2016 — I step off the plan in Costa Rica, smiling as the heat hits my skin. Even though I’m not at my final destination, a yoga retreat center on a little island off the mainland, I’ve successfully escaped the frigid January hellscape that is my life in New York. Work is crazy and all-consuming and I'm trying very hard not to listen to all the little voices in my head saying, “you’re wasting your life.” I’m ready for this vacation. My friend, Misty, and I scramble through the chaotic airport and meet up with 3 other women who will be on our next flight. Together, we find the pilot, and he immediately offers us cold drinks. I consider a beer, but opt for water. I’ve been doing Dry January an

As a kid, the youngest of 6, I play to type: a big old ham, the court jester. I'm always angling for attention by any means necessary. This one time, I’m playing with matches. Of course, I’ve been told repeatedly NOT to play with matches. But matches are just awesome. (I STILL love them.There are bowls of them all over my apartment. I mourn the day when every bar and restaurant stopped giving away branded matchbooks. Sometimes a throw-backish place will offer them and I hoard them like my mother used to do with packets of Sweet ’n Low.) Anyway, I’m totally playing with matches. Always a multi-tasker, I’m watching tv and mindlessly ripping each flat, brown piece from its cute little cardboar

December. I’m having trouble sleeping. Elderly Dog is sick and her coughing sounds like a flock of geese has landed in the apartment. Add to that the typical year-end anxiety and some unexpected and distracting Boy Drama — it feels like I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for a month. I’ve tried teas, tinctures, essential oils and a sleep app where a guy tries his best to bore you to sleep. But nothing works. I'm normally a champion sleeper, so this run of insomnia has me feeling freaked out. Last year people started talking and posting about weighted blankets. Ads popped up in my Instagram feed and there were a lot of “I’m so single, I had to buy one of those blankets that feels like a h

I finished up a journal this morning. Such a great feeling — filling up the pages of a blank book, what an accomplishment! And I get to start a fresh new journal tomorrow! This speaks directly to my inner 4th grader. Today, as then, I love "school supplies" almost as much as I love ice cream. Almost. Just for fun, I turned to the first entry in the journal — what was August 2018 Colleen writing about? Full of anxiety over solo show performance. under-prepared, like everything i thought I knew is suddenly backwards and smells faintly of desperation. Regret. Feedback was good, but I need to do better. Also, should I sell the chair in my living room? Or just throw a blanket over it? Yikes. So

When I left my corporate job a year and a half ago, I set myself up in a co-working space uptown thinking it'll be the perfect place to write and work on my plans for world domination. The decor is straight out of a West Elm catalogue (I ain’t mad at that) and they have free beer and wine! Trouble is, I rarely go there. It’s not very convenient and, frankly, it feels like an overpriced library. So cold and quiet. So I try my local library. It’s free and literally next door to my apartment building. But it smells like egg salad and is filled with other unemployed ne’er do wells. I can rarely find a seat. I try the other library, you know, the big one. The one with the lions. The one with the

As a kid I went through a serious James Bond phase, devouring Ian Fleming's books and seeing every movie I could get on VHS. I’m not sure I got through all of them, but I gave it a solid effort. I loved the salacious romance subplots (even though I barely understood them) and the increasingly gadget-filled briefings with Q. I imagined myself going on missions, transformed for undercover operations by wigs, couture, and a sudden, inexplicable fluency in Polish. So, when given the chance to go to SpyScape, NYC’s new-ish spy museum, obviously I choose to accept the mission. Fuck, yeah. I go with a small group of spy nerds to Spyscape’s adults only Friday night offering. One or two of us may ha