Natalie Burg's Blog
September 30, 2016
Pain In My Ass
I have late-onset hypochondria. Yes, that is a made up condition. Yes, this is a self-diagnosis. But doesn't that just make me right?
In the past year, I have been convinced the following things would kill me: ingesting poison ivy (without actually ingesting any), Lyme disease (saw a tick once) and aneurysm (it was a headache). Now, there's my ass. My tailbone has been sore for six months. I am not imagining this. I've had an ultrasound, X-ray and lots of people poking around the top of my butt crack. And before any of them came to a conclusion, I did: I determined I was suffering from stage 11 butt bone cancer and my daughter would grow up motherless and I wouldn't live to give her a sibling or witness the incredible woman she will grow up to be.
That was the official self-diagnosis. Including the Ginny stuff. It's what I spent weeks thinking about, and how I developed a habit of wistfully smelling her hair.
In the past year, I have been convinced the following things would kill me: ingesting poison ivy (without actually ingesting any), Lyme disease (saw a tick once) and aneurysm (it was a headache). Now, there's my ass. My tailbone has been sore for six months. I am not imagining this. I've had an ultrasound, X-ray and lots of people poking around the top of my butt crack. And before any of them came to a conclusion, I did: I determined I was suffering from stage 11 butt bone cancer and my daughter would grow up motherless and I wouldn't live to give her a sibling or witness the incredible woman she will grow up to be.
That was the official self-diagnosis. Including the Ginny stuff. It's what I spent weeks thinking about, and how I developed a habit of wistfully smelling her hair.
May 17, 2016
Spending your (time) lotto winnings
For about three minutes today, I fantasized about how I would spend $429.6 million in lotto winnings. Then I realized that since my thrilling character combination of being both super cheap and strongly analytical has prevented me from ever having purchased a lottery ticket, these were three minutes sorely wasted. Besides, once you are a legit adult, don't you have to subscribe to that boring windfall rule of 1/3 toward debt, invest 1/3 and just 1/3 for splurging? Zzzzzz...
All this happened just moments before winning my own brand of lottery.
All this happened just moments before winning my own brand of lottery.
April 26, 2016
Seneca Falls 1848: Women looking at each other
The following is a blog series based on my new daily habit: Reading one entry from “What Every American Should Know …
April 21, 2016
Sarah & Angelina Grimké, 1837: The power of a compelling story
The Grimké Sisters DNGAF at a time when NGAF could ruin a woman's life in no shortage of ways. I'd already set these women on my shelf of revered feminists after reading "The Invention of Wings," a fictionalized account of their lives as abolitionists and feminists by Sue Monk Kidd. A new theme about their story emerged for me, however, in their short (non-fictionalized) entry in "What Every American Should Know About Women's History." It turns out that one of the biggest audacities of their audacious lives was lecturing to same-sex audiences on abolitionism. 
April 19, 2016
Dorothea Dix, 1843: Stay focused, do great things
In a time when women could not vote and were still incredibly limited in their ability affect social change, Dorothea Dix singlehandedly changed the living and care conditions for hundreds of people with mental illness in the United States.
April 14, 2016
The most productive hour of my month (errr…year) was getting a massage. Really.
Yesterday, I redeemed a gift certificate for a massage given to me by my mom for my birthday. Wasn’t that …
February 9, 2016
In which a professional writer asks, “I actually have to write during working hours? Whaaaaa?”
Writing between the hours of 9 and 5 is really difficult for me. And it's taken me six years as a professional, full-time writer to recognize that it's sort of a problem.
How it has always worked before is that I spent the almighty Designated Working Hours doing all of the writing tasks that are not writing: emailing, scheduling interviews, conducting interviews, editing, researching, invoicing, etc., etc. Actual writing was reserved for the couch, after hours or on the weekends. So that's what I did.
How it has always worked before is that I spent the almighty Designated Working Hours doing all of the writing tasks that are not writing: emailing, scheduling interviews, conducting interviews, editing, researching, invoicing, etc., etc. Actual writing was reserved for the couch, after hours or on the weekends. So that's what I did.
In which a professional wrier asks, “How am I ever going to get any writing done during working hours?”
Writing between the hours of 9 and 5 is really difficult for me. And it's taken me six years as a professional, full-time writer to recognize that it's sort of a problem.
How it has always worked before is that I spent the almighty Designated Working Hours doing all of the writing tasks that are not writing: emailing, scheduling interviews, conducting interviews, editing, researching, invoicing, etc., etc. Actual writing was reserved for the couch, after hours or on the weekends. So that's what I did.
How it has always worked before is that I spent the almighty Designated Working Hours doing all of the writing tasks that are not writing: emailing, scheduling interviews, conducting interviews, editing, researching, invoicing, etc., etc. Actual writing was reserved for the couch, after hours or on the weekends. So that's what I did.
January 28, 2016
That Time I Drunkenly Ranted About Hating Libraries
I don’t often go on drunken rants, but the one time I did in recent memory, it was about how …
January 19, 2016
The boy on the beach
There are fewer more embarrassing things for a writer than when someone — a prospective client or random reader — …
