A Different Kind of Learning When I think about what I learned in high school, the answer is not simple. Partly because I did not finish high school in the traditional sense. I dropped out in 1990. I should have been part of the Wheat Ridge High School class of 1994 in Colorado. At the time, I was still more girl than woman, but already beginning to feel something I would carry for years: the sense that I did not quite belong where I was.

A different kind of learning.

Some lessons only make sense years later.

#WritingCommunity #PersonalEssay #CherryCoBiz

Excited to be in Isthmus' 50th anniversary issue. #personalessay #writing

Having Fun by Myself I've been learning how to actually enjoy being by myself, & Lilith has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting getting me there. Two nights of fun!

New post is up! I've been learning how to actually enjoy being by myself, and Lilith has been doing a lot of the heavy lifting getting me there. Come read about two nights out that actually went well.
#WitchSky #OccultSky #PersonalEssay #substack

What Is an Office Anyway? On noise, space, and the shifting idea of where work lives

#BackInTheOffice #WorkCulture #OfficeLife #ModernWork #Productivity #RemoteWork #OpenOffice #PersonalEssay #Reflection

open.substack.com/pub/johncoy/...

The Hardest Room to Be In The Bowline in Astoria made it easy. Being present was the hard part.

“I can't explain the mental itch of needing everything to happen at once while simultaneously wanting the entire world to shut the hell up.”

#travel #personalessay #hotel #adhd

What Is an Office Anyway? On noise, space, and the shifting idea of where work lives

open.substack.com/pub/johncoy/...

#BackInTheOffice #WorkCulture #OfficeLife #ModernWork #Productivity #RemoteWork #OpenOffice #PersonalEssay #Reflection

GI Joe Probably Doesn’t Talk About It, Either Or, This All Happened When I Was Younger, Slimmer, and Probably Cuter

Three strangers. One summer. Zero conversations about it afterward.
Turns out the silence isn't personal — it's learned. New essay:
substack.com/home/post/p-...

#personalessay #masculinity #memoir #storytelling

Outside the Velvet Rope Like many queer people, I learned how to scan a room long before I learned how to drive—and shrink to fit. I thought joining a queer rugby team might change all that.

I grew up being bullied for being “too queer.”

Then I came out and realized I didn’t fit neatly into queer spaces either.

I wrote a personal essay about body image, exclusion & what it took to finally feel safe and accepted for #TheQueerLoveProject.

#LGBTQ #QueerVoices #PersonalEssay #Belonging

A Passover Thought Time as a spiral — how memory, story, and identity repeat

ust Published my 1st Medium Article! :)
A Passover thought.
medium.com/@segalpuppet...

#Passover #Writing #Reflection #PersonalEssay #journaling #jewsky

what happened to all of my big dreams? diary entry 01

posted my first substack article the other day, so i thought i'd share it here.

#substack #writing #writingcommunity #writer #personalessay #diary

The Drunk Cig Will Never Die We know smoking is bad. But you’ll have to pry the drunk cig out of our cold, dead hands.

it's come to my attention that my drunk cig article was, like, way too long. here's a more palatable version - a history of my drunk cigs and why it's kind of nice to smoke together when things suck

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#writing #writer #personalessay #dating #memoir #smoking #millennials #relationships

The Best Cup of Coffee. Ever When it’s not about the aroma or the taste—it’s about the experience

How did such large chunks of ourselves end up inside machines? It’s something I thought a lot about the day I left my laptop—my life—in a Paris post office. What happened next? find out here: tinyurl.com/4cstvx2b #DigitalLife #ModernLife #LifeLessons #PersonalEssay #SelfAwareness #Storytelling

Religion, Science, & the Desert Seeing the awe of the universe beyond religion and science; seeing life in things that aren’t.

this is for people who are like, religion? 👎 spirituality? 🤷‍♀️ nature? 🤠 oh fuck yeah

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#medium #writer #writing #desert #religion #spirituality #nature #lovenature #protectourparks #exchristian #writing #personalessay

@audreyjwhitson.bsky.social reads an excerpt from her #essay “The Great Hunger” published in issue 177 of The New Quarterly. Grab your copy of Issue 177 today: tnq.ca/product/issu...

#newreleases #booksky #personalessay

Flashback Thursday – 1994 Edition A new monthly tradition, digging up old writings from my past, unedited and raw. First stop: second grade, 1994.

Flashback Thursday! Every last Thursday of the month, I'll be posting an old writing, unedited, raw, errors and all. This month we're going back to 1994. Second grade me could not spell baby to save her life.

#FlashbackThursday #Blogging #PersonalEssay #90sKid #Nostalgia

buff.ly/TpiixAj

The dish thoughts about being a woman, doing the dishes, and how healing never seems to feel quite right to me.

this did pretty well its first time around, so here we are: "the dish," a little memory about my a relative's corningware, being a woman, and doing the f*cking dishes

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#writer #writing #personalessay #memory #feminism #sexism #homemakers #family #women #medium #creativenonfiction #exmormon

The wedding cake A horrible, terrible, no good object lesson I’ve never forgotten.

if you grew up in christian purity culture, this one's for you. actually kind of a real read.

#writer #writing #christian #exchristian #atheist #purityculture #exmormon #objectlesson #medium #memoir #personalessay

Get started with a low-cost studio session, you learn, write, leave wth your essay off to a good start. #PersonalEssay #Memoir #GetPublished

May All Beings Be Free: The Modern Journeyer

Last week I witnessed a car lose control. Everything slowed down. Then it sped up. It stayed in my body longer than the moment. I wrote about it, what stirred & stayed & about releasing.

Have a listen; read it.
#Writing #PersonalEssay #CreativeLife

amandamottornartist.substack.com/p/may-all-be...

In a World Apart From Nature, I Am Familiar With the Rocks in a River Memories of a family cabin and growing up in a river.

it's self promo o'clock! I wrote a short prose-y, memoir-y article about being outside (like, the woods). and I actually took this one seriously

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#writing #nature #forest #medium #writer #personalessay #childhood #memory #river #nonfiction

The (Wrong) Stories We Tell About Women On narratives, patriarchy, truthfulness, and a young Aztec girl with a tarnished name.

hot off the metaphorical presses: thinking about women who didn't get what they deserved, crying in an art exhibit, and a little bit about aging

extremely inspired by @yourewrongabout.bsky.social 🥲

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#writing #article #yourewrongabout #medium #writer #personalessay #shortessay #sexism #feminism

The Drunk Cig Will Never Die We know smoking is bad. But you’ll have to pry the drunk cig out of our cold, dead hands.

look, don't smoke, but also, here's an ode to the drunk cig

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#writing #drunkcig #writer #medium #personal #personalessay #milennial #culture #milennialculture #coping

Not Hot Enough to Write Home About: Dating While “Thick” I love the body positivity movement, but I’m still a “category.” My relationship with my weight has always been complicated; dating doesn’t…

dating while "thick" is a fucking roller coaster !! whether you can relate to this or want to read about the experience pls give this a nice look-over, also there's a bad pun

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#medium #article #writer #bodyimage #bodypositivity #thick #personal #sexism #bodytype #writing #personalessay

Natural Loss x Stole Loss A philosophical inquiry into the difference between loss that transforms and loss that is stolen, and what each one asks of the person who carries it.

A meditation on natural loss, stolen loss, and the identities they carve.
open.substack.com/pub/stillher...
#Loss #Identity #Transformation #Memory #Psychology #Anthropology #HumanBehavior #PersonalEssay

5 Things I'd Tell My Younger Self If I Figured Out Time Travel and Lost My Oatmeal I should probably say something, or else it would just be really weird! Right??

#amwriting #Writer #personalessay

open.substack.com/pub/ckanomal...

The Latchkey Years: How Generation X Raised Itself I was a latchkey kid—one of millions of Gen X kids who came home to empty houses, fed ourselves, and learned to manage our own lives while our parents worked.

There was a kind of freedom in all that neglect, though calling it “freedom” feels wrong. It wasn’t that I was given independence—it was that I had no choice but to claim it.
chriscampbellauthor.substack.com/p/the-latchk...

#Substack #PersonalEssay #GenerationX #GenX #80sKid #Memoir

Out of Hibernation A St. Patrick's Day in Cleveland

Forced myself into the Cleveland cold, and ended up somewhere I hadn't been in thirty years — a room full of strangers becoming, something like family.

open.substack.com/pub/mikeandm...

#Cleveland #StPatricksDay #ThisIsCleveland #Substack #PersonalEssay #CommunityVibes #outofhibernation

Do I Like Dating Men, or Am I Just Competitive? A really, really, really honest review of my dating habits.

bored at work? here's a read full of icky honesty on dating competitively. and it should take you less than 5 minutes, so your boss probably won't even notice

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#dating #datingexperience #personal #personalessay #relationships #lgbtq #bisexual #medium #writing #writer

When Measurement Fails Tamara-Lee Brereton-Karabetsos By Tamara-Lee Brereton-Karabetsos The numbers arrived without ceremony: a small column of figures, neat and confident, delivered through a screen that assumed fluency…

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is let the engine go cold for a while.

'When Measurement Fails'—it's live today.

borderlessjournal.com/2026/03/16/w...

#Tamaraleewrites #PersonalEssay #WritingCommunity #SubstackWriters

Religion, Science, & the Desert Seeing the awe of the universe beyond religion and science; seeing life in things that aren’t.

and this is a stupid ""personal essay"" about how the earth feels alive even when you know it isn't....it's also about being atheist, and how mean the desert is. please read

#writing #medium #personalessay #atheist #atheism #spiritual #spirituality #desert #thedesert #nature #personal