These are not posts that are deeply and personally confessional, but my (generally left-leaning) opinions on politics and my disgust with where we’ve ended up in 2018.
It’s a natural response — and, in some cases, the right response — to try to hold the line against political reaction, to shame people who espouse shameful ideas. But shame is a politically volatile emotion, and easily turns into toxic resentment. It should not be overused. I don’t know exactly where to draw the line between ideas that deserve a serious response, and those that should be only mocked and scorned. I do know that people on the right benefit immensely when they can cultivate the mystique of the forbidden.
In February, Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who has garnered a cultlike following, asked, in an interview with Vice, “Can men and women work together in the workplace?” To him, the Me Too movement called into question coed offices, a fundamental fact of modern life, because “things are deteriorating very rapidly at the moment in terms of the relationships between men and women.”
Having to contend with this question fills me with despair. I would like to say: It’s 2018 and women’s place in public life is not up for debate! But to be honest, I think it is. Trump is president. Everywhere you look, the ugliest and most illiberal ideas are gaining purchase. Refusing to take them seriously won’t make them go away. (As it happens, I’m participating in a debate with Peterson next week in Toronto.)
I shy far away, here and on Facebook and usually on Twitter, from so many political subjects — gun use and abortion, being two of them — that will only provoke trolls, bullies and harassers.
I have no time, energy or appetite to get into fights with ghosts over this stuff, no matter how passionately I feel about them, which I do.
It’s become a world of virtue signalling, spittle-flecked (out) rage and worse.
I see some bloggers sticking resolutely close to home with soothing/inspiring images and posts.
I get it.
I wish I dared.
But I don’t.
Are you also holding back on your blog and other social media?
⇒ If you work in design or architecture, in or near New York City, I’m once more teaching a class I created that starts soon at the New York School of Interior Design, Writing Skills for Designers. It starts March 21 at the school, on East 70th. Street, (very close to the 68th. Street subway.)
The class runs two hours, for four weeks, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. It helps design professionals — architects, interior designers, lighting designers, anyone working in the field — produce lively and compelling copy.
It’s fun and practical and you’ll come away inspired!
⇒ If you are, or know of someone, a truly interesting entrepreneur with an unusual story, (anywhere in the world), please email me at learntowritebetter@gmail.com as I’m always looking for people to feature in The New York Times column on entrepreneurship.
⇒ If you’re thinking of attending the annual conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, held every spring in New York City, I’ll be speaking there May 19 at 2:30 on How To Write for The New York Times,which I’ve done dozens of times since 1990, and for many different sections and editors.
I’ve been an ASJA member for many years, (membership costs only $235 a year), served for six years on their volunteer board, and every year I volunteer to mentor at the conference as well.
It’s a terrific place to meet fellow writers at all levels, as well as agents and editors.
⇒ I coach writers of all skill levels, focusing on non-fiction, journalism and public relations. Maybe you want to create a better blog or to get a personal essay published and paid for.
I read and offer clear, helpful feedback on finished work and/or answer pretty much any questions you have about how to succeed in journalism, whether writing for websites, magazines or newspapers.
As the winner of a Canadian National Magazine Award, (for an essay about my divorce, in the humor category!), a three-time staff reporter for three major daily newspapers, former magazine editor and successful freelance writer for The New York Times, Washington Post, Marie Claire, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Smithsonian, Sunday Telegraph, VSD and many others, I know what editors, agents and publishers want!
I’m also the author of two well-reviewed books of nationally reported non-fiction; details here — and can speak to your students or class about this (one on gun use in the U.S. and one on low-wage labor in the U.S.) via Skype.
I offer 90-minute, individual webinars ($150) and hourly consultations ($225/hour, with a one-hour minimum.)
I really enjoy social media — but I see such mixed results.
Women who speak up about contentious issues are harassed, bullied, doxxed. Some, in desperation, end up fleeing Twitter and other platforms, blocking everyone who attacks.
I’ve had a few bad experiences there as well, but thankfully most of my social media experiences have been pleasant.
I recently started using Instagram.
My site is caitlinkellynyc...and I’m enjoying the wild mix of people who like my photos — from an auto-body shop in Brazil (a photo of a vintage air machine) to a trekking company in Nepal.
I have, as you know from reading here, extremely eclectic interests, so my Insta feed includes flowers, vintage clothing, travel photos and lots of female pilots.
Thanks to Twitter, I also met up in Berlin with Jens Notroff, an archeologist who works on Gobekli Tepe, a 12,000 year-old Neolithic site in Turkey and Dorothée Lefering, a travel blogger whose post about Rovinj, Croatia impelled me to stay there for a glorious week last July. I’d never even heard of it before!
We all met for lunch at Pauly Saal (a trendy restaurant) in Berlin last July, thanks to “meeting” them regularly through several weekly Twitterchats focused on travel — and Jens and I bonded for certain after trading the lyrics to the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Who knew?
Now, thanks to Insta, I’m reviving my photography skills; I began my journalism career as a teenager selling three cover photos to a Toronto magazine, then sold to Time, The New York Times, Washington Post and more.
I love how my Smartphone has made me hyper-aware of my surroundings once more. The glossy perfection and waayyyyyyy too many selfies of Instagram don’t appeal to me, but I’m loving the global reach it offers.
I also spend a lot of time on Facebook participating in online-only women’s writing groups, where we find friendship, freelance work, staff jobs, mentoring and moral support. At worst, it can get ugly and weird, but at best it’s my daily water cooler, as someone who works alone at home in the boring suburbs of New York.
(It costs me $25+ in train and subway fare into New York City to meet people face to face, so social media offers us all an easy and affordable option.)
But I also plan play dates — this week an Oscar-viewing night with a neighbor, lunch here with an editor, a Canadian consulate event at the Tenement Museum in New York City, and meeting friends for dinner in Harlem at Red Rooster.
My weekends are also filled with in-person social activities from now through mid-April, so I don’t feel isolated and lonely, which social media can create online interaction is all you do.
Facebook was also useful recently in a highly unusual way — with a local woman reporting to our town in real time that a woman had been shot in an apartment complex nearby, that the shooter was on the loose (!) and that’s why we heard police helicopters overheard for hours.
(She died and he was captured in New York City at the bus station.)
The hashtag for our town’s zip code, whose Facebook page has thousands of members, was the single best place to find out what was happening.
— A yearly Christmas card from someone you’ve yet to meet face to face (Thanks, Leah!)
— A warm welcome back to a church we hadn’t attended in 18 months
— Standing in a bookstore line back in Toronto when a handsome guy in a leather jacket recognizes me, a dear friend (and Grade 12 prom date!) I hadn’t seen since high school
— Another sunrise over the Hudson River
— Another sunset
— Continued good health
— Freelance clients who even say thank you and pay well and promptly for our skills
— Neighbors we like who like us
— Taking care of a friend’s dog so gentle and loving I miss him already
— More than 19,000 followers for Broadside, from Iceland to Yemen, Malaysia to Romania.
Thank you for being here, for reading and commenting and returning.
Your attention is a great gift!
Wherever you are and whoever you’re with, I hope you have a calm, lovely holiday season!
More than 18,900 people have now signed up to follow Broadside — and I only know a very few of you.
So, to get to know some of you a bit better, here are 20 questions I’d love some of you to answer.
Pick whichever ones suit you, some or all…
Thanks for playing!
I’ll go first!
1. Favorite city/place:Paris
High above Paris — silence!
2. What do you see out your bedroom window? Treetops and the Hudson River, facing northwest.
3. How many languages do you speak?English, French and Spanish
4. Where were you born? Vancouver, B.C.
Our view of the Hudson River
5. Where do you live now?Tarrytown, NY
6. What sort of work do you do?Writer and writing coach
7. What makes you most angry? Arrogance/entitlement
My gift to Jose
8. Who do you most admire? Those who fight for social justice
9. What’s your blog name and why do you blog? Broadside is a play on words. I like to hear what readers worldwide have to say. It’s a place for me, as a professional writer, to write for pleasure, not income.
10. Dog, cat or other sort of pet person? Dog (although currently dog-less)
Banana bread!
11. What are some of your creative outlets? Photography, writing, drawing, cooking, interior design
12. Number of countries visited? (or states or provinces) Forty countries, 38 U.S. states, seven Canadian provinces
13. What did you study at university and why? English literature, French and Spanish, with the goal of becoming a foreign correspondent
14. Deepest regret? Our family’s unresolved estrangements. Never getting a staff job at a place I dreamed of.
15. Unachieved goal(s)?I’d like to publish at least two or three more books.
16. Typical Saturday morning?Coffee, reading The New York Times and Financial Times (in print), listening to favorite radio shows like On The Media, Studio 360, This American Life and The Moth. Spin class.
A bejeweled coat in the window at Prada — I love fashion!
17. Do you play a musical instrument? Acoustic guitar, but haven’t touched it in decades.
18. Do you have a motto? Chase joy.
19. Biggest accomplishments? Re-inventing my career/life at 30 in New York City in a recession, with no job, friends or family here. Surviving a crazy childhood. Winning a Canadian National Magazine Award.
Some of you may wonder why I haven’t added my voice to the chorus of outrage and fury at the growth of what some call the alt-right, what others call Nazism.
Don’t I care?
Yes, very much, but…
Some of you, including me, are simply worn out from only six chaotic months of the Presidency of Donald Trump, a man for years before his election well known to New York residents like me to be a man who routinely lies and cheats, who bullies and shames everyone he considers an opponent. Much as I loathe this man and all he stands for, I’m not the least bit surprised by anything he now says or does — or fails to do. If you knew Trump then — and millions did not — little of this comes as a shock.
2. As someone who has also lived in France, Canada, Mexico and England, I don’t view the Presidency with the same awe and reverence as many Americans do. It’s not a matter of disrespect; I chose to move to the U.S. and am grateful for what that choice brought me — a fulfilling career, a home I love and a marriage I treasure. But other political systems are less rigid and most hold their elected leaders in much less regard. My greatest frustration with this Presidency is how utterly impotent his opponents, in and out of office, seem to be,
3. My husband, in his capacity as a New York Times photographer, spent eight years in the White House Press Corps — photographing Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He’s flown aboard Air Force One and stepped into the Oval Office, the President’s domain. (He took me there as well.) He’s covered campaigns, heard the speeches and witnessed some backroom behavior no one else has. There’s little mystery to us about this man, or his actions, or the Republicans who turn their gaze away from his chicanery, He’s seen it all up close before.
4. Because I feel worn out by living under this Administration, I avoid mentioning POTUS’ name. I mute his voice on the television. Daily exposure to him, for me, is just too enervating. In my six weeks traveling through Europe, itself a luxurious escape, I avoided all conversation about him as well.
Really, what is there to add?
5. Like me, many of Broadside’s readers — no matter how much you might also care about American politics — you either live very far away, (as many of you do), can’t vote in the U.S., (I have a green card, so that’s my situation), or just crave a break from it all.
6. If you’re as active as I am on social media, (i.e. Facebook and Twitter, especially, possibly Reddit for some of you), you’re already bombarded there by outrage and fury and dismay and face-palming, some of it hourly. I want this blog to be something of a respite from that — for you and for me.
7. I was recently interviewed for Maclean’s magazine, Canada’s national magazine of current affairs, by another Canadian journalist who lives and works in New York, Chris Taylor. His relief from this daily insanity is escaping into books, and, for him, the classics. I’ve begun reading books more than ever again, fleeing the radio and television and endless endless chatter. Here’s the Maclean’s piece.
8. I work full-time as a journalist and writing coach. In my ongoing capacity as a journalist, and someone who writes frequently for The New York Times, it’s not helpful to be seen as a wild-eyed partisan, no matter my personal feelings. American journalists are expected to be impartial in our reporting.
Now that Broadside is closing in on 18,000 followers worldwide — eight years after I started writing it — it’s time once more to remind newer readers who exactly they’re reading!
Based in Tarrytown, New York, a gorgeous little town on the east bank of the Hudson River 25 miles north of Manhattan, I’m a published non-fiction author and career journalist, with staff experience at three major daily newspapers, several magazines and numerous digital outlets, from Reuters Money to bbc.com.
Here’s my website, with sample articles from my thousands of published stories — in outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, MORE magazine, Marie Claire, House Beautiful and many others.
I’m always seeking new clients with a clear sense of what they need and a budget to support a high level of skill and experience
A two-time author of nationally reported non-fiction, I also teach other writers and bloggers, through specific webinars of 90 minutes, (30 minutes reserved for your questions), at $150 and individual coaching, also arranged at your convenience, at a cost of $225 per hour, payable in advance through Paypal.
One of my coaching clients was published in The New York Times, and another in The Guardian — and neither one are professional writers.
I also help public relations professionals better understand how to tell their clients’ stories more effectively, and have worked with teams in New York and California.
I began blogging because my then-agent insisted I create a social media presence to help sell my second book. I never wanted to tweet, but thought I’d better get with the program. Ditto for Instagram.
But I now enjoy them all.
I use social media, more than anything, to connect professionally and personally with people I find smart, interesting and civil.
I only “knew” her from her Facebook posts and blog, but we had a great time. I later hired and paid her to coach me on how to better use social media for work, which she teaches at my alma mater, the University of Toronto.
A blog meeting in Paris, January 2015. We had a great time!
This trip — most of it solo through seven European cities and six countries — has also finally given me a chance to meet some people I’ve only known through social media.
Several years ago, I started reading Small Dog Syndrome, intrigued by the worldly young woman who wrote it. We began by reading one another’s blogs, worked together (virtually) for a year, and finally met face to face only in January 2015 when I stepped off the Eurostar from Paris.
We sat and talked for so long at the train station her worried husband called to see if we were OK. We were indeed!
They generously hosted me — having just met — for a week(!) in their teeny London flat, and this month I was able to return the favor by hosting them for several nights at the Paris apartment we rented this trip.
It’s been a huge pleasure to get to know them both.
Now in Berlin, I’ve met three more social media pals, all of whom I’ve gotten to know through their blogs, some private emails and weekly Twitterchats focused on travel, like #trlt, #culturetrav and #travelskills.
I met Kate and her fiance, and we spent the day talking and walking through a flea market and through Tiergarten, one of Berlin’s huge and fantastic parks, filled with brown bunnies, lakes with rowboats, beer gardens and lots of benches.
It felt immediately comfortable, as if we weren’t meeting face to face for the first time.
We all went out for lunch and had a fantastic time. Finally meeting someone face to face is always a bit of a blind date, so it requires optimism and openness. But, really, it’s just lunch!
I’ve done this now in several cities, and enjoyed every meeting.
Have you met some of your blog or Twitter followers in person?
It takes guts to face your feelings and try to work through them, certainly when they’re painful or confusing. I’ve found it simpler to just ignore and/or bury them.
Writing publicly about your most private emotions? I’m still deciding how much of it I want to do.
I’ve not struggled with panic attacks or severe anxiety, occasionally with depression. I haven’t been sexually abused or attacked. Therapists — starting in my teens when I was bullied in high school for three years — have helped.
I grew up in a family most comfortable expressing a limited set of emotions, often anger. There was usually plenty of money, and good health and interesting work, so there was no obvious source for it. Material wealth and a sort of emotional poverty are a challenging combination.
No one got hit, but verbal attacks weren’t unusual.
My mother is bi-polar and hated how her medication tamped down her energy and creativity — so her terrifying and out-of-the-blue manic episodes were a part of my life, beginning at age 12 and continuing into my 30s. These included police, consular officials in three foreign countries and multiple hospitalizations, including a locked ward in London.
As an only child, my father (then divorced) usually off traveling for work, I had no backup.
She also drank a lot, and smoked, both of which eventually have ruined her health. No one seemed to care very much, which was both understandable and heartbreaking. She was Mensa smart, beautiful, funny.
We gave up on our relationship in 2011; I live a six-hour international flight away from her.
It’s a source of deep and un-resolvable pain. I don’t write about it because…what good would it possibly do?
I have three half-siblings, each from different mothers; we’re not close.
When people rave about how awesome their family is, I feel like a Martian; I left my mother’s care at 14, my father’s at 19, to live alone.
I hate explaining this. It feels like telling tales out of school, or people react with pity or they just can’t relate to it at all.
Which stops me from writing about it, except for here, something, I suppose, of a trial balloon. I still don’t have the distance, or skill, to make it all beautiful, an amuse-bouche presented prettily for others’ enjoyment.
I wonder if I ever will.
My parents divorced when I was 7, and I spent my childhood, ages eight to 14, shuttling between boarding school and three summer camps. Camp saved me. There, at least, I felt wholly loved: as a talented actress and singer, an athlete, a friend and an admired leader of my peers.
But you quickly learn, when you share your bedroom with strangers, none of whom you chose, to keep your mouth shut. Guarded = safe. There’s almost nowhere completely private to cry, or comfort yourself.
At my private school, no one ever just asked: “How are you? Are you OK?”
The ability to be emotionally intimate is very much a learned, practiced skill.
Not surprising, then, that I became a nationally-ranked saber fencer!
I also work in a highly competitive field — journalism — where emotional vulnerability can provoke (and has) attack, ridicule, gossip and bullying. A friend in India once defended me there against a lie that took root in Toronto, where I worked, carried overseas by someone who thought this was a cool tidbit to share.
Jose
Luckily, later in life, I met and married Jose, a man fully at ease with having and expressing his feelings and hearing mine, a deeply loving person. He was the much- cherished youngest child of his parents, a small-town preacher and a kindergarten teacher. He was a late-life surprise baby, born after the stillbirth of a brother.
A fellow career journalist, working at The New York Times for 31 years in photography, he’s also quite private and cautious about who he lets in close.
I’m so grateful every day for his love and support.
How do you cope with your difficult feelings, of sadness or anger or loneliness?
Do you share them and/or blog or write publicly about them?
A year before, like many addicts, I had sensed a personal crash coming. For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Throughout the day, I’d cough up an insight or an argument or a joke about what had just occurred or what was happening right now. And at times, as events took over, I’d spend weeks manically grabbing every tiny scrap of a developing story in order to fuse them into a narrative in real time. I was in an unending dialogue with readers who were caviling, praising, booing, correcting. My brain had never been so occupied so insistently by so many different subjects and in so public a way for so long.
Like Sullivan, I went on a silent retreat, (and blogged about it, which broke a retreat rule!); if you’re interested, check out my archives from July 2011.
It’s a life-changing experience to withdraw completely from chitchat, both in person and online.
And, I know, it’s a bit rich to complain about our constant connectedness to screens on a blog you’re de facto reading on a screen, somewhere!
By now it’s become a counter-cultural act to:
not have a smartphone; not check it constantly; not feel compelled to post every thought and image on your multiple social media streams so that other people can like it, share it, re-tweet it.
It’s now also considered staggeringly rude, invasive and old-fashioned to use a telephone to call someone, let alone leave them a voicemail or message.
How dare you speak to me directly!
One of the best weeks of my life, working in rural Nicaragua — now still friends with these three
What are we, maharajahs?!
We had a party last weekend and it was a hit. We love to entertain and do it as often as we can afford.
A party?
You know, a room full of real people, sharing conversation and lots of great food and laughter and talking about everything from aerial yoga to the American Constitution.
Guests included several photographers — (one whose new book of pinhole photos I’ll soon feature here) — writers, three lawyers, editors.
Several had never met one another before and were soon deeply engaged in lively chats.
Yes, relating in real life is risky. Your joke might fall flat. You might be wearing the wrong shoes or not catch a cultural reference. Maybe you’re really shy.
But hiding behind a screen all the time is nuts.
This is what life is for: face to face connection, a fierce hug hello and reluctant good-bye.
Yes, I blog and tweet, and will continue to do so — because it’s now essential for me to have a lively, visible, provable digital presence.
But my phone is often off, left in a drawer or “forgotten” at home.
The un-screened life is my favorite and always will be.
