Morgan Longford
Bio
Stories (40/0)
The Time I Almost Married Jake Gyllenhaal
‘Twas Winter, in the year of our Lord 2011 (roughly,) when I almost married Jake Gyllenhaal. Jake Gyllenhaal has been a celebrity crush since the Donnie Darko days, picking up steam in the Bubble Boy era, and gradually growing stronger and stronger. You may think adult women don’t get celebrity crushes, but you’d be wrong. We do. Sometimes, they are childhood crushes that have followed us into adulthood, and sometimes it is a new, budding imaginary romance in middle age, but I don’t know that we ever move past them. So anyhoo. Jake Gyllenhaal.
By Morgan Longford4 months ago in Humans
Plastic Bowls and Other Proclivities
I’m learning how to slow down. We may as well add that to the list of things I am learning about myself. Coincidentally, learning how to slow down, and actually putting it into practice, is how I am also learning new things about myself. Some of these things you would think I would know by now, given that I am 43 years old. (This may turn into a series, TBD.) But, it is strange how little we know about ourselves, quite honestly. Part of being human is learning how to interact with other humans, and for most of us, that is how a good chunk of our waking life is spent: learning how to interact with other humans. We learn social norms, verbal and non-verbal cues that tell us how to act; we learn what we should say and do around other people, and we learn how to have a conversation and how to connect with others, even if it is just at the cash register of your corner coffee shop. What this means, however, is that we spend most of our lives, honestly, learning about how to exist, learning about other people, learning new skills, etc., but really zero time learning about ourselves. Which is why, at 42 years old, I learned that I don’t like using ceramic bowls and plates.
By Morgan Longford4 months ago in Humans
The Sun and The Shift
Something is shifting inside me, inside my consciousness or in the place my self-awareness lives, or my self-esteem. Maybe the shift is wrapped in self-love or self-confidence. I’ve been exploring timeline shifts, quantum leaps, and the idea that every version of ourselves already exists, so that if we just visualize our future selves in the future house/clothes/career/whatever, we can shift our entire trajectory just by placing ourselves in the exact circumstances we want to be in in our minds. So maybe it’s that. Maybe I’m feeling different because I am mid-shift.
By Morgan Longford4 months ago in Confessions
La Quinta Nights
Since November 27th, I’ve been working on an essay about why I am a grinch. I have spent probably hours really sitting with my feelings and sorting out why the holidays make me feel this way, and carefully crafting them into a piece to publish. But now, I am in the holiday spirit, and it doesn’t feel right to publish that right before Christmas for a variety of reasons, so on the shelf like an elf it goes until at least January. It seems like a shame to finally sort out all those personal, complicated feelings about the holidays and not share them with strangers, but four days before Christmas is not the time and place. My therapist and best friend would be proud. So instead, on this winter solstice, from a hotel bed in downtown Austin, I will tell you about La Quinta nights and why everyone needs one from time to time, (as well as why I want to live in one and it is a very solid argument.)
By Morgan Longford5 months ago in Lifehack
December
The last few weeks have been hectic, in good ways, bad ways, all the ways. I really want to create a thoughtful essay, and I have a long list waiting in the wings that I hope to tackle in the next few weeks. But since it is the season of giving, I will give you another poem. It is from my collection, Catching Dusk With Our Teeth, available for pre-order here. It is also currently available in Kindle format if you don’t want to wait.
By Morgan Longford5 months ago in Poets
- Top Story - November 2023
Middle Weather Days.Top Story - November 2023
This is it. The weather I’ve been waiting for. Yesterday, in Austin, Texas, we didn’t see the sun. Today was sunny and 80 degrees, but yesterday- sigh- was gray and cloudy and just the right amount of drizzly all day and the kind of weather that just makes me feel so soft. The heat makes me sad and angry. The sunshine makes me feel like I should do something productive even if I don’t want to. But on days like yesterday, on glorious, sprinkling days full of gray, the weather demands nothing of me. It is middle weather. It makes me feel like the only thing I have to do is snuggle or drink warm beverages or stroll or watch movies, or really just do anything I feel like doing, and it’s the only weather that makes me feel this way, and thus, it is my favorite weather.
By Morgan Longford6 months ago in Psyche
Giving Grace.
I’m three-ish days behind schedule. I didn’t technically meet my goal last week, so I will aim for two pieces this week. I know I don’t need to tell you that, I know you aren’t keeping track on a calendar, but I feel like writing about it feels like accountability. I’m still not feeling overly creative or inspired the last few weeks and haven’t come up with a whole lot of stuff I feel excited to write about. If you read my last post, you know what I mean when I say “still.” But I feel less stuck, so that’s positive. I just don’t feel like I have it in me this week to follow a theme like girlhood, or to dive into the list of topics that I want to write about eventually (like how often I think about Taylor Swift or how New York City was my first love.) I will, but just not today. I don’t feel focused. I’m having a hard time writing about anything other than how much I miss my dog. A little over a week since my last post, and I have come to the conclusion that my writer’s block is in fact a delicate blend of planetary alignment and sadness.
By Morgan Longford6 months ago in Humans
Big Love. Big Grief.
TW: Pet loss, death, suicide A part of me feels like I should have written this days ago, when my whole body was filled with the deepest grief I have ever known; when I was the rawest, the most vulnerable, and the saddest. I would have been able to capture in perfect acuity every thought, every ache of loss that contorted my body into a quivering ball of human on the floor, every word spoken. But that’s the thing. Maybe I should’ve written this days ago, but for all the reasons listed above, I couldn’t.
By Morgan Longford6 months ago in Petlife
Here's to Girlhood
The internet moves fast. By the time I think of something I want to write or get around to some silly little TikTok trend I want to jump on, it’s over. We’ve moved on. Our collective energy is focused on something else. You don’t have to look far to see this. There is still a war raging in Ukraine and the blue and yellow flags that flew with such fervor stateside have faded, tattered, or been torn down. There is a new war to focus on. People know they’ve cancelled some celebrity or company but can’t remember what for anymore. Women were walking around saying, “Hi, Barbie,” to other Barbies that crossed their paths, and before my personalized HI BARBI license plate could even arrive, the hope of Barbieland becoming real seems to have disappeared, giving way to the Kens, once again.
By Morgan Longford7 months ago in Humans
Support looks different depending on the day
I got my first paid subscriber this weekend. It was my dad, for those of you that were wondering. But with that subscription, a cascade of thoughts, and outright epiphanies sauntered in, starting with how cool it was to open my email and see that I had a paid subscription when I had just posted my first piece. Now, I did NOT know who it was at first, and I just thought, wow, man, my writing career is going to soar if I already have fans. And when I saw it was my dad, I thought, oh man, of all the fans, he might be my biggest. And then my mom subscribed, and I thought, wow, I have two biggest fans. And this is when the emotion kicked in. (My husband might be my biggest fan of them all, but that is a different story because today we are talking about parents.)
By Morgan Longford7 months ago in Families