Shameless self-promotion

I’ve always had some social anxiety, unlike the rest of my very extroverted family. But working from home has made it so much worse. Luckily The Write Life, a site for writers, let me get some therapy for it.

Shameless self-promotion

Mental Floss ran my story on dyscalculia, the math learning disability that makes it hard for people to do the simplest calculations. While I really enjoy reading all the publications I’ve written for this past year, Mental Floss is where I can scratch that itch that answers questions like: why do my dog’s paws smell like corn chips? Yes, that’s an actual story. I won’t link it, because once you get sucked into the Mental Floss rabbit hole, it’s hard to get out.

Shameless self-promotion

A third story for Paste, on the hot sauce industry’s penchant for risqué names. No one has taken issue with this one. I will never understand readers.

Shameless self-promotion

I had a depressing shopping experience a few weeks ago, and as writers do, turned my pain into an article. XOJane just published my treatise rating dressing rooms in 10 popular chain stores.

Shameless self-promotion

This week, Paste published my second article on foods you are better off making than buying. No controversy here, worse luck.

Shameless self-promotion

Since high school, I’ve wanted to write for Ms. So I am thrilled to have a piece in there this week, and best of all, it’s on women’s education, a cause I am passionate about.

Shameless self-promotion

I have a food story up at Paste today, on foods you’re better off buying than making. The entry about mashed potatoes is getting people all stirred up, which I admit is what I was hoping for. It’s nice to be doing some food writing again!

Shameless self-promotion

I have a story on Bitch this week, about mathematician and cryptanalyst Joan Clarke. She is part of the new movie “The Imitation Game,” and is played by Keira Knightley.

PS: If anyone ever makes a movie about me, I want Angelina Jolie to play me. Ewan McGregor can play my husband.

PPS: Fine. A woman can dream!

On not blogging every day

When I vowed to blog every day for a month, I had hoped it would inspire me to write more in general.

Alas, that has not been the case. If anything, it’s made me write less, which is bad. It’s also made me not want to really dig into any weightier topics, because they may be fodder for actual paid work, and I’ve been working hard on widening my platform.

So while it’s been fun adding random items every day, I’m cutting this experiment short in order to focus on the bigger picture.

Hopefully the muses will return from wherever they’ve been hiding!

Wilderness music

The dust bunnies have been self-actualizing again, so I decided to spend the weekend cleaning. Music usually helps make the dusting and wiping and scrubbing less tedious, so I tucked an iPod in my pocket and set it to my mid ’90s playlist, otherwise known as “Wilderness Music.”

I call it that not because I went camping a lot during that time, but because the songs on the playlist are from the years right after college, aka my wilderness years.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life after graduating from Bryn Mawr. I hadn’t yet decided on journalism, and my somewhat nebulous notion of becoming an English professor died shortly before I turned in my senior thesis. It didn’t help that there was a recession that summer, and the next year, which meant even entry-level jobs were hard to find.