Welcome to NDistinct Chatter
It’s been 10 years since I was writing like this, and that’s long enough
Oh. Hey! Here’s me:
That’s not how you spell my brother’s name. It’s Erik, not Erick. Maybe that’s part of why I was upset? I just knew the photographer would screw that up?
Anyway, hi. I’m Kelly.
In a previous life, I was a columnist for the Bismarck Tribune. That ended 10 years ago, this month actually. I have been writing columns irregularly for different start-up publications in ND, a couple of women’s magazines and a college newspaper in Eudora, Kansas, (don’t ask; not because it’s sensitive info; it’s just an uninteresting story; I did it as a favor to a friend; I don’t think this is how semi-colons were meant to be used) since then.
Mostly, though, I’ve spent the last 10 years worrying. And making that same “unhappy” face from the Santa photo seen above.
Predominantly I was worried for my mom. She was diagnosed with cancer a little more than 10 years ago. It was at about the same time that I was asked to please stop writing my column for the Tribune (they didn’t use the word “please”) when my mom put her cancer successfully into remission. So I kind of thought that my column was the price I needed to pay for her to be well.
If you read the post that I launched this here substack with, yesterday, you may already know that my mom’s cancer came back in 2020, and she was unable to survive it this time. So I’m a man without a mom and a creative outlet now.
This, now I’m launching this here Substack newsletter thing. As I understand it, you folks can hit the Subscribe button on this post somewhere, and start to receive these missives each time I write them in your emails.
Everybody wins!
I hope to start to share some of the catalog of columns I’ve written in the last 15 years, and put them all into one place. Right here, and at www.ndchatter.com.
NDChatter is the short version of (NDistinct Chatter), which is the title of this blog site I am hoping to launch. I’ve already invited my brother (the aforementioned “Erick”; actually it’s Erik, and that’s how you semi-colon) to participate on this endeavor.
He writes like me and looks like me. And just as soon as he figures out how computers work, he’ll hopefully start to write stuff for the site and newsletter, too.
My e-mail is kelly.hagen@gmail.com, if you should like to correspond. But please subscribe, and I’ll tell you more stories about my mom, what I’ve been doing these last 10 years and maybe we can trade some recipes or something?