Penny Post #50: Rewind

Celebrating 1.5 years of 50 essays with an in-depth look back.

If you want to catch up on previous posts, this is your time to. With Penny Post #50 (wow!), I encourage you to journey with me backward to mark the growth of my writing and wisdom.

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It is my hope to eventually compile these essays into an anthology much like Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice from Dear Sugar or Ann Patchett’s This Is The Story of a Happy Marriage. Until then, I do this: compile the best of my writing here for both of us. Not in paperback nor hardcover yet, but promise me you’ll buy it when it is! 🤞🏼

Onward…

I took my thoughts to the road and investigated how we are the worst versions of ourselves behind the wheel.

Best line: Although Ruby has never defeated a terrifying host of Decepticons that have travelled to Earth from another planet to destroy it, she got me through high school which is, more or less, the same thing.

My writing (if you haven’t noticed by now) is decidedly philosophical, sometimes asking more questions than it answers. Hints of sarcasm tinge the in-between, my humorous voice shining through.

Best line: Even if it means steeping tea bags on the stove at 6am in the morning or buying a milk frother wand and then triple A batteries to operate said milk frother wand and searching every grocery store within a 10 mile radius to find the Tazo Chai Tea bags that are always emptied from the shelves.

I love run-on sentences that leave you gasping for breath. My next PP feels like a run-on affirmation as I navigate the challenges of young adulthood.

Best line: There are the random sun spots and moles that arise on your skin without permission. Yet there is also the sun, the glorious sun, that rises each day like a promise.

Sick and confined to bed, I recorded a voice memo of the following PP in the middle of the night. I remember thinking it hilarious in the moment, embellishing for dramatic effect. Pared down slightly, here is the ironic “smooth move”…

Best line: I consulted no doctors except for my unlicensed yet incredibly confident mother who encouraged rest and hydration as well as my unlicensed yet incredibly ambitious boyfriend who thought a meat thermometer (that punctures chicken flesh and cow skin) would be able to accurately predict my condition if stuck under my tongue.

Then I traveled East for a week away from a job that I had sensed was getting the best of me.

Best line: Perhaps my cynicism comes from the fact that a mindless middle aged man spilled my just-paid-for strawberry daiquiri (my own negligent indulgence) all over my favorite white skirt. I spend two days and many fluid ounces of to erase my sins & his.

I sunk into a deeper pit of unfulfillment and helplessness, using nature’s phenomenon to explain my despair.

Best line: I find myself wishing to be as small as an ant. Then maybe the world would feel bigger. The 567 square feet that I live in might feel full of infinite possibility. I might know that dead ends aren’t hopeless, they’re just redirection.

My best coping strategy was to fit the numbers into boxes on a grid. Otherwise known as Sudoku. I’ve since finished over one hundred puzzles and have elected myself an “expert”.

Best line: I’ve turned to numbers and have lost words.

I’m a vivid dreamer. Most of the time, they’re useless and confusing. Every once and awhile I dream of something with significance, like an elusive and relentless hamster named Rosie:

Best line: Somehow we decided that our failed ownership of hamster Rosie was evidence that we were meant to own a dog. Somehow we decided to honor (or erase?) hamster Rosie by using her name to identify our newest pet who would come to replace hamster Rosie as our first true pet.

Cue Kiera writing pieces dedicated to her favorite writers. Exhibit A:

Best line: I was fascinated by alcohol’s influence, but more than most, grateful that this drug did not wrap its grimy addictive claws over my body and call itself a victor. 

Exhibit B:

Best line: And yet Suleika, having crossed that treacherous tightrope from one kingdom to the other, has bravely marked her passage through her work. Although her fine is likely far more complicated and hard-wrought, she repeatedly finds the tools—through journaling, watercoloring, and community—to “transform life’s interruptions into creative grist”.

Then came a resentment-driven monster of an essay written during a time that I would not quit a job that I desperately needed to. This is my version of Taylor’s “Female Rage: The Musical!”

Best line: Once again, I take my modest resume and my YMCA CPR certificate to the telephone poles in town and staple it below Stanley the missing cat. I wonder if Stanley was ever found. I wonder if I will be.

My writing took a turn toward eerie darkness, when I wrote a haunting essay about what was once a fairytale.

Best line: Pumpkins are actually pumpkins and mice are actually mice and glass slippers leave blisters no band-aid can fix.

Then I went on a birthday trip and took the day off of work and wondered why I was so happy. In hindsight, the answer was glaringly obvious.

Best line: Thank you for taking the thing that is closest to my heart and bringing it ever so slightly closer to yours.

Happy nostalgia continued with a trip down memory line where chaos meets love on a set of rickety, steep European stairs.

Best line: Never again did my backpack come unzipped.

I continued on in deeply metaphorical discernment with an essay inspired by Rumi’s The Guest House.

Best line: I looked in on my guest house and saw all of my uninvited guests mingle, sip on my aged red wine, and goad me from within.

I got lost in the torrent of responsibility and expectation, diving deep into my chosen career.

Best line: The copper glint at the bottom of my well delivers me hope, reminds me that there is a ground and I can walk on it.

I floated on the cloud of companionship as a dog-sitter, delightfully covered in golden retriever fur.

Best line: What he doesn’t know, what he shrinks away from, however, is how much he is deeply, deeply loved by a young woman who has been in and out of his life for several years; who returns older and wiser as the hair on Bo’s snout turns from gold to grey.

I journey deeper into metaphorical territory, when I released my most popular-essay to date that earned me my fair share of panicked text messages, phone calls, and emails from friends and family who were shocked at my supposed announcement that I accepted a job as a zookeeper.

Best line: Enter into that damn cage, dangle that big, juicy steak in front of the creature, and eventually, become one.

Inspired while watching Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour on Film, I investigated my own relationship with performance and rejection.

Best line: I couldn't find English words for the pain, so I didn't bother finding Spanish ones. I rolled my r's and held my tongue yet (inevitably) couldn't hold my pen. These words, unlike the ones that had come before them, wrote themselves. Instead of trying to find my special, I found my truth.

Finding the courage to start before things are “just right,” analogous to another childhood tale.

Best line: Secret negotiations between my self as a writer and my self who is sleepy, hungry, and uninspired.

Roused by the ardent support of a stranger, I (once again) dove deep into metaphorical-edging-on-literal-territory with another “am I a fiction or nonfiction writer?” essay:

Best line: She writes it down and shares it with her Substack audience, wondering if they'll believe her. 

In my best essay to date, I draw back the curtain on the beginning of my novel.

Best line: My grandmother, now ninety-one, kept other matters private. It was a sin to gossip, after all. And if my grandmother was ruled by anything, she was ruled by the fear of God above, whose will, soon enough, found her father's grave excavated by her granddaugther's relentless curiosity and authorial ambitions. I, unlike my stoic and guarded grandmother, never learned to use a soft pedal.

I return to stream-of-consciousness writing in where I wrestle with the challenges of identifying as a writer.

Best line: There are few kinds of psychological torture more unrelenting and powerful than staring at a blank page with a blinking cursor.

Finally, an update on my faith journey and upcoming projects:

Best line: As the years waxed and my commitment to a nightly prayer waned, my tired mind would negotiate little shortcuts.

Now it’s your turn: tell me which penny posts resonated most with you in the comments below.

Until next time!
Kiera