I promised you a recap of what I've been up to in the nearly 3 years I've been hanging out with the crickets, and I promised it wouldn't be very much. But I lied! So much has happened! When Covid started I was just starting to crawl out of a 2-year stage of introversion and... Continue Reading →
The March I Remembered Myself
In collaborating with a woman I sort-of know but would like to know better to start a Ladies & Money book club, I began reading our first book. I was nervous that I was starting too soon, as I am a very fast reader, and our meeting wasn’t for another twenty-two days. Coinciding with this... Continue Reading →
Purple Brain
The first time I really sat down to listen to him -I mean really listen, not just sing along to his hits that made their way to the radio - was on a break from K-Mart mopping the dining room floor of Full City Cafe in Kalamazoo. It was the end of the night, all... Continue Reading →
Made With Care
I have a new hat. It's mine. And I love it. A new friend made it for me, with her own two hands and a couple of knitting needles. When I say 'new friend' I mean that she and I recently met at a dinner party where, in the midst of our conversation she put her hand... Continue Reading →
Politics at Large
I generally try to stay quiet about politics in any sort of public format, for no other reason than to avoid the crazies. So many people feel the need to shout about why their candidate of choice is the best, why yours is the worst, and why I’m a horrible person who deserves to have her... Continue Reading →
Describe Your First Love and/or Kiss: Prompt for Day 5 of 365
I’ve written before about my first love, Scott. I was 14 when we met so one might assume he was also the bearer of my first kiss but, raised by boys way out in the country as I was, I never got the memo that girls should put any emotional significance into something so simple... Continue Reading →
Go West, Young Girl
My mother told me to wear a baseball cap, so I would look like a boy. This was one of the many pieces of advice I took and then quickly abandoned on my drive to California from Kalamazoo. "If the truckers think you're a boy they won't try to trick you into stopping so they... Continue Reading →
An Open Letter to my Facebook Friends:
I just have to say, I'm so happy to have all of you in my weird, sometimes off-putting Facebook land. Today social media exploded with beautiful news. That news, fantastically, has remained beautiful as the day has worn on. What I've seen from the moment I woke up until now, when I'm about to go... Continue Reading →
The First Time I Saw the Ocean
The first time I ever saw the ocean, U2's The Joshua Tree was blasting from the speakers of Cole's '66 coffee-and-cream Mercedes. I was squatting in the passenger seat, perched on my toes so I could see better, singing along at the top of my lungs as we rounded a corner, and there it was... Continue Reading →
Beck and Call
There is no explanation that I can think of for why I started thinking about Beck in the shower this morning. Whatever the reason, the line of thinking frustrated me. The shower is usually where I do my deeper thinking: ideas for writing, wondering where my life is going, trying to bring into focus the... Continue Reading →
Amanda Janik 