Monthly Essays

I Procrastinated

You might think it’s not that hard to write a monthly essay. After all, it’s only once a month. So just get it done. Well, this month I didn’t. Here it is the first day of the month, my essay should have been on my website early this morning, and I have nothing.

My file of essay topics is thick. Through the years, I’ve jotted down ideas when something strikes me as unusual or thought provoking or interesting, but every one of those subjects requires focused thought. I rarely write an essay the day before it’s due, certainly not the very day it’s due, even if it is my own deadline. Sentences should hold together, and that requires lots of tinkering and revision.

I actually started an essay yesterday and then deleted the document. It was on how invisible I felt at a recent ‘strategic planning’ board meeting. After someone reaches a certain age, it’s as if their ideas are old school, looking backwards, out-of-step. Doesn’t experience count for anything? When I was forty, did I treat older people with condescension? I hate to think the answer could be yes. But I’m not ready to think about that yet and form an essay. I’m still a bit hurt.

Now… that could be an essay idea—because we control if we are hurt or exasperated or amused. No matter what someone says or does, we choose how we react to it. Wasn’t it Eleanor Roosevelt who said, “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent,” or something like that? I’ve nursed this hurt feeling, a little “poor me” a couple days, and I’m through with it.

Obviously, I should start an essay the last week of the month, but I’ve learned with age not to promise something I can’t deliver. Or promise to attend a function because something could happen and I couldn’t make it. My go-to phrase now is “I plan to…” That gives me wiggle room.

This first of the month, I procrastinated too long to write a coherent essay you can relate to or an amusing anecdote to entertain you.

I plan to do better.

Dr. Sarah’s Dare

Doctor Sarah's Dare

Deception and Secrets–At a celebration dinner, Dr. Sarah Madison’s friends from high school days tell her she’s way too serious, intimidates men with her intelligence, and has lost her sense of whimsy. They dare her to ask out a complete stranger and not tell him she’s a doctor until she’s manipulated him into going to a fundraiser fashion show. Across the restaurant, three doctors in Kansas City for the AMA convention discuss their college days. One asks Dr. Marshall Adams if he still has “It,” the ability to pick up any gal he wants. They dare him to ask out the woman at a nearby table; she’s been casting icy glances their way. He accepts the challenge. Thus the clever deceptions begin. Download your copy today!

Travel back to small town life in 1954 to meet the people who live on the Corner of Pearl & Moffet.

Before 33-year-old Josie Jameson takes the seat reserved for the widow, she glances around the old graveyard. Over three hundred people have gathered to pay their respects to her late husband. That is nearly the population of Ducane, Arkansas.

She had married Orville nine years earlier. That he was 43 years her senior hadn’t really troubled her, but there had been plenty of talk. She was a farm girl when she married and moved to the big white house on the corner of Pearl and Moffet. She didn’t fit the mold of housewife to the richest man in town. Now that he’s dead, she owns the Ducane Savings and Loan, The Station that makes more money from liquor sales than gasoline, his private ledger books with unofficial loans and repayment schedules, and the little brown books written in his tight scrawl that hold the town’s secrets.

When tragedy strikes, the good people of Ducane, who share each other’s joys and sorrows, who celebrate others’ accomplishments with pride, who take food to the bereaved and do chores for those who are sick, these same good people whisper, “This is Josie’s fault!”

Corner of Pearl & Moffet is a gripping tale of one woman’s struggle through sorrow and challenges to find her own life. Download your copy today.

2025 essay