Jeff O'Handley, Author

Jeff O'Handley

The Doubting Writer Finds His Voice

Monday Musing

The blear is strong in me this morning. I woke up in the dead of night–or morning, technically. 3:22, to be exact. I’m not sure what woke me up: too hot, too cold, fingers falling asleep, spider running across my face, who knows? But I was sure, for just a few seconds, that it was […]

Monday Musing

Last week was one of those weeks that nearly ate my brain. We had a big grant application due on Friday that kept me in the office for 22 combined hours on Wednesday and Thursday, and took up almost all of my other time in the office. Despite that, I actually managed to draft a […]

New Year Noodling

First post of the new year, and I’m in rather familiar territory: not knowing what to write! So, we’ll ramble. -We did not watch the ball drop–it’s just not the same without Dick Clark (though the last time I saw Dick Clark, that wasn’t the same, either). We did do a countdown, complete with New […]

Monday Musing

Part I: Teaching an Old Dog a New Tick As you may know from reading this blog, in what has shockingly-become my distant past, I used to live here: How many times can I possibly use this picture? “Here” was in a 1600-acre state park on Long Island’s north shore, a wonderland of woods and […]

Monday Musing: Hugs and Brain Cramps

Over the last few weeks there’s been a flurry of hugging going around. It’s a natural consequence of high school graduation–people suddenly come at you with arms open, as a way of saying both “Congratulations!” and “I understand the emotional whirlwind you’re going through, I’m there, too.” It’s not unpleasant, but it’s a little strange […]

Monday Musing, Powerless Edition

On Friday, just as I stepped out into the driveway on my way to picking up the Catbird at her job “in town,” a storm hit. A wicked streak of lightning landed to the right, on the other side of the hamlet. A moment later, another one landed somewhere over the hill across the street, […]

Monday Musing, Sleepless in Upstate New York Edition

Here it is, Monday morning, Memorial Day in the USA, a holiday, a day that, in theory, I can sleep in on, and here it is, 5:45 in the morning and I am up. Just like yesterday. Just like the day before. For the better part of a week, my sleep schedule has gotten totally […]

Monday Musing

I missed my regularly-scheduled posting time last week. Work was busy, with a huge project deadline looming. On the home front, there were 3 things last week happening in the evening hours. When I had nothing on Friday morning, I thought, “I’ll do it tonight,” but we had a meeting that kept me out, then […]

Monday Musing, Daylight Savings Edition

-It’s six a.m. and it’s dark again. Sunrise is officially 7:22 a.m. The other day I read an essay somewhere calling on Obama to banish Daylight Savings Time, to send it back to the abyss from whence it came. Aside from the fact it does not work from an energy-savings perspective, the author argued that […]

Monday Musing: Dr. Seuss

If ever I were granted the chance to teach a creative writing course–say, Fiction 101–I think the first text I would choose as a class assignment would be “And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street” by Dr. Seuss. Yes, this is why it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever be asked to teach Fiction […]