corps Marathon. I’ll be running with a group that raises money for AIDS and trains Sunday mornings …
When I, always the initiator, smile at a stranger and the stranger smiles back, it puts a musical note in my step. Or in my pedal, as was the case on Christmas Eve day. I was on a long bike ride from New Jersey to Staten Island and, when a driver …
In my post My Year of Blogging, I noted that writing personal essays involves catching yourself in the act of thinking and then exposing and exploring it on the page. Here’s something I do every single day, and it was not until this morning that I caught it in my …
‘Tis the season to obsess . . . about gifts. For someone like me, who gets overwhelmed by choices, and–even when the options are narrowed to two–can’t decide, this can be a hard time of year. So I resort to creative gift-giving, like ice cream sodas for the third night …
One day, after hours of sliding my cursor from Twitter to Facebook to Stats for my blogs and back to Twitter, when I should have been writing, I emailed Dr. M, a cognitive therapist. Dr. M had previously helped me understand that worry is an addiction; it hits the same pleasure …
At heart, I’m as much a salesperson as a writer. In 1978, I was recognized by Merrill Lynch for ranking second in opening new accounts among their first-year stockbrokers. During my next career, back in the days of print, selling my essays was harder. Some of my articles received a dozen …
I needed an antidote to worry this weekend, when my bike got a flat tire and then my car wouldn’t start. So here is the latest in my Antidote to Worry Series of food photos and such. Here’s how I compose this satisfying crunchy salad: A base of arugula Trader Joe’s …
Note to those of my peeps to whom Twitterspeak is as foreign as Uz-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan-ese: You may not want to slog through this one. If you do, RT means retweet. I spend a lot of time on Twitter sharing links to articles I write. I have cultivated a variety of followers. …
Is it a worrywart trait to seek pleasure on the highest plane? To always be wondering whether–no matter how good something is–it could be better? That’s how it is with me and eating. It’s a similar quest with family time. When I hear about a family who acts out Shakespeare …
If our family were contestants on a TV know-your-family game show, and the emcee were to ask, “Who is least likely to be a pest?” we would all shout “Emy!” The rest of us can be annoying, not least of all yours truly, but never Emy. When my three daughters were …
While shops experience brisker business on weekends, blog traffic slows, at least mine does. So I’m posting this shortie today, hoping for weekend visitors. What I’m about to write is one of those things I wouldn’t give a second thought to, were I not examining myself all the time for …
1955 After a swallow of dinner, I dirty my face with burnt cork and, on my shoulder, rest a broomstick with a bundle of rags tied to its end. I then prepare for the battle with my mom over not wearing a coat. I step into the hallowed night, wondering …
For my recent article on Home Goes Strong about Happiness at Home, I interviewed my blog crush Gretchen Rubin, whose book The Happiness Project–the same name as her blog–was a #1 New York Times best seller. Gretchen keeps a one-sentence journal, which she admits sometimes expands to 4 sentences. Says Gretchen, …
OccupyDC provides photo ops. Here are a few and, at the end, a link to my salade nicoise recipes. There’s a tie-in, sort of. Check out my quick, easy, delicious, low-cal Salade Nicoise Recipe with Countless Variations. What has struck you about the protests sites, either if you have seen them …
The other day, I bike downtown to the Newseum to hear a panel discussion by New York Times columnists. I leave home early enough to swing through McPherson Square, D.C.’s Occupy Wall Street venue. My immediate sense is a blast from the past, a hippie and flower child commune ambience. …
When I’m in New York, I like to hang out and write at Jack’s, a coffee place in the West Village with a patina that suggests long afternoons of sipping lattes and tapping on laptops. The overall look is shades of brown, like paper bags and coffee. Jack’s is so …
Up until I first got my period, I was Susie. In high school, I was Sue. After reinventing myself in college, I became Susan. My mom and, hence, other relatives continued to call me Susie. My dad called me Sooze, (pronounced Sooz, not Soozie) starting when I was 20 and began …
“Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” I’ve been thinking I should get a medical alarm button to wear like the one advertised in the campy Life Alert “Help! I’ve fallen!” commercial. My mom wore one until she died at age 92. Otherwise, how would I contact someone if I were …
Popcorn is one of my favorite comfort foods. It fills me up, is healthful, tastes delicious and I pretend that eating this overflowing pot of it, sprinkled with sea salt, won’t make me feel squeezed in the waist by my elastic waist pants. When my oldest daughter Eliza was a toddler, I …
Beware of asking me to rant. I am liable to start today, five days after autumn began (also National Good Neighbor Day and National Pancake Day), and never stop until Flag Day. If you really want to hear loud and wild talk, ask me about the leaf blowers whose noise …
You can tell a lot about a person’s life from the files they have open on their browser. Eugene, my computer guy, says I shouldn’t keep so many files open. But like with my desk, if I put things away, I’ll forget about them. So I leave them out and …
My very first Mr. Wrong told me, “Susie, what you need is a purpose.” That was in ninth grade. George, now a retired psychiatrist, was right. The benefits of having a purpose were never more obvious than after I launched my blog. The irony of blogging about being a worrywart, …