Dispatches from Storyville

Category: Life 2.0

  • We Can’t Return, We Can Only Look Back from Where We Came

    We Can’t Return, We Can Only Look Back from Where We Came

    –Joni Mitchell I am, at long last, back on my bullshit. If it wasn’t exceedingly obvious, I was in a dark place the last time I wrote here. I’d been searching for a full-time job in one of my fields (broadly, nonprofit communications, fundraising, and event planning) for going on two years. I’d had a…

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  • When Her Birthday Comes

    Tomorrow (the 13th) is my birthday. My 48th birthday, to be exact. Today marks three years since I sat in the orange leather chair in the living room of our sweet little cottage in Shreveport and listened to my (now) ex-husband enumerate the many ways he felt I had failed him and our two children.…

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  • Home Alone

    I’m bad at titles, OK? Just ask any editor I’ve ever had. In this writer’s humble opinion, thinking up catchy titles should be in someone else’s job description. You want me to birth the baby AND give it a name? Has no one except me heard of delegating responsibilities? My therapist would say that bit…

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  • Squared Away

    Getting a blog post out this week has been hard. Charlotte and her younger daughter move next week, and I start a new part-time job (!) two days before they do. Add in a full schedule of classes and life in 2025 (Jesus, just this WEEK), and I have been struck with the worst anxiety…

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  • The Board

    When I was younger, before I met my kids’ father, I dreamed of – was sort of obsessed with, really – finding The Great Love of My Life. As a lonely, bookish teenager, I devoured love stories. They weren’t just romance novels, although, as a voracious reader at the mercy of my rural school library,…

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  • La Tricoteuse

    Neither the threat of a looming recession nor monthly economic blackouts can keep a real clothes horse down, so, at the start of Mardi Gras Break, I committed to doing less doomscrolling and more sewing. In addition to keeping my wardrobe nice and full, sewing calms my mind in a way even writing can’t. Writing…

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  • The Cure

    The past couple of weeks have tested my ability to manage my course load, writing, working (or trying to), my contributions to The Resistance, my commitment to overdressing, cultivating community/a social life, and, most importantly, being a mom. There’s obviously the challenge of being present in Harper and Truman’s lives when I live six hours…

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  • Spare Parts

    Let me preface this: I’m not saying anything supernatural is happening here, but I’m not not saying that, either. But when I wish for things, sometimes the Universe cranks it up to 11. For instance, I feel mildly responsible for the current state of…<gestures wildly at everything>. You see, even as a wee Phelan, I…

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  • Lavender Haze

    Restarting this blog has been a balm to my soul, especially these days when, you know…<gestures wildly at everything>. When the chips are really, truly down in my life, there are only three things for it: Aaron Neville singing Ave Maria on repeat, cookies dunked in liquor (e.g., Oreos and whiskey – don’t knock it…

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  • Warrior Women

    I can’t speak for everyone, but I suspect most of us have little lies we tell ourselves in order to get through difficult situations. I know I do. For instance, when I’m in a room full of really intimidatingly attractive people (given that I’m a deeply introverted and committed homebody, this happens to me significantly…

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