Outside of about a two week span in high school, I've never tried to hide the fact that I'm a nerd. Not just in the "Oh yeah, I read 27 think pieces about comics last week" way, but in a "Big Bang Theory isn't funny because physicists aren't represented well" kind of way.
These days, I stick to cocktails and reading a lot of sci-fi and fantasy. I'm an extroverted introvert, so I tend to prefer deep conversations to small talk. Bartending has helped partially overcome my aversion to small talk, and booze usually tends to lubricate the conversation (pun intended). Even four years in, I'm still trying to wrap my head around people wanting to hear about my nerd-dom.
And at cocktail parties and young professional events, that's my superpower. Not everyone likes reading the same things I do, but almost everyone has a favorite cocktail, mocktail, or flavor. Get on that topic, and I'm in my element.
Probably the greatest part of it is that cocktails are capital-c cool. People want to talk about what they like and dislike in food and drink, and love hearing how things fit together. Dive into the history of a spirit or cocktail? Your audience is usually captive.
My origin story thankfully doesn't begin with exposure to radiation or chemicals or science. When I started behind the bar, I spent almost all of my off-hours researching drinking history, lore, and recipes. I made dozens of flashcards to learn recipes for classic cocktails, and dove into it like I would have for a paper in college. My manager had provided links YouTube videos on bartending technique, and I practiced at home. When I was at work, I went through my flashcard deck of tasting notes as I tried new-to-me spirits, liqueurs, and tinctures.
No matter how far into it I got, customers at the bar wanted to hear about what I'd discovered. My friends were interested, and editors began accepting stories about the weirder aspects of drinking and bartending culture. Before, I had to rely on extensive web searches, tips from friends, or writing assignments to find topics to pitch, but in the bar world, everything was new and shiny and desirable.
I'm still finding things that keep it fun, but the shine has worn off for me. Cocktails are a big part of what I do, and until I find the end to all of the topics I have in my pitch ideas notebook, I'll keep digging. Right now, it's tequila and modernist authors, but in the next week, I'll probably start developing cocktails to submit for the winter menu at Marble Ring.
And until the day the drinking trend moves back to sugar-laden, day-glo club drinks, cocktails will be my superpower.
Want to claim a superpower of your own? Check out my online whiskey class! In 30 minutes, you'll zoom through nine videos and become a whiskey hero all your own.
Y'all all know I'm addicted to NPR. You've probably guessed that I'm also a sucker for a beautifully written Washington Post, gut-wrenching Atlantic or quippy New Yorker column. But all of my media, including the most conservative channels got this election wrong. Not just a little wrong, bigly W-R-O-N-G. Or big league. Whatever.
Some people place the failure on the proliferation of fake news sites like 
It may not be an organization doing good work in the community, but you can't do sustainable good for others if you're not practicing 
For this entry, there's a caveat. I work part-time at the YWCA in our secondhand store, My Sister's Closet. Fxmmes, if you're ever in need of cheap work clothes, we have a pretty awesome selection. More info on that in this 
The Crisis Center is an organization local to Birmingham, but there are many similar organizations around the country. Though I can't speak for national call centers, since the election, the Birmingham 
For 45 years, the SPLC has been a powerful legal and educational voice for civil rights. Their specific program focuses include children's rights, immigrant justice, LGBT rights, economic justice, criminal justice reform, and monitoring hate and extremist groups.
SPLC has tracked the instances of reported hate crimes, not just over the past few days, but since their inception. What's changed is the rate at which they've occurred. From Wednesday to Friday, they logged 
Since the election, a lot of people have been posting about wearing safety pins as an outward indication that you're an ally. For some, it's the first step they've ever taken towards allyship, which is cool. But a symbol without action, 
I get really, really excited about voting. In fact, Ed Bowser wrote an 
Bartenders host the best events. Try to prove me wrong, but if you've ever been to a 
As both a deeply private person and a writer trying to build her portfolio, I've written a lot of pieces that I didn't share when they came out. Though I was proud of many of them, they weren't immediately available online and I forgot or the topics were personal enough that I could risk offending someone or there was some sort of error (from me or the editor) that overshadowed the awesomeness of the piece.
Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, most of those errors have been fixed after the fact, but it was far enough after publication that I forgot to publicize the piece. Yikes. Anyhow, here's a short and strange look into my portfolio.
Piecing together a new bucket list is one of my biggest goals for the month of November. As I may have mentioned if you've seen me or my social media since September, I wrote a book. It's a cocktail book (surprising, I know), but it's not the book I've wanted to write. I'm still trying to figure out what else I want to do with my life, but that's still to come. Here's what I've got so far:
As promised on Nov. 1, I'm going to use #bloglikecrazy to get a bit more personal on the Internet. But there's less than two months left in 2016, and it's time to face the music: This year was pretty shitty. There were some high points and a good bit of travel, but a lot of the milestones were negative. As a result, I've spent a lot of time on the couch with Netflix instead of socializing because I couldn't bring myself to leave my blanket burrito.
Though I've nabbed three bylines in new-to-me national publications (and have one more coming), I've been seriously struggling financially with writing. Most online writing pays less than $500 per article, and the hours involved in researching and writing render the hourly rate less than ideal. Include time spent pitching and emailing, and the stats are downright grim. In addition to articles, I almost write copy for one corporate client, but the gig isn't steady.
Somewhere between the day-to-day grind of freelancing writing and the 50,000-word book project that consumed September and most of October, I lost It. For a few months, I lost the magic/motivation/desire/mojo/ love that gets you up in the morning and guides you through being self-employed.
Y'all, I have a confession: I wrote a book! In seven weeks! It still seem surreal that I was able to write and compile the 50,000 words of Craft & Classic Cocktail Recipe Book in that time. To answer your next few questions, it will be published in December by Rockridge Press, they found me through Google, it'll be available for purchase this December, and it was one of the biggest challenges of my life thus far.
