When I got home from the night shift that morning, there was nothing out of place. Nothing strange. I put my keys on the little dish. They rattled. I made dinner (breakfast), ate it, took a shower, put on a nightgown, pulled the curtains, read until I fall asleep. Dreamed something. When I got home from the night shift that morning, there was nothing out of place.

It's like this when dark comes: you get inside. The rule is simple and absolute. Anna is running late after she finishes her audition. The auditorium doors close behind her and lock. The auditors will be there all night -- but dancers can't stay while they deliberate. It's 5:42pm on a late winter evening. She's never been out this late before.

The boy read an article about a lake with a thousand skeletons somewhere in the Himalayas. He's never been to the Himalayas, though his father once climbed Everest. He never imagined he would see a skeleton beneath the ice, but here one is, caught in the weeds by the shore of the lake. He stands there among the cattails, alone at night, and wonders what to do.

The treadmill stands in my living room, no matter what. So far, it’s moved three times with me. First thing I do when I wake up, first thing I do when I get home, and the last thing I do before going to bed is run. Run, stretch, run, stretch. It’s the only way I feel fully comfortable in my body anymore.

It was my intention at the beginning of the year to post "accountability" progress reports every Friday. So far, I have failed. But no longer! Welcome to the first weekly update of 2025. While these posts are mostly for me, I'm hoping that my struggles and successes and attempts might resonate with other creative types. Please feel free to share your own weekly insights in the comments.

Allison Beeman was cast as Agatha Christie’s septuagenarian mystery-solver Miss Jane Marple, in A Murder is Announced, at the ripe old age of twenty-two. Something about Allison’s wispy blonde hair, pale skin, and fragile bone structure spoke, “Seventy year old,” to the director of the Center for Performing Arts. (It could also have been that there were only ten auditioners for eight roles.) But, whatever the reason Allison was cast, she determined she would be the best damn Miss Jane Marple to ever grace the stage.

The year is 1888 and you have not been in this much pain since being grazed by a Confederate bullet in 1865. That time, you battled through, knowing what was wrong. This time, the ache is a long-standing mystery. You tell the doctor, when he finally arrives, that your shoulder is immobile. You are unable to lift your arm. Your wife has to do all the heavy lifting around the house at the moment.

Around one a.m., after the third time I’ve woken from restless dreams, I stare at the ceiling and think “I am done with true crime shows.” Normally, I know that I’ve hit my quota of true crime when I start mentally narrating my day in the True Crime Voice. That morning started like any other, I’ll think as I make my coffee.

My husband, finally irritated with me, tells me to leave him alone while he finishes changing the tire. I am happy to do so. Leaving the smell of hot rubber behind is a blessing. He's doing it wrong anyway, so this is going to take a while. We took a wrong turn off a New Mexican highway and went on for five miles before realizing our mistake.

As I'm waiting to go up to the choir stands, a girl from the middle school asks me how I ended up in a wheelchair. There's not malice in her question, no insult. She's just curious. There's a small ramp put in just for me, just for this occasion on the school football field. The bleachers are packed for graduation. This isn't my year, I'm still a junior, but the choir is performing alongside the band.

On Wednesday I had the chance to sit down with my buddies Holly and Carley, the hosts of We're All Fine--a podcast in which they chat about all kinds of life affirming things, personal struggles, and basically whatever comes into their minds to chat about. It's delightful. And we got together to talk about that favorite subject of stay at home moms everywhere: serial killers.

In the light of day, six months ago, when she bought the house, the bushes seemed lovely. Charming hedgerows, grown six feet high, provided privacy and a fence of sorts. A wrought-iron gate, only three feet high, filled a gap between the bushes and blocked off the cracking walkway to solicitors. Sure, the brown grass grew in fairly skimpy patches. But on that sunshine-riddled afternoon, the hedgerows seemed to breathe a British magic which overrode the yard’s other failings.

1. Constance Gramercy hadn’t attended Harvard and Yale, survived fifteen years in the Space Force, battled her way through the astronaut training program, left her two children behind, and divorced her asshole ex-husband just to die on Mars. She took another deep breath of plastic-smelling oxygen and forced one booted foot in front of the other. Despite the fact that she weighed thirty percent less out here, she felt heavy and exhausted.

There are no streetlights in the new development just outside of town, only the dark outlines of modern square homes silhouetted in the half-moon light. Eerie shadows give the xeriscaped lawns a strange texture. If the boxy houses gentrifying this borderland between Elephant Butte and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, aren’t enough to make the landscape otherworldly, then the square craters of the dug-out would-be basements certainly make the place feel like Mars.

Archie always told me good food was about layers of flavor. When he taught me how to season, he explained the necessity of salt and acid. He showed me how to cook and plate a dish so that it hits your tongue in the right areas, filling the space in your mouth with umami, starting with sweet, tingling the sour out, and ending with a slow build of heat, but not pain.

Welcome to 2025 everyone! We have arrived at one of my favorite times of year: a moment to take stock, evaluate, and plan ahead. I love this moment—which also comes around birthday times—because it helps me get my bearings. I get a chance to peruse my internal map, attempt to gauge the distance between where I am and where I want to be, and then figure out pathways to close the gap.