Lately, I’ve been cleaning up my apartment and packing in preparation for a move to a new complex (a whopping .8 miles away) that will better suit my needs. Namely, I won’t have to carry my 14 foot kayak up and down from the third floor and then wrestle it into it’s tight fit against [...]
#Life
a story worth telling is a life worth living
Tag Archives: #JPS
I am a ghost
A letter came in the mail a few weeks ago informing me that since the bank was unable to find a record of my having borrowed money ever, I was not eligible for a credit card. They said I was a ghost. I count myself incredibly lucky that I’ve never had to take any serious [...]
If only I were Stretch Armstrong
Last week, I was attending a poetry reading event and one of the pieces by another local poet resonated with my emotions and is still haunting me. He used an image that is all-too-familiar to how I feel, especially in the six months since I’ve moved to Florida. When he introduced the poem, he said [...]
Make it so
Today is First Contact day. In the Star Trek universe, it’s the date on which Humans first make contact with an alien race, the Vulcans. It’s a strange holiday to celebrate maybe, but I wore my red shirt in honor of the occasion. First Contact is also my favorite Star Trek movie, and I plan [...]
The difference a year can make
One year ago today was the worst day of my life. St. Patrick’s Day has always been a great day for me. The “P” in JPS stands for Patrick, and I’m named after the Holiday more than the Saint — though I’ve always been a pretty big fan of the Saint, too. I’m wearing the [...]
I’m taking this Lent off
I have been struggling with my faith for the last year. I am a Roman Catholic and have been since birth. I never really stopped being a Catholic, though I have stopped practicing almost completely. When I was 19 or 20, I did go through a very serious exploration of my religion and spirituality in [...]
A poet has to eat a fruit that rhymes
I’ve always been an orange person. During college, apples only fell into two categories of my life: decoration and Hooch ingredient. But, as I begin having a “real life” and I try to start eating more fruits and (when I can stomach it) veggies, I find that sometimes you just have to eat an apple. [...]
The framing of art forms
A friend asked me, if I could only pick one, what I considered “my art.” She asked if it was poetry. I said yes, dutifully. I am, after all, a writer of poetry who would like to have either an audience or a paycheck from those literary ramblings some day — and poetry is “art.” [...]
The painful practice of counting pages
So much of my my life is about making things fit. As a page designer, I must take pictures and words and display type and get everything in it’s place so that is equal parts pretty and readable. And my job, though it certainly does require a level of creativity, is not strictly creative. Instead, [...]
Winter gets you down
I’m sure the rest of the #Lifers will scowl at me for complaining about the Florida winter, but in a lot of ways, it sucks here just as much as it does everywhere else. Certainly, I don’t have to deal with inches of ice and feet of snow, but winter seems to have an effect [...]