Regarding wombats, unicycles, karma, and kitchen sinks There’s a reason you’re looking at a wombat I can explain. As you may know, I also write on Medium.com (you can find me there using the search bar under my profile, @janmflynn1537). Currently, Medium is conducting a four-week contest, the Medium Writers Challenge, in which writers are urged to undertake writing on at least one of the four chosen themes: Work; Space; Reentry; and Death, using specific tags for each of the submitted articles. There’s a panel of celebrity judges, and big money enticements — $50,000 for the grand prize winner! I…

It’s less about you than you might think My husband, an actor, landed the role he’d pined for It was a leading-man part he’d wanted to play for years, one he knew he was right for but that would challenge him. The theater was prestigious and well-attended, with a lush budget for sets and costumes. The job meant moving across the country for months, but that’s the actor’s life, and he was thrilled. He trained. He studied the script until he’d honed his understanding of it to a fine point. He had his lines down cold before the first rehearsal.…

Ready or not, it’s a different world My friends and I take a table outside and scan the posted QR code  Three-dimensional menus are largely a casualty of the pandemic. It’s a small but pervasive shift, one of the reminders that life as we knew it has undergone alterations while we were tucked away at home. All of us find a casual way to mention that we are fully vaccinated. “Yes, but the Delta variant,” says one of us and for a few minutes, the talk turns to the recent announcements from the CDC and Dr. Fauci. There is chatter about…

It helped to realize space does not equal room The flight was full and I had the center seat My heart had begun jackhammering the moment the doors closed. The soothing pull of gravity during takeoff, its effect like a temporary weighted blanket, gave way to free-floating semi-weightlessness now that we were at cruising altitude. My amygdala flashed its emergency lights, blinding my brain in its panicky glare. In response, my inner voice muttered a litany familiar from so many previous flights: You’re in a metal tube 30,000 feet in the air. You’re stuck. You’re trapped. There’s no space, people are…

Your butt could be better off If you’re American, your derriere is in danger of neglect  My fellow American, I feel quite safe in this assumption. Why? Because as much time and energy as you devote to keeping your house, your car, your laundry, your kids, your pets, and your corporeal self clean, odds are your bathroom lacks a bidet. For all of Americans’ obsession with personal cleanliness, the bidet has never really caught on here, even though it’s literally a fixture in much of Europe, Asia, and around the world. Weirdly, the same Puritan ethic that drummed “cleanliness is…

It’s time to show that rough draft who’s boss I can’t be the only writer this happens to The project you’re working on might be your first, or your forty-first novel. You may have a detailed outline, even a scene-by-scene breakdown. Or maybe you’re just letting the idea that seized hold of you some months ago (okay, or years ago) unfold as you go. In either case, you’ve banged out the opening, hiked up the mountain of conflict, thrown obstacles in the path of your main character with wicked abandon. As you write you make unforeseen discoveries. New characters appear! Themes…

Next time, I unpack the books first We moved in twelve days ago, but today I finally feel like I live here We lived in this house in a sweet neighborhood in Southeast Boise, Idaho for six years before emptying it out, renting it out, and heading back to California to live in the Napa Valley for seven years. Now, for reasons I’ve written about in previous posts, we’re back. And it has been rather, shall I say, discombobulating. Moving back into a house you used to call home is a little like entering a time warp or finding yourself in…

We fled the California fires, and here we are Living in Napa Valley was a dream come true, at first In 2014 when we moved to the lovely little Wine Country town of St. Helena, we kept pinching ourselves. Here we were, going about our daily lives in the midst of a destination that people travel the world to visit. It was like the south of France, but with better coffee and nicer public restrooms. Year-round, morning and evening, we walked our dog along a levee trail that ran behind our neighborhood and led us through storied vineyards. One of the…

To the Black mom protecting her son I understand why you fear for your teen son I’m a mother of sons too, and while mine are grown men now, I vividly recall the stomach-dropping anxiety of their adolescent years. But I’m white. Whatever fears that kept me wide-eyed at night waiting for them to come home were, I’m sure, only a peek at the dread you must carry with having a Black son in America. That’s true even in our lovely, mostly progressive small town — a place you and your family relocated to, hoping to find an environment less polluted by racism…