Writing/Podcasting/Nurturing Our Relationship: Heartfelt Stories, Hard-Won Lessons, and Humor

Where the hell have you been, Melinda? Quick answer: NOT poolside.

I’ve been publishing my work on Medium and recently added podcasting/writing to my resume (as guest and host).  Checking in with you now and more regularly, I hope, will better our relationship.

For a while now, I haven’t posted stories here and there. As a result, “MelindaBlau.com” (here) doesn’t come up in search engines! I knew this might happen happen, but I let it. 

Writing eats up my hours.  I need time for dog walks and long lunches in Paris. 

The online gurus — who offer “productivity” workshops and say it’s best to churn out an article a day — would not approve.  But I write for me, not them.

And yet, I miss not writing here.  In a sense, I feel like I abandoned this “place,” created as a repository for my writing.

Also, I write differently here; it’s my house.  You visit; I feel a connection.  I actually know some of you.  (More on our relationship below.)

The start of a new year seems like an auspicious time to bring you, my loyal reader, up to date about my work.  It’s been a minute, hasn’t it?  Over a year.  My last post was December 24th. 

Did you notice I wasn’t popping up in your in-box? Wonder about me?  (That’s a joke, of course; I struggle mightily with email overload. I’d never notice or wonder about anyone!)

The Podcast

Crows Feet, a Medium publication I often write for — and read — is now doing podcasts, featuring writers and others who have an interesting, informative, and/or uplifting take on aging.  Do listen to all of them, including of course my episode, which opens our 2023 “season.” 

I hope you enjoy the gals and me in “My Old Ladies: How Women in Their 90s and 100s Inspire Me.”  If you don’t have a spare 24 minutes, here’s a short clip to entice you to find time:

You also might enjoy the backstory, wherein the team had to decide what to do about 100-year-old Zelda’s potty mouth: Should We Bleep the Old Lady’s Jokes on the Next Crow’s Feet Podcast?

The exciting thing for me is that at the tender age of 79, I’m learning new skills.   (Yes, my friends, I said my age out loud, for all to hear, even wrote about it in Listen Up, Young People: If You Want a Good Life, Celebrate Every Next Birthday!)

In the coming year, I’ll host several Crows Feet podcasts where I ask the questions.

One features a physical therapist after my own heart, who hates to exercise and specializes in older clients.  Great combo. She has some great ideas about what to do instead. 

Another is an interview with an old friend, the wife of an NFL star, a former model who, at 81, is still a flight attendant. The challenge there is stick to 30 minutes.    

A third is with a remarkable woman I met through her writing on Medium. She hits all the Ps: pianist, photographer,  psychotherapist and, to my delight has become — can’t resist this — my pal.

I promise to keep you posted.  

Medium Stories You Might Have Missed

When I refer to “you,” I imagine someone actually reading these words. I write for me, but I also write to be read.

I imagine you and address you because writer/reader is a relationship. And for any relationship to thrive — including the most casual beyond a one-time encounter — the two partners need to occasionally wave to each other, fill each other in.  We might never actually meet, but our minds mingle when you read me. 

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about and doing.  Let me know about you in the comments section. 

• On learning how to live better, wiser:  A Long-Gone Old Lady Sits on my Shoulder and Says, “Tell it like it is” and The Therapist Who Taught Me How to Have a Healthy Relationship
• On the combatting the dark side:  Part 1: You’re Not Jewish.  You Think Antisemitism Doesn’t Affect You?  and Part 2: 12 Ways to Actually Make a Difference in a Divisive, Hostile World  
• On advice: Who Has the Right to Give Advice? and 10 Foolproof Strategies for Avoiding the Downside of Dispensing Advice 
• On death, dying, and grief: Death is Final–or Is It? and I Know How I’d Like to Die. Do You?
• On “potty lit”: A questionable genre about the elimination of bodily fluids, as in How to Think Like a Woman and Pee Like a Man and What to Do When It’s Wet Annoying and Utterly Disgusting.  A girl’s gotta have fun, right?

I hasten to add that choosing a “favorite” is no different from a mother singling out one of her children.  How can you compare two, three — or twenty?

To wit, I agonized last November when an editor at Medium asked me to compile a “best of.”  It took me a month just to come up with categories and then to choose.  So if you’re still hungry after consuming the short list above, check out The Best Stories of Melinda Blau —  and Why This Took Forever. 

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I hope to visit MelindaBlau.com more often in the coming months, perhaps publish other compilations of my Medium stories (especially if you let me know you’ve enjoyed this one).  

You can get an email whenever I publish something new here or on Medium by clicking on these links: 

Subscribe to MelindaBlau.com 

Subscribe to Melinda Blau on Medium

IMPORTANT: Remember that non-members can access only 3 of pieces a month on Medium. But if you’re willing to shell out $50 a year, you get unlimited me and a wealth of terrific writers, all for the cost of ten visits to Starbucks.  

Please use my referral link to join.  After deducting expenses, Medium shares half your membership fee with me. My end is around $2.36 a month  — not exactly windfall but so what? Getting paid for hard work is only fair.