HeyJaredThe Joyful Storyteller
Behind the scenes of a creative entrepreneur's life. Excerpts from upcoming novels, first looks at covers, musings, and an inside look at what it's like to make a living doing what you love from a mid-life cancer survivor.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 8
- Latest publication
- Sep 25, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 3, 2026
Latest issues
Thanks, past me. I owe you one. (opens the original)
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If you think you’ll ever want to write a memoir, I hope you’re a journaler. It makes the process so much easier. (And simultaneously harder.)I spent the last four days holed up in Schaumburg, Illinois, the first two recording the journals I kept during my cancer treatment. I’d already recorded some of them, but I had the toughest parts to go and I didn’t want my husband to have to relive that time, too, so I hightailed it to a hotel.Why did I record them? Because the app I use gives me an automa
The Visibility Experiment (opens the original)
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I’m doing something that makes me surprisingly uncomfortable for a person who’s spent nearly 25 years in the public eye: I’m making myself more visible. Not performative. Not posting because some content calendar says I should. I mean actually letting you see what I’m working on, what I’m thinking about, what I’m changing, and where all of this is going.This is my next 28-day experiment. I enjoyed—yes, enJOYed—creating those 28 Days of Joy so much that I’m inspired to create a whole series of fo
Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Six Years in the Making (opens the original)
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Hello !I told you all about the Kickstarter and 28 Days of Joy last week, so I’m not going to repeat myself today. Instead, I want to tell you where I was exactly six years ago.On August 17, 2020, I woke up at a campsite at Chain O’Lakes State Park waiting for the results of my breast biopsy.Jim and I had gone camping because we needed the escape, and because I needed something to do besides stare at my phone and wonder when the doctor would call. That morning, I sat at a picnic table surrounded
Would You Like 28 Days of Joy? (opens the original)
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Hello !One week from today, on August 18, I’m launching the Kickstarter for Diary of a Cockeyed Optimist! If you’ve been subscribed for a while, you know I’ve been working toward this for a loooong time, and now it’s almost here. Woohoo!The date is intentional. It’s the sixth anniversary of the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I wanted the launch to mark that anniversary in a way that felt meaningful. So from August 18 through September 15, the length of the Kickstarter
The Appointment That Saved My Life (opens the original)
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Six years ago today I went to an appointment that saved my life. I was late—by about ten years. I should have started getting mammograms when I turned forty, but I didn’t have insurance and didn’t realize I could get them for free.Finally, because of the pandemic, which killed my business, I was able to get Medicaid. (Thank you, ACA, but that’s another story.) I began checking boxes. The first: a visit to a PCP that revealed high blood pressure and high cholesterol.The second revealed cancer.I c
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