Jeff O'Handley

The Doubting Writer Finds His Voice

The Doubting Writer Blog

Weekend Update: Post-travel edition

This past weekend saw us travel for a funeral. On our return trip, we got hung up in the snow that came up the coast, which added an extra two hours–and an untold level of stress–to the drive. The weather

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The struggle to keep current

In the Netflix comedy series, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Ellie Kemper plays Kimmy, a 29-year-old woman who spent literally half of her life imprisoned in an underground bunker with three other women, and the doomsday cultist who kidnapped her when she

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Back to normal…for now

We have a saying around my office to describe those draggy, low-energy days that happen from time to time: “Feels like the day after a board meeting.” That’s because our board meetings take place in the evening, they run typically

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Delayed Reaction

On the afternoon of Sunday, May 4, 1974 the Boston Bruins and the Philadelphia Flyers squared off for game six of the Stanley Cup Final. For the Bruins, a win was needed to send the series back to Boston for

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Extra Time!

I’m a little toasted around the edges this morning, due to the bending of space and time that is otherwise known as ‘Daylight Saving Time ends.’ It’s funny, everyone always talks about how you get an extra hour of sleep,

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Stranger Things 2: That’s a Relief!

Last week saw the much-hyped and long-awaited return of last year’s surprise Netflix hit, Stranger Things. A critical success that was also insanely popular, the show is a sci-fi thriller centered on three nerdy, on-the-cusp-of-adolescence boys who are searching for

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The Lure of the Shiny

The good news? This isn’t a post about politics, or Harvey Weinstein, or anything really unpleasant. The bad news? I don’t know. Maybe it’s not bad news at all. In fact, there really isn’t much news at all. Saturday was

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And Here We Are Again

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A man holds a position of great power and influence. He’s at the top of his field, the top of his company. He rubs shoulders with the rich and famous and influential.

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Sorry to see you go, Tom

I don’t remember exactly when I first heard Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers. I do remember back in junior high school, having an acquaintance who was fast on the way to becoming one of my closest friends talking Petty up

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The Reading List, 2017 (Part III)

Amazing that we’re into October already, isn’t it? Here’s the list of books read and completed between July and now–have you read any of them? The Good Life (2006), Jay McInerney. Unintentional re-read. I did not like it nearly as

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Goldenrod and cross-promotion

I’m going soft today. I’m been working up to something bigger,something more outraged, as the result of yet another maddening meme I saw on Facebook this weekend, but I’m not quite ready to go there and I don’t want to

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An Interview with Nick Wilford

Good morning, all. Today is an auspicious day. Not only is it my wedding anniversary (yay!), it’s also the launch day for Nick Wilford’s newest novel, Black & White. Nick has been a long-time friend of the blog, and his

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Swapped!

Some time in the middle of last week, while tooling around the Internet, I came across an interesting tidbit. Lord of the Flies was getting a remake. William Golding’s classic 1954 novel about schoolboys marooned on a Pacific island had

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Weekend Update: Summer’s (near) end edition

Well, we’ve hit the penultimate weekend of ‘official’ summer and already we’re seeing the signs of the winding down of the season: one of the big baseball camps in the area is already empty, already moving in the bulldozers and

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Celestial Events and other things

Semi-random postings for this ecliptic day. * As you may or may not know, I write a monthly column for one of our local papers. This month’s column is on eclipses. Take a read! * That column is not exactly

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Short thoughts on Charlottesville

I had two uncles who served in the Navy in World War II. Another flew a P-38 with the 8th Air Force out of southern Italy. Three of my friends had fathers who helped liberate Europe. Two of them swept

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Writing and…Cold Cuts?

Last week, we picked up some cold cuts at the deli counter at the supermarket. Ham. Turkey breast. A little Swiss cheese. Tasty stuff. The ham was perfect, thin sheets you could almost see through. The turkey, the same, at

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“The Doctor is a–“

In 1974, Mel Brooks released Blazing Saddles, which is at once a brilliant and intelligent satire of racism and a typical, infantile Brooks film. In the movie, the Attorney General of some unknown state tries to force the residents of

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Put a Bow on it

Yesterday (Sunday, the 16th), at pretty much high noon, I pushed back from the computer, the final chords of the Grateful Dead’s spirited-but-sloppy “Scarlet Begonias” first set closer from July 16, 1976 still ringing in my ears, and said, “Finished.”

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Thoughts on the MOOC (Part II)

Well, look at that, me delivering on a promised post! I even went to the extraordinary step of pre-writing a good portion of this post; still, it’s just past six a.m. on a Monday and my coffee’s not quite ready

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The Reading List, 2017 (Part II)

Happy Independence Day (early) for my American readers! Happy Canada Day (late) for my Canadian readers! And happy [insert appropriate holiday here] for my [insert appropriate nationality, ethnicity, religion, etc. here] readers! Whew, I think I covered it. Last week,

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