Ellie Di Julio's Blog, page 6

State of the Ellie: May 2018

I know I said I was starting totally over with the blog, but I also know you guys love these posts and they’re good for my own perspective, so I’m going to keep them. I’m still toying with the format and I might not do it every month, but by golly, Imma try. Here goes.

Health: I started back at the gym! It’s literally been eight years since I set foot on a treadmill. I’d planned to go back in February, but then my left knee spontaneously dislocated (DID YOU KNOW THAT COULD HAPPEN BECAUSE I S...

Fill the well: what the creative soul needs

A shocking number of my personal breakthroughs come while I’m consuming media. I wish I could say I’m appreciating iconic paintings or listening to underground bands or reading feminist poetry, but it’s usually from bingeing the same crime dramas I’ve watched for ten years. You can learn a lot more from Bones than what a kerf mark is.

In this latest rewatch (#4), something happened that’s never happened before: I started bawling my eyes out. Sure, I’ve cried at the show before–if Vincent Nig...

Too much to say

There was a time in my life when I’d write anything on this page. I shared every story, held nothing back, left it all on the field, and rarely worried about what people thought.

And now, there’s nothing.

Which isn’t to say there’s nothing happening. My world, both inside and out, is a tumult of unfulfilled desires and unrelenting duties that I primarily share with someone whose greatest dream is to be Moana.

There is stuff going on in here. Stuff that desperately needs to come out.

What hol...

Integration and the returning Hero

There’s a definite pattern of separation and confluence in my life. Intimacy and mystery. Integration, disintegration, integration again. I want everything in its own box, easily findable and useable, far away. I want everything to be in one place, whole and universal, close.

That’s where I sit with this space (and the various others born from this pattern). This was my home, but now it feels like a foreign land. It’s me but not me. I’m in an integration cycle. I want one place, one identity...

Thinking of the sound of the wind

I’m not a winter person. I can deal with the dreary skies, filthy slush in the street, and the horrific chill knife of the air until about mid-February. While I don’t suffer from SAD like many people I know, I do feel that my solar cells are completely drained after my birthday and that I’m running on sheer willpower. I ache inside whenever I step into the frozen air and see yet another steel-grey sky peppered with buildings and sidewalks made ugly by aging snow. I feel the rot sink in.

Ever...

Writer, interrupted

This essay is a microcosm reflection on how my writing life has changed since I became a mom, including whining about never wanting a kid in the first place and how having one maybe makes me a better writer. I wrote this for an award application,  and it appears here unedited (with a note). I wanted to share because, well, that’s just the kind of guy I am.

I broke my mother’s heart, not for the first time, when I was twenty-eight and told her that she’d better put all her grandma-hope eggs i...

The State of the Ellie: December 2017

This is going to be a quick and dirty (and super late) version of tSotE because, as you may have noticed, I’ve been scarce online for the last month. It’s not because I don’t love you or have forgotten how to work a keyboard; it’s that I’ve been hella busy, and the way my life is constructed these days, that means internet (and, sadly, non-immediate connection) falls to the bottom of the pile.

Okay, excuse time over. On to the juicy stuff.

Baby: Mackenzie is almost 19 months old and SO CLOS...

They’re all gonna laugh at you!

When I was in middle school, I was a proud member of the chess club, which was run by my mother, who was also my English teacher.

I’ll give you some time to giggle.

Our handful of members ranged from age 12 to 15 or so–it was open to grades 7-12, but most of the high schoolers were too cool for us.  We were stereotypical nerds, a cadre complete with the smelly kid, the kid who talked to himself, and the kid with taped glasses; I was the only girl.  Everyone else avoided us.

Except one guy.

M...

Be here now

That stupid cliche is true, you know.  “Yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery. Today is a gift; that’s why it’s called ‘the present.'”

The moment you’re living right now – eyes glued to a screen, absorbing these words – is all you have, all you can know, all that matters.  It’s precious in it’s fleetingness.

But, like most folks of my generation, I forget and jolt myself out of the timeline.

I’m always focused on the next thing.  What’s going on tomorrow or next week or next month or next...

The State of the Ellie: November 2017

Welcome to the State of the Ellie post, my monthly overshare life recap!

Um…
Well…
Huh.

Okay, so I stared at an empty post for a good hour trying to remember how to do this. It’s hard after so long of not talking frankly and frequently about what’s up on this side of the screen. I feel like I need to tell you the backstory of every little detail–a process for which neither of us has time. It’s also hard because everything in my life is all up in everything else’s business, which makes it har...