If you’re anything like me, 2020 was a swift kick in the pants to your professional life and your bank account. After trying and failing with a handful of side gigs, I managed to supplement my lost income by freelance writing and starting my own cult.
I’d written compelling content for my own website. The question was — could I convince someone else to pay me to do it for them?
Much of the success we have in life begins with our network. Knowing people is our superpower.
I sent emails to my professional contacts letting them know about my…
It’s good my days of sexting or attempted sexting, are over. The steamiest text I sent last year read ‘should we order dim sum tonight?’ The world is a far better place for my now-chaste exchanges because I was never good at the naughty stuff. Some guys aren’t wired for wireless sex.
I think it was Shakespeare who said, “Brevity is the soul of sexting.” If not then, some other bard probably did. Alexander Pope, maybe? This is my problem. Most women were looking for a man who would be explicit and cut to the chase, whereas I favor long…
The first time it happened it felt as if terror filled the hollow of my bones, anchoring me to my mattress under the weight of suffocating dread. I opened my eyes and stared at my white popcorn ceiling, which looked blue from the sunrise slipping between the window blinds. I was frozen, wooden actually, stiff, and unable to move. I cried out but my voice squeaked in an unrecognizable wheeze, my throat feeling the crush of an invisible hand. My eyes darted about as shadows closed in around me from the corners of the room. The staccato pulses of my…
Christmas with the family can be stressful. I’m lucky because I’m close to my parents and I get along well with all my siblings except for Christopher. Thirty-four years ago, I absorbed Christopher in the womb and he refuses to let it go.
I’ve apologized thousands of times. I feel bad about it, but we do things as fetuses we wouldn’t do as adults. And, really, I didn’t have much say in the matter. I was simply more absorbent, but try convincing my brother this wasn’t an in utero coup.
Christopher doles out daily doses of passive-aggressive vitriol, but he’s…
January — that wonderful time of the year when we return to work five pounds heavier from all the holiday treats and try to get fired up about a new set of twelve months. But I’m not even returning to work in 2021; I’m just logging into a part-time gig from the kitchen. As I sit at my makeshift desk and look around our Christmas-bedecked apartment, I wonder if it’s time to put the festive cheer back in the box and get on with January.
This is a common annual quandary. I have friends who take their Christmas decor down…
It was about this time last year, I wrote down three goals for 2020. I wrote them on the big wall in our kitchen we painted with blackboard paint the previous summer. The wall has a little cubby hole where we store chalk and erasers. Above the cubby hole it reads:
Goals 2020:
Seemed reasonable at the time, but I’ve since learned if you want to make a year laugh, tell it your resolutions. …
On January 20, 2017, the world watched another peaceful transfer of power in the United States as Donald J. Trump became the country’s 45th president. In his inaugural address, newly elected President Trump described an America plagued by crime, drugs, and carnage, which he claimed robbed the once great country of its potential. His speech was allegedly described by one ex-president as ‘some weird shit.’ And boy, would that shit get weirder as President Trump stumbled from Twitter to the Oval Office, leaving national crises, international incidents, and a seditious mob in his wake.
Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday last week. It was nice to see some of you take a moment from your little Christmases to remember my special day. I’m well aware how busy you people get over the holidays.
We had a small shindig at my place. In the morning we staged our annual nativity scene with Mom and Papa Joe. After centuries of my part being played by Middle Eastern Jewish boys, this year we branched out to be more inclusive. For 2020, I was played by a prokaryote from Jupiter’s moon Europa. …
writer (hack) entrepreneur (unemployable) expat (immigrant) philosopher (unemployable hack) humorist (who says that?)