The Agony
The bookshelf at Poke Acupuncture. Follow me on Instagram for more photographs from my life in L.A.
Buy My Book I About | Blog I Newsletter I X I Instagram I LinkedIn I Consulting I Email
Filtering by Tag: HEALTH
#mood
The Last Plague
Image via Wikimedia Commons
Awhile back, an audio producer friend of mine asked me to write up a pitch for an original fiction podcast series inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. The series I pitched wasn’t picked up, but here’s an excerpt from the pitch:
What if you thought you were the last person left alive in the world? What would you do? And what if one day you discovered you weren’t the only one? “The Last Plague” is a two-part, 70-minute, fictional oral history of what happened after The Last Plague (as it’s known) leaves one lone virus-immune survivor on each continent. Narratively framed through interviews conducted by a researcher in Singapore, this original fiction podcast series examines the power of our will to survive and the determination to connect with others in the wake of a global catastrophe.
I’m a writer and a strategy consultant. Contact me for a consultation.
The Interrupters
Image via Wikipedia
Great piece by Betty Márquez Rosales for The New York Times, featuring “the Interrupters” in Stockton, where “Covid-19 and the issue of police brutality have intertwined with the existing problems of gun violence and unemployment to create fresh ways of ensnaring young Black and Latino men.”
An excerpt:
“Stockton sits in the vast agricultural flatlands of central California, about 80 miles east of San Francisco. It is a working-class community that fell into steep decline after the Great Recession. A universal basic income project, investments in its downtown, and the election of its youngest and first Black mayor have generated optimism in the city. But violence remains a challenge. A 2018 F.B.I. report found that Stockton’s violent crime rate was the highest of 70 California cities with more than 100,000 residents. ‘A lot of folks in our community were in a crisis before the coronavirus crisis,’ Michael Tubbs, Stockton’s mayor, said.”
Read it here.
I’m a writer and a strategy consultant. Contact me for a consultation.
8 Years Ago
Welcome back to Instagram. Sign in to check out what your friends, family & interests have been capturing & sharing around the world.
Not long ago, Facebook started sending me reminders of “memories,” and as of late they’ve been featuring posts from eight years ago, when I’d just finished chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer. After I went through treatment, I’d sometimes remind myself on bad days that, well, hey, at least it ain’t chemo! (Chemo is the worst.) In any case, this was one of those not-so-good days, and I’m glad to have been cancer-free every since.
I’m an author, editor, and consultant.
Book a free 15-minute consultation today.
When Things Fall Apart
Image via Wikipedia
My latest newsletter is about “How to Flourish When the World Falls Apart.” The answer is one part constitution, one part nature, and one part lived experience.
Here’s an excerpt:
“What I’d seen in New Orleans—a city decimated, refrigerators standing in the street like tombstones, a boat marooned by the side of the road—was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. It forced me to face what we all sense but do not want to see: That in an instant, the world as we know it can be utterly transformed, and irrevocably so.”
Read the rest here, and subscribe to my newsletter here.
About me. To hire me, read this and then email me here. Subscribe to my newsletter. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Read The Hustler Diaries here.
Isolation Selfie
Sex Work Pandemic
If you’ve not seen it yet, check out my Pandemic Fictions series. You can also see animated versions of some of them on Twitter and Instagram.
Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.
In the Tub
Image credit: Nikola Tamindzic
My photographer friend Nikola Tamindzic remotely photographed me for his “I Am Here, and You Are Where You Are” series. As he puts it: It’s “a series of portraits of people all over the world during the coronavirus pandemic, most of whom I have never met in ‘real life.’ I am shooting these portraits remotely: me in my apartment in New York City, them out there in the world, using whatever technology we can.”
Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.
The Plague Fables
Image via Amazon
I highly recommend reading Jill Lepore’s latest for The New Yorker: “What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About.” If you’ve not read Lepore before, now would be a great time to read Joe Gould’s Teeth.
Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.
The Empath
Image via The New Yorker
If you’re interested in the toll being a hyper-empath takes on the creator, check out “Fiona Apple’s Art of Radical Sensitivity” by Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker.
On the day that Jonathan Ames came over, Apple had pondered the exact nature of her work. Maybe, she suggested, she was like any other artist whose body is an instrument—a ballerina who wears her feet out or a sculptor who strains his back. Maybe she, too, wore herself out. Maybe that’s why she had to take time to heal in between projects.
Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.
#pandemicfiction
This Smells Like My Vagina
Image via Goop
Fascinating. How is this real? Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is selling a candle called This Smells Like My Vagina. It costs $75, and here’s the backstory:
“This candle started as a joke between perfumer Douglas Little and GP—the two were working on a fragrance, and she blurted out, ‘Uhhh..this smells like a vagina’—but evolved into a funny, gorgeous, sexy, and beautifully unexpected scent. (That turned out to be perfect as a candle—we did a test run at an In goop Health, and it sold out within hours.) It’s a blend of geranium, citrusy bergamot, and cedar absolutes juxtaposed with Damask rose and ambrette seed that puts us in mind of fantasy, seduction, and a sophisticated warmth.”
The Cut has some very funny reviews.
Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.
Joker
Image via LA Times
Finally saw “Joker.” “The King of Comedy” meets “Taxi Driver” meets “Logan.” A triumphant performance wrapped inside a decent movie. A celebration of mayhem, murder, and insanity. Grimly nihilistic but sometimes gorgeous. The best parts are when Joaquin Phoenix dances. The third act stumbles, then resurrects itself. The point, if there is one: Sometimes it’s up to madmen to change the world.
Like what I do? Support my work! Buy my digital short story: THE TUMOR.
Sorry Not Sorry
A recent shot from my Instagram feed.
Buy a copy of my acclaimed story, “The Tumor” … “a masterpiece of short fiction.”
Seven Years Cancer-Free
Buy my digital short, “The Tumor.” It’s been called “a masterpiece of short fiction.”
How to Get a Mammogram
19 Likes, 0 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "✨"
You go to the place. You’ve done this before. You’re not a novice. In fact, you’re a pro. Because you’ve done this many, many times before. So, you get there early. Even so, other people get there before you. So, you have to wait. But not for long. Soon enough, someone tells you it’s time to go in the first room. There, a woman behind a computer does your paperwork. She hands you some papers and tells you where to go. You go down a hallway until you get to a locker room. There, a woman gives you a robe and a bag. You go in a smaller room and change. Then, you come back out. For a while, you wait in another room. Eventually, another woman comes out and tells you it’s time. When you walk in the final room, it’s just you and her. When you see the machine, you remember how big it is. Its plastic panels are waiting to squish your flesh between them so it can see what’s inside of you. For a moment, your mind skips. Is it this time, or the last time, or the time a long time ago when they looked inside and found something wrong with you? Just as quickly, you’re pulled back to reality. For maybe ten minutes, you and the machine are locked in an intimate embrace. One by one, it squeezes each breast as you drape your arms awkwardly around its hard frame. Finally, you’re done, and the only evidence it happened is the pink marks on your chest were it squeezed you so hard that you winced and the woman apologized. As you wait for the woman to hand you a piece of paper, you catch a glimpse of the inside of yourself on the screen. There you are: luminous, the flesh in the shape of your breast, inside of it a map of lines you cannot read. What can you do? You take the piece of paper, you walk out to the car, you wonder when they’ll call you and what they’ll tell you.
Buy my digital short story, “The Tumor” … “a masterpiece of short fiction.”
An Excerpt From an Unpublished Essay
An excerpt from an unpublished essay:
Image via Harvard Health Publishing
“The tumor was mine. Arguably, it was my malignant baby, for my body had created it, and it was growing inside of me at an aggressive pace. But I did not want it. I wanted it out. There was a lot of debate over the best way to address the monster within me. The first oncologist wanted to chop off both my breasts and yank out my reproductive organs. After that, a plastic surgeon showed me his photo album filled with pictures of women whose heads were clipped out of the frame and whose breasts had been ravaged by cancer, the interior flesh of which had been removed by him, and which had been reconstructed in ways that did not, to my eye, look at all natural. Finally, a physician’s assistant came in the room after the plastic surgeon had left. I said I didn’t realize it would look like that, and he said he understood. He held one hand in the air palm up, and he held the other hand in the air palm down. His top hand made a tent over his bottom hand. He said my breast was like a circus tent and having a mastectomy was like taking away the tent pole. With that, he flattened his top hand against his bottom hand like a circus tent collapsing, crushing all the circus animals, carnival performers, and acrobats in the process.”
Buy my short story "The Tumor" — it’s been called "a masterpiece of short fiction."
Bones
10 Likes, 0 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "💀"
A photo from today’s Instagram feed.
Buy "The Tumor" — my short story that’s been called "a masterpiece of short fiction."
I'm Giving TM a Try
9 Likes, 0 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "I just signed up for #transcendentalmeditation 🙏🏼"
Following in the footsteps of my personal heroes David Lynch and Ray Dalio, and on the heels of trouble with migraines, I’m going to give Transcendental Meditation a try. (Image from my Instagram feed)
Buy "The Tumor" — my short story that’s been called "a masterpiece of short fiction."