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Alone on the Jumbotron

In My Year Downtown by Steve Fuller

People fight like hell to avoid loneliness. Growing up in suburban Cincinnati, the idea of spending time alone in public made me squirm. I don’t remember the first time I ate alone in a restaurant, but it had to be …

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A More Fulfilling Life

In Yellow House Chronicles by Natalie Shaw

A month ago, I lived in a small apartment in the center of a mid-sized city in the Midwest, in the hippest neighborhood, steps from some of my favorite bars and restaurants, blocks from my friends, a mile from the …

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Do the Work

In My Year Downtown by Steve Fuller

I have always found something strangely fascinating about listening to old comedians rehash their early days playing dive clubs for pennies, shacking up with seven other guys in a New York studio apartment, or getting their first big break opening …

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Living

In My Year Downtown by Steve Fuller

I stumbled across a quote by Ernest Hemingway approximately five years ago that has haunted my writing—in both Casper the Friendly Ghost ways and Poltergeist ways ever since. Hemingway said, “In order to write about life, first you must live …