As a freelancer, I thought I was made for pandemic-style work life. Maybe I was wrong. — I am a workaholic and I have hit rock bottom. By which I mean I literally have a rock for a bottom. I have the beginings of a bedsore from sitting in my desk chair. A chair sore. Is this really possible? I’m afraid it is. Yesterday when I was…

Why was my essay about leaving New York during the pandemic the most sinister of my career? — This time last year, I was dragged on Twitter as essentially the worst person in the world. I was “a plague rat,” “a selfish asshole,” “a rich, tone deaf dip-shit,” and a “vapid, selfish fucking monster,” among hundreds of other vigorous characterizations. The occasion for this outcry was my April…

How to live your life on a need-to-know basis — I recently offered this piece of unsolicited advice to an author whose first book had just been published: “Don’t be constantly checking your Amazon rank. Limit yourself to 30 times a day.” It was only sort of a joke, since I had a feeling this author was likely to check…

Can I retire now? — A few weeks ago, on March 24 to be precise, my decades-long writing career reached its apex. No, I did not win a major prize, receive a giant royalty check, or see my bestselling novel turned into a blockbuster film (or, better yet, a landmark cable series). …

I said I shouldn’t. For now. — Last week I wrote about feeling like I was too old to write about my life. It was kind of a toss-off post, a last minute effort to come up with something to say as my deadline neared. …

I used to be known for personal writing. Now I can’t bear it. — I’ve recently had a revelation that should have been obvious but for some reason wasn’t; the older you get, the less charming it is to tell stories about yourself. As someone who spent at least the first half of her career mining her life for interesting/funny/embarrassing/emblematic-of-larger-cultural-phenomena anecdotes that I could…

Why have I been working as a writer all this time when I could have been selling mugs? — You know those moments when you look up from your life and realize, with breathtaking clarity, that it’s exactly the life you dreamed of when you set out on your journey? You know what it’s like to feel years of hard work and ambition suddenly coalesce into deep satisfaction, as…

I still love Los Angeles. Will I ever be able to go back? — I awoke Thursday morning to the news that a bear was roaming the streets of my old neighborhood in Los Angeles. At that point there was only one photo in circulation, a shadowy image of a large black bear moseying past a garden wall in the northeast L.A. enclave of…

Microphone Settings Are Making Me Crazy. — As I discussed a few weeks ago, I have a podcast and it’s taken over my life. I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, since roughly nine tenths of the American population now have podcasts and are apparently able to juggle that work with other responsibilities. …