Archive • Sleeping with Monsters • Buttondown

2023 Kill List: Medication-Induced Heat Intolerance

November 25, 2023

This piece was killed for a host of reasons, but the main one was we were both out of time for this to be timely (it was then September, summer heatwaves...

2023 Kill List: Narrative Therapy

November 22, 2023

I'm going to be sharing a few pieces I worked on this last year that got killed for various reasons out of my/my editors' control. These specific pieces not...

Shiny Happy Things

Hello. It's been a while. Last year was tough. I didn't write almost at all. Instead I did a lot of foundation repair work, and focused on routine and...

Making home, making stories, making a life

November 11, 2021

This week I have one of my brothers staying with me. He's helping me around the house, I'm listening to him talk. We're both in transition, figuring things...

Friendship loss grief

September 22, 2021

I promised a newsletter about that particular grief of losing a close friend to a relationship, and I’ve been sitting on it because I don’t know how to write...

morality dysmorphia

bodily dysmorphic disorder (not to be confused with dysphoria, a different experience) is the mental condition of feeling detached and uncomfortable with...

TO WHOMEVER OF THE HRHs IT MAY CONCERN

DATING TIPS FOR NEWLY SINGLE MONARCHS Your prince consort has just died. This is tragic, but not unexpected. After a lifetime of duty (70 plus years of...

Sleeping With Monsters, now on buttondown

Sleeping With Monsters an occasional newsletter, now off substack Hi friends, I'm not going to get deep into the reasons I'm here now instead of on Substack,...

Saturday buffet

February 13, 2021

I’ve written a bunch of things over the last year+ that have gotten published this last week and the week before. Please enjoy. Sleeping With Myself, at The...

on wanting revelation

January 30, 2021

“What do you think you are on the edge of?”“I don’t know. Revelation.”-----The Road to Damascus carries with it a promise of possible universes that plagues...

knocking around

December 30, 2020

The semester is over. I am officially unemployed until the end of January, when the spring classes start. Such is the life of an adjunct. I am still writing...

running up that hill

December 18, 2020

I got myself a pink Christmas tree this year. Something about how nothing feels real in 2020 made this feel right—let’s make ridiculous choices, see if we...

December 5, 2020

This is a formal response essay I wrote for a CNF class with Thorpe Moeckel at Hollins U in Feb. of 2019. I’m putting it up here so I can reference it...

December 1, 2020

Hello, hello. Thank you for your kind responses to the last letter I sent out. Feeling loved and getting bits of the glinds (happy recognition emotion term...

hello yes attention please

November 20, 2020

(I actually hate the term “housekeeping” for informative administrative conversations or announcements, please tell me what terms you like to use as...

November 5, 2020

when you have good soil, you can grow the garden you dream of. the other factors—climate, water, sun—are important but they could all be perfect and without...

Miscarriage and being seen

October 5, 2020

Like many people living alone during Covid-times, I have been watching celebrity Instagram videos for company late at night, and have thus been following the...

September 29, 2020

I’ve been thinking and talking about what it means to have a sense of self all summer—how do I know who I am, how my life and actions are perceived by others...

Learning to sit

I’m training my sister’s dog for her this month. Lola is a hound/dinosaur mix with black eyeliner and soft short fawn-colored fur. She sings the song of her...

some recent conversations with Emily VanDerWerff dislodged a memory and I wanted to write about it. celebrate the final days of Pride month by donating to a...