HeyJared(re/dis)Orientation West
Uncertainty and the pursuit of awe along the Northwest I-84 corridor. Using humor to cope with polycrisis.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 4
- Latest publication
- Sep 18, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 10, 2026
Latest issues
30. Nobody will revoke my Writer Card (opens the original)
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I don’t have as much time as I’d like to write this post. My reasons are typical for someone in the middle-ish stage of life: job, health, etc., and at many points I’ve earnestly added to the chorus assuring writers that breaks are okay and fallow seasons are not just typical, but necessary. Why, then, this familiar little fear as I look at the months between now and January and recognize that my writing life will slow down? <a class="image-link image2 is-viewable-img" href="https://substackcdn.
29. The fire question (opens the original)
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Pretty much everyone who’s lived in the West long enough has at least one fire story. Particularly if you grew up deep in Intermountain territory, as I did. I wasn’t in Spokane when fires chewed through part of the city on August 1st. I no longer live there, so I can’t trace for you what was lost or what it means for the community, as other writers can and have, beautifully. My response to the Spokane fires was delayed, induced by a different fire in another place, and it left me overwhelmed by
28. Dry thunderstorm season (opens the original)
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On Wednesday evening, as the dogs sprawled under the fan and my husband and I tied ice packs to our necks with dish towels, thunderstorms cracked across Oregon. Unusual humidity and heat had been mounting for days, and the rolling thunder and whips of lightning felt like a culmination of something, an outburst against summer’s relentlessness and a perpetuation of it at the same time: thousands of lightning strikes and more than 35 new wildfires were reported across the state as of Thursday morni
27. Please Revise. (opens the original)
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Here’s the truth: I went to a writing workshop last month intending to make progress on a new project. (If you’re curious about the Orion workshop, I wrote an entire post you can read here!) However, many of the conversations I had there led me back to Exit Strategy, the novel I [supposedly] finished and am currently querying. Learning about narrative engines, how to render place, and the all-important “forward lean” of a text (thanks to Rob Spill
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