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Writing is more than my career—it's my lifeline. I've kept journals for as long as I can remember. The first diary I ever owned was Ramona Quimby-themed. I filled it with riveting tales about the complexities of first-grade life and expressions of love for my toy poodle, Tiger. I still keep diaries, and while the topics I pen about have (thankfully) evolved, the reason I write remains the same: Writing helps me attribute meaning to my life. It forces me to plunge deeper inside myself to reach heightened levels of awareness and clarity; to relate to, and forge connections with others; to apply significance, and purpose, to life's nonsensical events; to extract overwhelming feelings from inside myself, and work through them on paper; my words reveal my trajectory of growth. Writing about my experiences helps me organize my world: Existence itself becomes a story, a cohesive narrative in which events are organized into ascending, climactic and resolving moments. And all my occurrences, varying and contradictory as they may seem, become thematically linked and interconnected, like the differing, yet correlated, chapters of a book. The baby—or Caboose, as my dad affectionately refers to me—in a family of 5, growing up I was a tad dependent on my family. And by 'tad', I mean exceedingly. I am that girl who, for the better part of her life, clung to her mother's side. Reliant and self-doubting by nature, I'm most comfortable letting others direct, and manage, my life. That's why, at the age of 22, I uprooted myself from my sheltered Minnesota existence to the land of blaring car horns and cockroach-infested streets. New York, New York – in my opinion the scariest and most exciting place in the world – if I could make it there, surely, I could make it anywhere. And now, as I near the end of my 20's, I will attempt to return to the Twin Cities, bringing with me all the knowledge and maturity I gained during my 7 years in Manhattan. Much of my writing is centered on this literal, and figurative, voyage: I write about rites of passage – the shift from needy child to self-reliant adult. The struggles involved in finding an identity, carving a future, meeting a mate, friendship upheavals and job distresses. I write about persevering when all the odds are against you, when every cell in your body tells you that you can't, but you go ahead and do anyway. I write about taking risks and embracing a life of uncertainty. Since graduating from Indiana University in 2002 with a degree in journalism, I've written for various print and online publications such as Time Out New York, Psychology Today, Spirituality & Health, Chicken Soup for the Soul Magazine, FOXnews.com and iYogaLife at RunnersWorld.com to name a few. The genres I've covered range from health and wellness, to beauty and fashion, dating and relationships, adolescent culture and the arts. I maintain a fitness and beauty blog on the PsychologyToday.com network entitled Shake Your Beauty, I was the New York Editor of an online arts and culture magazine, Boheme Verite, and I served as the advice columnist at Fazed.com – an ezine geared towards teens and 20-somethings. But, as a self-proclaimed Chronicler of Life, my specialty—and passion—lies in nonfiction and memoir writing. View my personal weblog at: http://mariskris.blogspot.com |
