Jo Traveler

I don't travel. I just up and move.

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Memorial Day in a year of magical thinking…

Memorial Day in a year of magical thinking…

The first time I read Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking wasn’t long after it was published. I was mourning my mother for the fifth year and ongoing, and I was also disappointed about the transition from Missouri to California. I could relate to Didion in this book and in another of hers, Where I Was From. California was impressive, but it took me a long time to grow into it. Parts of it to…

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#GenerationGeneralizations

Kids these days.

About a year after I graduated from high school a friend and I moved to southwest Missouri, to Branson, so that she could get her shot at country music and I came along for the adventure. Her manager asked me one night what my interest was in.

“Writing,” I answered.

“Writing music?” he followed up, thinking folks only moved to Branson if their interests had something to do with…

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#ShortAnswer

I’ll admit it, if you give me a verbal leash, I’ll write or speak it out to length. This blog warns readers that they might have to be “long-winded” in order to read my thoughts and ramblings.

And still…

I constantly push myself with my writing, and for me pushing myself means learning how to write the short version of a story or essay. I review social media and recommendations from fellow…

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#TheCrawl

I moved to San Diego in 2012 under duress. I didn’t want to move to San Diego, I wanted to stay in the Bay Area, but I had taken a career risk in the Bay Area and it didn’t pan out and I ran out of money. My brother and sister-in-law lived north of San Diego and I moved in with them. I’m always and forever grateful that they took me in, but I resented San Diego.

“But why hate San Diego?” I got…

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#BingeingNumbers

When I was in elementary school (and I imagine when you were, too) there were summer reading programs put together by the local libraries. A series of charts with stamps or multi-colored circles that could be strung together with tape or string tracked how many books kids had read, and at the end of the summer break the numbers were tallied and kids won prizes for crossing certain number…

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#NoComment #DisappearingAct

I don’t receive many comments or questions to these blog posts, and with comments it’s difficult to tell how to respond. Like the comment? Comment on the comment?

And, really, no questions at all.

Not that comments or questions would be unwelcome, by any means.  I don’t write things of high controversy, though; I just write about experiences, trying to keep to a topic. Other blogs, other vlogs,…

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#StoryProblems #NeatTrick

As previously stated in this blog, I belong to a book club with a local bookseller, held the second Thursday of every month. For the most part I find some kind of redeeming quality in the books that we read, even if the book isn’t a favorite; the individual sentences may be quality prose, or I enjoy a particular character, etc. The only thing that I struggle with is if the writer decides to…

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#ReaderLeaders

Back in 2004 I was living in Southwest Missouri and suddenly had the opportunity to move to California. My brother was in the Bay Area, still single, and we decided that when I did move we would be roommates. I packed most of my Missouri life in a storage unit and the rest into my car: clothes, cat, notebooks, and books (but just a few because this was a 1998 Chevy Lumina, not a bookmobile). The…

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#WellBehavedReaderWriter

There are cafe cultures and there are cultures that are still struggling to be cafe cultures. I’ve written and read in public in four different geographic areas in my lifetime, and lived in five different geographic areas; when I was growing up in rural Ohio there was no writing in public unless you were in school, and even then one needed to hurry up and finish the damn writing so that I could…

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#ComfortBooks

My apartment is one big To Be Read pile. There are very few books there that I have read before; when I finish reading a book I place it in a basket by the front door to be donated to the library.

Still, I do save some books. If I’m given a book as a gift, I keep that book. If the author has signed the book (either in front of me or I just happened to buy it that way), I keep that book.

And if I…

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#WhosWho

Last week I finished a memoir by Reyna Grande entitled A Dream Called Home. Grande is a naturalized U.S. citizen who journeyed as a child from Mexico to join her parents in Los Angeles, only to discover that her parents and her siblings weren’t too keen to have her there. A Dream Called Home picks up where the memoir of her childhood (The Distance Between Us) leaves off, when Grande finishes…

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Just juice if you think about it.✨ (at Puesto at The Headquarters) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuW0gF0H1ww/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1fmb8xw8b7t2n

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Facing another week like...🐇 https://www.instagram.com/p/BuSmuwPnPkC/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=rtwq21ihp9mr

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Something #Familiar, today. 🎭 (at Old Globe Theatre) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuR6dGUn37E/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1dx8nw13uhe95

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Tonight’s feature. 📽 #OscarSeason https://www.instagram.com/p/BuNTe_4Hczn/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1hdpc4pit1fp4

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Maybe just hang with George today...he seems to have the right idea. (at Coffee and Tea Collective) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuJy8XgnljO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=mjswbzdb7rtp