This is the last day of my 500 Words A Day challenge, and as promised here’s the rest of the things I learned: 16. When I sit down to write, stories of my my...

This being the penultimate day of this challenge, I wanted to use the word penultimate and also wanted to share with you some things I learned after writing ...

I’m fascinated by people who can just lay their heads down and sleep. As if all that separates them from here and dreamland is a pillow, and having found one...

It took pictures and audio recordings. Words weren’t enough. I’ll admit I scrolled past the initial headlines a couple weeks ago as I sifted through the fire...

I’m not great at going to the doctor. It usually takes me a couple days to realize I’m sick, and by then I figure I can wait for my white blood cells to batt...

I call my dad Pa. Not Pop or Pops or even Pappa. Pa. This is something I’ve always done, because this is the name he was assigned when I was a kid and my par...

Trees can talk to each other. I know this because I read an article about it a couple years ago and then started to watch a TED talk until I got distracted b...

I share a paper thin bedroom wall with a neighbor’s baby I’ve never seen. It’s been two years now, and every time I hear it crying I wonder when it’s going t...

She was tall and blonde and a Reagan Republican, and would have loved a descriptive paragraph about her beginning with all those adjectives. Now that I think...

Ten short years ago, “how many followers do you have?” was a question I could have only imagined being asked in the afterlife, in a conversation between Alla...

My favorite professor in college once told us our twenties were for asking as many questions as we could, and then following those answers until we found ano...

I never intended to grow a beard. Bald since nineteen, I thought a beard would only draw attention to the lack of hair on the top of my head, as though by sh...

It’s 10 in the morning and I’m standing in a medieval pillory, the old-school torture device that makes you look like you’re waiting for the guillotine with ...

Towards the end of high school, most weekend nights would begin or end at a smokey coffeeshop. This was before wifi, before Starbucks took over the planet an...

Day fifteen. We’re halfway there. I’ll admit when I started this challenge, I didn’t think it’d be that hard. Write and post five hundred words each day for ...

When I was a freshman in college, I wanted to write a book compiling people’s coming out stories. It seemed an auspicious time to be gay; Ellen had recently ...

I went to a catholic elementary school from kindergarten through the third grade called Notre Dame. The boys were required to wear light blue polos and dark ...

When I was signed up for my first marathon, I was not a runner. I had run places, but mostly because I was being chased or was late for something — I most ce...

For years, whenever I’d hear about someone’s allergies, part of me was sympathetic but another, larger part of me kind of thought they were making it up. Or w...

Ladies and gentleman of the class of 2018: wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. But not the spray-on kind...