Sneaking This One In Before May Ends
Howdy, howdy, howdy,
It's time for me to jam on my keyboard for a while and think about what I'm doing with my life! I don't have a lot up top here, partly in the interest of time and partly because I can't quite settle on which of my half-baked writing ideas to share here now. A few days ago, I collected a couple dozen writing prompts that I've been scratching down in notebooks and post-its. What emerged was a clarity: some of those will be professional blog posts, some will be personal journalings, and some will be just a way to get a few other ideas marinating. My therapist and I have been talking about how I can keep cleaning through my Stuff, physical and mental, in productive ways that aren't overwhelming. Getting those prompts down on paper was one small step to clearing out some of my mental clutter. Be on the lookout for my hot hot hot takes on such topics as "authenticity" and "meetings"!
Reading:
Oops, I have too many books going on right now. I am revisiting Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the New Millennium. (Spoiler alert: the book contains five memos.) I've only ever read the first two essays, Lightness and Quickness, and that was 18 years ago. A conversation with a friend about the Netflix show 'Bonding' led me to wonder if I've been mixing up those two, or otherwise misunderstanding at least Quickness. I also started Jayson Greene's much-anticipated Once More We Saw Stars which is beautiful and heavy. I've known Jayson since we were about six years old. He is a supporting character in a few of my favorite stories from my later high school years. Later, he became a professional writer who would pop up in the most wonderful places. His two year old daughter died in a tragic accident, and the book chronicles the resultant grief. The final book I can remember at the moment is Ben Loory's Tales of Falling and Flying. These short shorts read like dreams and fables. I perceive less horror and more sadness in these compared to his earlier book I devoured back in 2013, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day.
Eating:
I met a friend for lunch at Vernick in "the new Comcast building" and the host sat us next to Pennsylvania's Attorney General. If you go, you will probably not also see him there but you should follow our lead and order a cookie tray for dessert. Other notable eating experiences this month include date night at Tater Tot Tuesday during Drag Bingo at Southhouse, a much-needed trip to Northeast Philly's Georgian Bread, roadside diner pie, breakfast at Ikea, and the world's best broccoli at Cheu Noodle Bar. Here's some bread that I baked, and the photo is blurrier than I thought it was! Oopsies! This is the best loaf I've made in a while.
Beating:
I have a thing for summer-themed mixtapes and the world keeps providing them. Researching for this letter, I discovered that though I have six volumes of DJ Jazzy Jeff & Mick Boogie productions along these lines, they're up to NINE in their Summertime Mixtape Series. My partial collection of same and some other choices can be downloaded from my Dropbox, which is so much easier to run than an FTP site. I've also been listening to Carole King and Dolly Parton songs. And, at the very moment, I'm listening to R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People which holds up as a very good album.
Meeting:
It feels like a light month ahead, owing to travel and some intentional Time Off from certain commitments. That said, I'm presenting at the Nonprofit Nerds Meetup at the Free Library of Philadelphia on June 10, appearing with Joe Tuzzi as TasteBudz on Mr. Carter's Compound at PHIT on June 14, and speaking alongside Marion Leary at CESTEMER in New York on June 21. Marion and I are excited to share the process and results of our collaboration that led to the Penn Nursing StorySlam a few months ago. Oh, and speaking of StorySlams, I'm scorekeeping the first First Person Arts StorySlam of the season, when we're back at L'Etage.
Deleting:
This section often feels like it's heading into boring territory very quickly, so let me ask you this: how do you organize the app icons on your phone? The other day, tired of scrolling and scrolling past apps I barely use, I decided to dump a bunch of those shortcuts that I only occasionally need (Seamless, Grubhub, GoPuff, there's a theme here) into a "Rarely Used" folder. It's a start!
Now that you've read this you should have a glass of water and so should I,
Neil
It's time for me to jam on my keyboard for a while and think about what I'm doing with my life! I don't have a lot up top here, partly in the interest of time and partly because I can't quite settle on which of my half-baked writing ideas to share here now. A few days ago, I collected a couple dozen writing prompts that I've been scratching down in notebooks and post-its. What emerged was a clarity: some of those will be professional blog posts, some will be personal journalings, and some will be just a way to get a few other ideas marinating. My therapist and I have been talking about how I can keep cleaning through my Stuff, physical and mental, in productive ways that aren't overwhelming. Getting those prompts down on paper was one small step to clearing out some of my mental clutter. Be on the lookout for my hot hot hot takes on such topics as "authenticity" and "meetings"!
Reading:
Oops, I have too many books going on right now. I am revisiting Italo Calvino's Six Memos for the New Millennium. (Spoiler alert: the book contains five memos.) I've only ever read the first two essays, Lightness and Quickness, and that was 18 years ago. A conversation with a friend about the Netflix show 'Bonding' led me to wonder if I've been mixing up those two, or otherwise misunderstanding at least Quickness. I also started Jayson Greene's much-anticipated Once More We Saw Stars which is beautiful and heavy. I've known Jayson since we were about six years old. He is a supporting character in a few of my favorite stories from my later high school years. Later, he became a professional writer who would pop up in the most wonderful places. His two year old daughter died in a tragic accident, and the book chronicles the resultant grief. The final book I can remember at the moment is Ben Loory's Tales of Falling and Flying. These short shorts read like dreams and fables. I perceive less horror and more sadness in these compared to his earlier book I devoured back in 2013, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day.
Eating:
I met a friend for lunch at Vernick in "the new Comcast building" and the host sat us next to Pennsylvania's Attorney General. If you go, you will probably not also see him there but you should follow our lead and order a cookie tray for dessert. Other notable eating experiences this month include date night at Tater Tot Tuesday during Drag Bingo at Southhouse, a much-needed trip to Northeast Philly's Georgian Bread, roadside diner pie, breakfast at Ikea, and the world's best broccoli at Cheu Noodle Bar. Here's some bread that I baked, and the photo is blurrier than I thought it was! Oopsies! This is the best loaf I've made in a while.
Beating:
I have a thing for summer-themed mixtapes and the world keeps providing them. Researching for this letter, I discovered that though I have six volumes of DJ Jazzy Jeff & Mick Boogie productions along these lines, they're up to NINE in their Summertime Mixtape Series. My partial collection of same and some other choices can be downloaded from my Dropbox, which is so much easier to run than an FTP site. I've also been listening to Carole King and Dolly Parton songs. And, at the very moment, I'm listening to R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People which holds up as a very good album.
Meeting:
It feels like a light month ahead, owing to travel and some intentional Time Off from certain commitments. That said, I'm presenting at the Nonprofit Nerds Meetup at the Free Library of Philadelphia on June 10, appearing with Joe Tuzzi as TasteBudz on Mr. Carter's Compound at PHIT on June 14, and speaking alongside Marion Leary at CESTEMER in New York on June 21. Marion and I are excited to share the process and results of our collaboration that led to the Penn Nursing StorySlam a few months ago. Oh, and speaking of StorySlams, I'm scorekeeping the first First Person Arts StorySlam of the season, when we're back at L'Etage.
Deleting:
This section often feels like it's heading into boring territory very quickly, so let me ask you this: how do you organize the app icons on your phone? The other day, tired of scrolling and scrolling past apps I barely use, I decided to dump a bunch of those shortcuts that I only occasionally need (Seamless, Grubhub, GoPuff, there's a theme here) into a "Rarely Used" folder. It's a start!
Now that you've read this you should have a glass of water and so should I,
Neil
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