Last week, I turned 35. Unlike when I turned 18, 21 or 30, nobody asked how 35 felt. I suppose that’s because I’m now a “woman of a certain age,” and it’s indelicate to mention my advanced years. But if you’re curious, 35 really feels different to me. I’m no longer part of the 18- to 34-year-old demographic. I’m old enough to be elected President. I’m sure that if I like something (tattoos, $2.99 bottles of red wine, Insane Clown Posse), it’s a reflection of my unique tastes, not a phase I’ll outgrow.

Turning 35 feels like a milestone. To honor that, I’m putting together a list of 35 things I plan to do this year.

1. March in four Mardi Gras parades (Sparta, Druids, Krewe d’Etat and Thoth) with Gris Gris Strut.

2. Go to Portland in March with Laura and get matching tattoos.

3. Go to Hawaii this summer with Bryan.

4. Publish my debut novel in July.

5. Take Dan Blank’s book marketing course (starts today!)

6. Get better at using my camera’s manual mode using A Beautiful Mess’s e-course as a guide.

7. Start learning Photoshop. (I am scared. It looks hard.)

8. Rebrand this blog using Hagar’s design skillz.

9. Organize my closet and quit storing pants in the kitchen cabinets.

10. Try out blonde hair.

11. Wear the same outfit to work five days in a row and see if anyone notices.

12. Go to the dentist.

13. Harness Jason Kruppa‘s vision for an author portrait. “I like weird, too,” Kruppa says. “Odd gestures, odd props, a surreal air.”

14. Finish writing my next novel. (Currently in revision hell. HELL!)

15. Go to Jazz Fest.

16. Bike the Tammany Trace and visit the Abita Mystery House.

17. Get LASIK.

18. Go to Houston, stay in a fancy hotel and hit up the free museums.  (KIND OF A CHEAT BECAUSE I DID THIS LAST WEEKEND.)

19. Read in a place that’s not my couch. Like, go to a park and read sometime.

20. Acquire and wear Spanx at least once to see what the fuss is about.

21. Run the Jazz Half Marathon. But it is ON HALLOWEEN this year. This seems like terrible planning.

22. Trap this cute feral cat that’s been hanging out on the porch and make him love me.

23. Buy myself flowers at least once.

24. Take many luxurious naps.

25. Get an IPL photofacial from Janna Haas, nurse-practitioner and rosacea-treater extraordinaire.

26. Work really hard at selling out with this blog by getting paid advertising and sponsored posts.

27. Talk to Jenn Nunes‘ students at Southern University. I’m excited to do this. Jenn writes fun and beautiful poems and used to be my roommate.

28. Do a tiny book tour when my book comes out.

29. Coffee and lunch dates galore with Megan Braden-Perry , Christy Lorio, Lauren LaBorde and other friends I don’t see enough.

30. Host many Europeans on their summer holidays through airbnb.

31. Shamelessly Instagram many selfies.

32. Dinner parties, backyard grill parties, birthday parties, holiday parties… just host a ton of parties.

33. Grow and eat vegetables and basil. We got a free garden through Green Light New Orleans, so there is no excuse.

34. Try vlogging on Youtube.

35. Be happy that I’m ALIVE AND 35.

Some of you are lucky enough to know my sister, Laura Wilkinson. She is hilarious and awesome. In the name of showing and not telling, let me SHOW you something she wrote while serving in Peace Corps Ukraine. I’ve always loved the story of her overseas belly button infection. I hope you do, too.

infection |inˈfek sh ən|
noun
the process of infecting or the state of being infected : strict hygiene will limit the risk of infection. 

I first noticed the infection on a bus ride. A dull ache flickered around my navel. So it was there, in the privacy of the back row, that I pulled up my shirt to further inspect it. Under the half-crescent of my piercing, a thick, red circle loomed, encompassing my belly button. The ooze appeared a second later. Last, the smell wafted up to my nose. I gagged and yanked the shirt down.

“What the FUCK is that?” was the only thought doing the electric slide in my mind. Then a partner joined. “Where the FUCK did it come from?”

The only stab of an idea I had as to who the father of the contaminated belly button could be … was the sea. I had taken many a dip in the Black Sea, lounging around like a modern-day Esther Williams in my bathing trunks. My navel must be more into mountains and snow than sand castle days at the beach! We all have our proclivities.

After reading extremely polar advice on the internet (ranging from “Oh, put some antibiotic cream on that shit and fugggit abouuut itttt” to “See a doctor. You are going to have your belly button removed. The surgery only has a .02 percent survival rate“), I took action: oral antibiotics (Cipro) and anti-fungal cream (apply twice daily).

The rash didn’t have the willpower to fight both these anti-warriors and began to subside. Or maybe, just maybe… it knew I was on my way back to the sea… and was saving its energy for the next battle.

During my last trip to the beach, my bathing suit stayed on, my hygiene stayed low, and my belly button boosted the pus production to an all-time high. It was time to stop by Peace Corps Medical on the way back to my site.

 

Admitting to a “belly button infection” is a humiliating thing. It’s one of the grossest things you can say to someone, because EVERYONE has a belly button. Everyone can imagine how fucking foul it is for there to be something growing inside of it. Everyone’s noses wrinkle in disgust when you say it smells like a belly button rotting (when THEY asked!!!!!).

The doctor pretended everything was normal, asking typical questions (Does it hurt? When’d it start? How did you treat it?) But then came the examination. My navel could no longer curl into itself.

As I lay on the table, she prodded around in the anus of my stomach (I’m out of synonyms for belly button and forced to come up with new ones), looking more and more puzzled.

“I’m only internal medicine,” she stated. I eagerly nodded so I’d seem impressed. (Why else would she say it?)  She then added, “I’m going to get the surgical doctor in here.”

I gulped and pictured myself navelless: a future lover trying to give me an adorable raspberry and , upon seeing my hole-less torso, projectile vomiting uncontrollably.

Dr. Sasha went straight to work. He got a swab and pushed it in the depths of the red circle to test it in the lab. He asked me the same questions, still hunting around. Then, after approximately seven minutes of digging in my orifice with his metal instrument, he gasped.

“What… what…” He muttered, switching to a small pair of forceps.  “What the…”

A soiled, tawny, infectious ball the size of a dime appeared.

“What is THAT?” I asked, incredulous.

“What do you THINK it is?” Dr. Sasha retorted.

My jaw still was on the floor. I shook my head, dumbstruck.

“It’s a cotton ball, Laura. A Q-tip!” He placed the evidence on a tray. “Now… do you want to tell me the real story?”

I didn’t understand. Did he think I was lying? Did he think I KNEW about there being HALF a Q-Tip in my STOMACH? Did he think there was some debauchery I’d performed involving my rounded, knotty depression in the center of the belly caused by the detachment of the umbilical cord after birth? Never!

“I really didn’t know it was there.” I felt a wave of embarrassment. Not only did I come to the office with an infection in my b.b. that smelled like Death brewed it up, it was by my own hand. And took almost 10 minutes to find.

Luckily, the doctors shut their judging face navels and cleaned it. The peroxide fizzled. The saline burned. Before bandaging (but after commenting that it smelled less putrid) , they just had one last thing to check: the pus.

One doctor, horizontally, pulled my skin on my stomach flat, then pushed it together. The other did the same, but vertically. It is the closest I have ever been to being milked.

Dr. Sasha was not pleased. “It’s still secreting.”

“Gross.”

“I’d like to take some photographs of it to show you.”

“Gross.”

He busted out the camera with exaggerated noises (the zoom’s huge WHOOOOSH sound made it seem like he was trying to photograph my spleen) and took about six pictures. We had a little slideshow on the computer, revealing the shimmery pustule on the bottom of my stomach cavity in full glory.

“If this doesn’t go away by Monday, we’ll have to have a little minor surgery,” Dr. Sasha said in the most serious tone he’d used all day. “In the meantime, here are some things to clean it.”

He handed me a small brown bag with peroxide, saline, syringes, antibiotic ointment, gauze …  and Q-Tips.

 

I don’t know much about art or how to evaluate it. But I know when art makes me feel something. And generally that something is a reflection on/recalibration of my personal history. To me, good art looks cool and lifts me outside of my vantage point. It’s a holographic sticker that gets its shine from the interplay between my experience and the artist’s.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I’ll talk about the experience I had yesterday at the Museum of Public Art in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Baton Rouge is the city where I was born and spent the first 13 years of my life.  I drove to the museum from New Orleans and took the Louise Street exit from I-10, as per Google’s directions.  When I exited, I felt myself downshift not just from the interstate, but into the recesses of my past. Because the exit deposited me by McKinley Middle Magnet.

I attended McKinley in 1992-93, when I was in seventh grade. The school was surrounded by chain-link fences topped with barbed wire. On my first day, I saw leaking pipes and a rat doing the back-stroke on a glue trap in the library. There were no after-school activities. Immediately after the last bell, we students boarded buses that trundled us across Baton Rouge far and wide. The busing and the magnet schools are an attempt to overcome the lingering demon of segregation, which is a lingering demon of slavery.

So I was happy to see the chain link fence gone, the old school razed and a bright new brick facility in its place. But as I drove toward the museum, this feeling was replaced by uneasiness.

I was in the “bad” neighborhood, where I’d never been allowed to go. I felt like an interloper, come to gape at the graffiti and be gaped at by residents from their porches. I felt scared.

Although the Museum of Public Art has more than 230,000 likes on Facebook and has garnered no small amount of press, I was the only person there yesterday morning. Which surprised me. The experience of viewing huge murals and art in public spaces is inherently powerful and tends to draws a crowd. I went to Exhibit Be in New Orleans and it was packed. Same for the installations in the Lower 9th during Prospect. 1.

This was different, though. And it was different because in both of the afore-mentioned places, the art was in places where life used to happen. An apartment complex, standing abandoned in 2014. A former neighborhood, flooded and gutted in 2008.

The Museum of Public Art is in a living community. One that’s economically depressed. And that is part of director Kevin Harris’ motive for putting it there, according to reporting by The Daily Reveille. Art is the engine that drives economic development, and south Baton Rouge needs it.

I’d wager that putting the installation in a “bad” neighborhood also is a choice that’s meant to provoke questions. Why was I scared to be there? Why is this predominately black neighborhood “bad,” when the houses less than a mile away, in the predominately white Garden District, are “good?” And how do the murals comment on that?

To me, the Museum of Public Art is a dialogue on something that’s happening now. And the something isn’t too hard to guess. It isn’t too subtle. It’s in the photo of the plantation owner’s white wife and black slave. It’s in the paint-stained fists breaking free of shackles. It’s in the vibrantly graffitied shotgun homes sitting in the shadow of a magnet school meant to educate Baton Rouge children regardless of their race or income.

As a white person, it’s easy to think of racism as something that doesn’t affect me, like earthquakes in Haiti or deforestation in the Amazon. Something that’s a shame, but has little bearing on my day-to-day life. I write a check, support the cause when I can and shake my head, but overall, this tragedy is something that happens to Them. Not me.

I’m wrong for that. I don’t experience racism. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect me.  I feel poorer for having grown up in a racially divided city with a failing public school system that segregates wealthy whites and poor blacks. I feel poorer for not having had black neighbors. I feel poorer for being deprived of black voices and experiences. And not just me. Baton Rouge is poorer.  So poor it is on the brink of tearing itself asunder.

When I visited the Museum of Public Art, I felt enriched. Ashamed. Inspired. Mostly I felt proud. Proud to be from Baton Rouge, proud of its people. And proud of the city I pray it can become.

This afternoon, I promenaded around my neighborhood. These are some things I saw along the way.

Homes of the neighbors:

The New Orleans skyline below a weak winter sun:

Some life advice (or a demand?) in Crescent Park:

 

Graffitied warehouse scandalizing a prim shotgun’s pastel sensibilities:

 

A reminder that it’s been almost 10 years, and now the Katrina search marks are made of cast iron instead of spray paint:

This crazy cat! THE END.

If you mosey over to my Publications page, you’ll see I have a couple bylines in xoJane.com. I’m proud of those essays. They’re among the most honest pieces I’ve ever written. Both found large readerships, so they must have resonated with a lot of people. One was even translated into Italian. For a few weeks, I felt like a tiny literary star.

And SO CAN YOU! The great thing is, xoJane is very transparent about its submission process. The editors clearly lay out what they’re looking for, who to pitch and what to include. They value great stories and want to make it easy for people to share their own. That’s one reason I was (and am) an avid reader. Coincidentally, this also is the first step to a successful pitch.

I read xoJane for years before pitching my stories. I was a huge fan of the “It Happened To Me” section, where people share weird, embarrassing, poignant, funny (or a mix of all four) personal experiences. Though I’d sifted through years of back issues, I couldn’t find one that related to my experiences in a very strict, doomsday-oriented new religious movement (what some people would call a cult). I knew there must be people with similar experiences who might benefit from reading mine. So I decided to submit my story.

I had pretty much internalized the site’s voice from reading it so often. I did prime the pump by reading a few published xoJane essays right before I started writing. I told it the way I would recount it to a friend at a bar. xoJane editors say they value honesty and authenticity and your true voice and all that, but the people you should really fear are the commenters. They are bloodhounds when it comes to sniffing out BS. And they will skewer you if they think you’re not being honest with them (or yourself). They rule.

Although you don’t HAVE to submit the whole piece (you can pitch an idea), I did, just so the editors would know exactly what they’d be getting. Here’s what my pitch email looked like (I pasted the entire story in the email, too):

The next day, I got this response:

Thank you for submitting to xoJane! We would like to publish your story. Can you send (or re-send) us the piece, some original art to run with it, a bio picture, and a bio for your author page? I have attached our submission guidelines for your reference. Please try to adhere to these guidelines. If you would like to remain anonymous please do not send a bio or bio image and try to make sure there are no defining characteristics in any of the images you send us. When can you send this all to me? I will send you a contract as soon as you confirm your due date.

I snapped some bathroom selfies, signed the contract with Say Media, and the story went live that week. I will say it was not the most favorable contract to writers, but I can’t disclose anything more than that, because of its confidentiality clause. I didn’t get paid, but at that point in my career, the xoJane byline and its audience (3.5 million monthly readers, according to MediaBistro.com) made an unpaid assignment worthwhile. I would submit to them again just to get that kind of readership.

The overall experience was extremely cathartic. Prior to the story’s publication, very few people knew about my religious experience. It was weird to go from having this secret to having millions of strangers know my story. In twelve-step programs, they say, “You’re only as sick as your secrets,” and “Every time you tell your story, you cut the pain in half.” If these slogans are true, I’m a healthier person now, and I’ve halved my pain down to an infinitely tiny mote of suffering.

I guess that would be my most useful piece of advice, really: Find the kernel of secret pain lodged inside you and tell everyone how it got there. That’s a story I would like to read.

Just popping in here to say my story about sensory deprivation, which I blogged about last month,  is in Gambit this week, and it’s really blowing up online. More than 300 400 Facebook likes so far! Not too shabby. Anyway, check the Gambit feature out here if you’re interested. I highly recommend everyone try sensory deprivation at least once. It’s “like drugs… without the drugs,” my editor says.

 

The average price tag for an MFA in creative writing is $30,000, according to Costhelper.com. Pretty steep, especially since you probably won’t have time to hold down a full-time job during the two to three years it takes to finish.

Is an MFA worth $30,000? No way. Unless you’re the kind of person who has $30,000 rattling around in a shoe box or trust fund somewhere, in which case, go for it.

For everyone else, an MFA makes sense if… and only if… you’re funded. That is, your tuition is waived and you’re receiving some sort of stipend from the university for teaching or assisting or just because they like your prose. An MFA is an excellent way to learn a lot, read a lot, meet cool people and earn fast-food wages while figuring out how to Be A Writer. If you get accepted, your odds of being funded are not at all bad. Huffington Posts reports that more than half of the top 50 MFA programs are fully funded.

You’ll probably be low-income for a couple years. But at least you won’t graduate with debt!

I got my MFA from the University of New Orleans, and I was lucky enough to be awarded funding. I got a tuition waiver, health insurance and a stipend of approximately $6,000 a year. In exchange, I taught one freshman composition class per semester. Technically, teaching assistants weren’t allowed to work outside jobs, but of course I did.

Let me describe the kind of person for whom this might be a tenable situation. It helps if you’re young, sans family or responsibilities for anyone other than yourself, and willing to live in crappy apartments or move in with your parents. (I was 22, single, had come from a short-lived career in fast food, and lived with my grandmother.)

If you want to eventually teach at the college level, a teaching assistantship can be a real plus. You’ll probably take at least one pedagogy course and be assigned an experienced mentor. After graduating, I taught as an adjunct at state and community colleges. It’s a good skill to have.

You WILL have plenty of time to write and a wonderful community of writers. In my experience, these are the two most priceless gifts an MFA program has to offer. I loved the faculty at UNO, but I learned so much more from my fellow students. And they have gone on to do awesome things that make me insanely jealous proud. I shared workshops and post-critique beers with Mac McClelland, Bill Loehfelm, Jen Violi, Marcus Gilmer, Barb Johnson and other literary superstars.

After three years, countless short stories and two novels (one of which became my thesis), my writing did improve. Did it improve to the point where it was sellable? Did I snag a book deal? Was I a master, as my diploma said?  No, no and HAHAHAHAHAH (cue spit take). They say what you do during your MFA program doesn’t matter as much as what you do afterwards. There is only one thing you have to do, and that is keep writing.

I got my MFA 10 years ago. I’m just now beginning to be able to cobble together a half-decent novel. Would I do it again? Yes. But I’m really glad I don’t have to.

As you may intuit from the above photo*, I again lapsed on my 30-day NO BOOZE experiment. If you saw me on New Years’ Eve, you know I was not at all sober. That’s OK, though! The 30 days don’t have to be consecutive for the not-drinking experiment to be a success. I’m experiencing fewer cravings, and I’ve lost three pounds since starting the experiment on Dec. 15. Feeling pretty good about my resolution to keep my booze consumption to 7 drinks a week at most.

Here are my other New Year’s resolutions:

1. Publish a book with a Big Five house. This is a hugely ambitious goal, and if it doesn’t happen, it will be the number-one resolution for 2016. Last year, I resolved to publish two books. That did happen: one I self-published under a nom de plume on Amazon; the other (Destroying Angel) will be published in July by Torquere Press. I’m working on a manuscript right now that I feel good about. After writing four novels (only one of which was suitable to see the light of day),  I’m finally starting to understand story’s interplay of structure, character, voice and truth. I’m excited and proud of the novel-in-progress in a way I have never felt about projects in the past.

2. Get a smartphone. I’m ready to step bravely into 2008 with a smartphone. I’ll miss my sweet $25 monthly prepaid cell phone plan. But Instagram is pretty much impossible without a smartphone, and I think that is where I’ll find a lot of younger YA readers. Also, never getting lost, thanks to GPS? Hooking up a fitness band and monitoring my sleep and exercise patterns? Having voice recording apps available whenever I do an interview? YES PLEASE. This brings me to my next resolution…

3. Visit my grandmother at least once a month and record her oral history. Cora Ella Wilkinson, aka Mawmaw, is 88 years old. A lovely, symmetrical age, twin infinities balanced on their heads, but one that means she could slip out of this existence at any moment. When I make the trek to Baton Rouge and listen to her talk about being an Arkansas sharecropper during the Depression, a welder during World War II, a local news secretary in the 1960s, a National Organization for Women member in the 1970s, all I can think is, Damn, these are great stories. I don’t want to lose them. I also don’t want to lose her. I will treasure her while she is here.

4. Be a nicer person. There are very specific ways I want to be nicer. Mostly, when I have airbnb guests, I want to be slower to anger when they leave dirty dishes in the sink or ask us to hang new bedroom curtains because “the streetlight is too bright.” Many of the guests are pleasures, although sometimes I hate them, really hate them, and resent their presence in my home. But if it wasn’t a pain in the ass to host strangers sometimes, I wouldn’t be getting paid for it. Also, I want to stop talking smack about people behind their backs and be more generous about giving random assholes the benefit of the doubt.

That’s it! Happy 2015! Feel free to share your resolutions below… I’m told “being accountable” helps.

*The Champagne glasses are actually filled with ginger ale, a cheap, identical substitute for sparkling wine. Romney taught me this trick when we shot the glasses for a CUE shopping feature. He is a font of esoteric photography wisdom. Another Romney tip: When shooting diamonds, wear a blue shirt. It will reflect off the stones and make them appear sparklier.

 

 

When I began dabbling with my very first website, a simple Flavors.me design that was basically a glorified business card, I felt baffled by slick, pretty fashion and lifestyle blogs. Where did bloggers find such clean, elegant and chic themes? How were their images so crisp, vivid and consistent?

I have a lot to learn on all these fronts, but I’m happy with how this blog has evolved over the last year. Here is exactly what I did, complete with missteps. Feel free to follow the steps exactly if you want a blog identical to this one (I recommend skipping steps 1 and 3).

1. Bought hosting and registered a domain on WordPress.com.

2. Bought the Adeline theme from 17th Avenue Designs.

3. Realized WordPress.com didn’t support custom themes, and that I needed to transfer my hosting and switch to WordPress.org.

4. Hired Ahmed Rameez from Elance.com to transfer my hosting to Godaddy.com and work out a few bugs.

5. Installed Adeline theme.

6. Bought an About Me graphic from 17th Avenue and installed it in my sidebar.

7. Found Gala Darling’s killer list of blog resources, free Blogging Basics video and began following her tips to make the whole place feel more streamlined. I also bought the Blogcademy’s About Me video guide, because I really struggled with writing about myself.

8. Installed Google Analytics Dashboard for WP, SEO by Yoast, Tumblr crosspostr and drop cap plugins.

9. Sourced stock photos from Death To The Stock Photo and Unsplash, and cropped them to a uniform width of 700 pixels for visual consistency. Customized my banner using PicMonkey.

10. Applied to Southern Blog Society, BlogHer and Clever Girls Collective for brand partnership opportunities and a sense of community.

That’s the big stuff so far. If you blog, what would you advise?

Full disclosure: While I have gone 10 days without drinking, they have not been consecutive. I had two glasses on wine on Christmas Day. It was sort of a slip-up, but I learned from the experience. And relapse is part of recovery, as they say. Anyway, I’ve noticed a lot of changes over the past 10 days without booze. Here are a few of them:

1. I’ve lost two pounds. I’ve been eating far more pecan pie and chocolate-dipped pretzels thanks to the holidays, so this weight loss must be due to a lack of wine calories (about 300-400 per day).

2. The cravings tend to hit at the same time. I’m accustomed to drinking at dinner, so that’s when I really want to open a beer. But if I make it past that hour, the cravings vanish like vampires at sunrise.

3. I have cross-addicted with this blog. I am very fixated with blogging right now. I haven’t felt this fired up about a creative project since I took a photography class in college. I’m having a lot of fun with it, as you can see, since it’s Saturday night and I’m soberly blogging.

4. My brain feels more responsive. This is a weird one. It’s like I had a program running on the laptop of my brain. And it was slowing my processes down more than I realized. Everything seems to happen faster now. I have an idea; I act on it. I feel like a Porsche or some other expensively sensitive machine.

5. When I drank on Christmas Day, it was underwhelming. I craved wine SO HARD and built it up in my mind as being SO GREAT. But when I was actually drinking, it was kind of meh. Being drunk is more fun in my fantasies than in reality.