deep in the project
In the last two days I’ve spent four hours in 1995. My journals from then, that is. Sitting for this long with the 21/22-year-old me has been amusing,...
the invisible projects
fruits of invisible project The energy came from somewhere, I don’t know where, but I decided to use it. The bookshelves have needed weeding and rearranging....
process notes
a panoramic scene from my mood tracking app 1 — reading through the journals, marking pages of note to transcribe Transcribing journals, beginning this time...
mile marker 15
We’ve been celebrating the kid’s birthday for the past week. I’m now the parent of a fifteen-year-old. Late in the year that I was fifteen, I remember...
syllabi
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. The following is a reformatted and rearranged collage of fragments from different syllabi and teaching notes that I’ve...
the villains we know
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. don’t mind if I do On Friday I ventured into my office cupboards where I recently relocated all my journals. There was a...
gentle disruption of autumn patterns
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. just living wherever it feels like September 28th was the date of the last official event I did this year to support the April...
my little media ecosystem
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. she’s everywhere You might recognize the image above. It’s from The New York Times’ game Wordle. I haven’t been a subscriber...
cook, concoct, conjure
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. Learning more about ancestors. Making strides in the reading of three tomes. Singing to the garlic, undressing them, taking off...
evil
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. I missed you last week. In September, Lexi Kent-Monning, author of Burden of Joy, and I talked about my books, journaling, Apt....
diversion: Mudhoney (revisited)
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. diversion (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition): The act or an instance of diverting or...
cannabis charcuterie board, book talk, & Prison Library Project book drive, all in one
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. If you’re in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 28th, you’re 21+, and you like talking about books and ouid: RSVP here Special...
revival
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. the monstera in my office enjoys life “A new lease on life.” First of all, why a lease? I can’t own my life? Still, the phrase...
covid notebook
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. a scene from a covid bed I couldn’t have scheduled a better week for having covid. Not that this bout with covid, my second,...
animal joy
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. When I wake up some mornings, it takes a few minutes before I remember all the bad things. It’s not that fascism is...
eye-soft notebook entry
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. Sorry for the late email~there was an unscheduled snafu with Buttowndown (the newsletter platform) last night. 90% of my...
in a relationship with dating shows
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. Perhaps out of the sheer need to look away from all the horrible news pouring out of every screen, I’ve found myself watching ....
one page
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. Chapter Sixty-Two, from Hollywood Notebook by Wendy C. Ortiz, pub. Northwestern University Press
surviving
Welcome to Mommy’s El Camino. To access the full archive of MEC, from March 2023 forward, with newsletter topics ranging from writing life to ambition to...
notebook entry
Welcome back to Mommy’s El Camino. Subway station, July 2025. Photo by my kid. 7/18/25 I took this notebook with me all the way to New York and never opened...