Category: life
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Season of Thanksgiving
Well, when I said I was going to check out for a while, I meant it! Last time I posted, the trees Kansas City were just beginning to turn. Now, the holidays are upon us! It’s been an extraordinary year, on all levels. I feel at once emptied out and renewed – as if the…
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The Never Ending Storm
Blog writing has been a challenge this season. All the things I usually write about seem trivial in the face of recent world events. Those affected by hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria are facing a long and difficult recovery. I’d like to urge everyone to donate to relief efforts, if you haven’t already. Every little…
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atonement
I’ve spent a lot of time this week processing the events in Charlottesville. I wasn’t surprised by what happened; anyone who knows history and has a little bit of common sense could have predicted what this administration would unleash. But even when you see the cracks in the wall, even when you know the dam…
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Independence Revisited
One year ago this week, I traveled to Costa Rica to sign my divorce papers. Today, I can reaffirm the old saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Because this thing nearly killed me. And now, I feel stronger for it. The years leading up to the divorce and the months following have been…
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Living in A Time of Giants
2016 was a hard year for a lot of people, myself included, but despite the general wailing and gnashing of teeth out there in the interverse, I can’t help but feel that 2016 was, on the whole, no better or worse than 2015. To be fair, 2015 was a pretty bad year for me.…
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War and Peace
Anyone else find themselves wishing November were here so we could get these elections over with? In my case, I’ve been watching the current presidential race since summer 2015. I remember when Sanders and Trump announced their candidacies; I thought both of them unlikely to get very far, for entirely different reasons. The Trump bid seemed…
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One day at a time
Do you ever go through periods when you feel like every decision you’ve ever made was somehow wrong? It’s the cruelest, most insidious sort of self-punishment we can put ourselves through: comparing our lives against the image we once imagined for our future, and beating ourselves up because a handful of pieces are simply not there.…
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Work As Therapy
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to process the kind of emotional loss I’m dealing with at the moment. If I were a full-time writer, I think I would be entirely adrift. All my stories seem to have dried up under a knot of pain. I can’t think straight about publishing or marketing…
K. R. Gastreich, Author 