{"id":8290,"date":"2020-01-21T10:35:48","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T17:35:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/?p=8290"},"modified":"2020-01-21T10:35:48","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T17:35:48","slug":"a-season-of-quiet-work-upcoming-ragdale-residency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/?p=8290","title":{"rendered":"A Season of Quiet Work: Upcoming Ragdale Residency"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and your new year is off to a great start. I haven&#8217;t updated this blog in awhile so here goes&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The end of 2019 had me really pondering a number of things:<\/strong> I had been, in the last months of the year, suffering a number of health setbacks. I was feeling terrible&#8211;exhausted, suffering from acid reflux so bad it burned my throat, migraine headaches, insomnia, depression, anxiety&#8211;I knew I needed to make some changes. I&#8217;d let my to-do lists (usually 3 or 4 at a time) dictate my life. I spent too much time on Twitter, endlessly, mindlessly scrolling, and getting anxious over the latest news. I had taken on too much and it didn&#8217;t agree with me.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve always been a person who attended to her health, watched what I ate, exercised regularly. Due to stress, I ignored the very things that would have ameliorated that stress. (Can you relate to this?)<\/p>\n<p><strong>So, the changes:<\/strong> I&#8217;m giving myself only a few minutes a week on social media (Twitter&#8217;s the only one I use anyway and it&#8217;s not on my phone). I&#8217;m reading more, mostly poetry and essays, nonfiction, and memoir. I&#8217;m allowing myself to step back and say no to some things. I&#8217;ve unrolled my dusty yoga mat and find myself humbled by the loss of strength that&#8217;s happened in my neglect of regular practice. But hey, I&#8217;ve fought my way back before and I will again.<\/p>\n<p><strong><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-8293\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/night-sky-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/night-sky-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/night-sky.jpg 317w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/>What I&#8217;m reading:<\/strong> &#8220;How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy&#8221; by Jenny Odell (this was on President Obama&#8217;s&#8230;still my president&#8230;reading list for 2019 and it&#8217;s really resonating with me), &#8220;Deaf Republic&#8221; by Ilya Kaminsky &amp; &#8220;Night Sky with Exit Wounds&#8221; by Ocean Vuong (poetry is something I read really slowly and these I&#8217;m reading in complete awe at the imagery, language, and compression&#8230;so much to learn from for a flash writer) and Mary Miller&#8217;s novel &#8220;Biloxi&#8221; (I love her humor, her keen perceptions of humanity, and the depth she manages to achieve with such a light touch). I heartily recommend all of these books.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Some good things:<\/strong> I&#8217;m excited about two recent acceptances from <em>Washington Square Review<\/em> and <em>Copper Nickel<\/em>, journals I have long admired. And today I have begun a &#8220;Writing with One Story&#8221; class online. If you&#8217;ve never taken a One Story class, I highly recommend it!<\/p>\n<p><strong><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-8292 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/boots-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/boots-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/boots.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>And on February 3rd<\/strong>, I journey to north of Chicago to embark on my 25 day Fellowship residency at Ragdale. I have two projects I mean to make significant progress on and it will be good to have that focused time to work, read, write, and take long wintry walks around the surrounding prairie.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mostly, my friends, I&#8217;m beginning 2020 with a sense of gratitude and resolve. Thanks, as ever, for your support.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>P.S. I&#8217;ll be announcing my new round of Fast Flash workshops soon!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and your new year is off to a great start. I haven&#8217;t updated this blog in awhile so here goes&#8230; The end of 2019 had me really pondering a number of things: I had been, in the last months of the year, suffering a number of health [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[92,121,210,252,331,427,435,482,589,639,735,749,752,755,791,820,821,1061],"class_list":["post-8290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-biloxi","tag-copper-nickel","tag-deaf-republic","tag-fast-flash-workshop","tag-how-to-do-nothing","tag-ilya-kaminsky","tag-jenny-odell","tag-literary-journals","tag-mary-miller","tag-night-sky-with-exit-wounds","tag-ocean-vuong","tag-one-story","tag-online-workshops","tag-poetry","tag-ragdale-fellowship","tag-ragdale-foundation","tag-washington-square-review"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathy-fish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}