Maybe There Will Be Cupcakes

Ginny Bartolone's Blog of Many Years

Author: ginnybartolone

  • Tips for New Freelance Writers: Avoiding Shady Job Posts

    Now in my third year of freelance writing, I occasionally catch myself turning down potential clients and invitations to interview for no discernible reason. I’ve been burned more than a handful of times–as many freelancers have–both before and after I’ve done the requested work, so I can be a little quick to judge. On one…

  • “I’ll tell you where the real road lies.”

    “I’ll tell you where the real road lies.”

    With only 12 days to get from Porto to Santiago de Compostela, I’d have to get through some longer days to balance out the shorter ones.

  • Coming Home Requires Patience

    Coming home requires patience. I’m three weeks out from my trip and I still find myself retreating into the solitary part of my mind that shielded me from a world of little red notification flags at the top of a screen. What’s odd is that I am having trouble recounting each hiking day in my…

  • My Heart is Still in Porto

    Marcie–the South Carolinan sitting to my right–held my hand during the entire, hair-raising, hour-and-fifteen-minute descent into Newark airport. She saw me panicking during our last bout of turbulence that sent even the flight attendants rushing to their jump seats, and gripped my hand without even looking up from her book. As life would have it,…

  • If “Acting is Doing” Then What is Everything Else?

    My acting teacher in London was never a huge fan of me. Though I like to believe I’m a rather agreeable human, I consistently clash with a very specific personality. We’re like two liquids that simply cannot occupy the same space. In one of our first classes, she asked us in a raspy tone, “What…

  • The World Opens Up to You When You’re Not a Douche

    I realize that the title of this post is a bit off-brand for me, but I couldn’t think of anything sugar-coated to really sum up my morning. Around 11am, I headed off to my usual coffee spot to get some work done. On my walk, I greeted the guy who owns the antique store, the…

  • Well, I Just Booked a Ticket to Portugal

    Eleven years ago, I laid on my back across a bus seat on my way into Santiago de Compostela for the first time. As many of you know, I took a course about the Camino in college and spent three weeks flitting around Spain from the comfort of a coach bus with about 15 of…

  • Master of Two Worlds

    Muscle memory can sneak up on you. It’s been raining off and on all morning, so I headed out to my usual coffee shop with our big umbrella, tapping it on the ground as I walked. Halfway through my trip, I caught myself hitting the umbrella on the grass beside the sidewalk instead of the…

  • It’s More Fun to Believe in the Magic of Coincidence

      I’ve decided to make peace with living in emotional technicolor. Hear me out. I know that sounds like a bad hipster band name. But I’ve had a lot of coffee, so I’m rolling with it. Several months after my second Camino, I started having these wildly vivid dreams. The dreams themselves are pretty trippy.…

  • A Quick Rant About Socks and Toxic Masculinity

    I stopped off at a gift shop on my way home this afternoon to look at something small for Ben. We don’t really make a huge deal out of Valentine’s Day, but I thought I’d grab a card or something else silly. There’s a company that makes these comedic socks — something Ben often wears…