Author: Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Process. Day 81 of 100 Days of Writing

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I spewed today about the old 40-is-invisible trope.  I spewed more about Robin Williams and how, in one conversation, he treated me more respectfully and delightedly than most men I worked in theater with.

I spewed.

I don’t want to spew anymore. I think these 100 days have been great about letting me get so much of the dirty anger out, the shallow, pointless, unpleasant-to-read, masturbatory anger.  100 Days also of letting myself write the little pains that I so longed for anyone to acknowledge.  100 Days of DO YOU HEAR ME? I’M HERE!

And…it’s good. I think that needed to be done. It’s actually boring me. The other, more complex, less whiny, more mature…better stories and thoughts can now be heard, for the me-centered yelling is out.  I can think outwardly now.  I feel even my small ideas having big shadows.  It’s good.  I look forward to the next 100 days, when the kids are in school, when there is more time, when I can be big.

But I will still happily tell the story of the actor who screamed at me at a table reading because he didn’t like “the look” on my face. (I call that look “my face”) in a teenage snotty tone. Because he really sucked.