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It’s no secret that the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 hit small businesses HARD. At the time, many of these small businesses had to make some impossible choices. In many cases it was pivot and get creative or close up shop. One such business was the small but mighty independent bookstore. In 2020 and 2021, all of the articles written about bookstores were depressing and defeatist. I refuse to even link them here because it’s not something I want us to dwell on. However, 2022 roll

A lifelong friend of mine invited me to join her on her dream of walking the Camino, a historic pilgrimage that winds hundreds of miles through Spain. Before she asked me, I had never heard of it. This is the joy and honor of having beautiful friends who open up your life to new experiences. Now I’m one week out from following in the footsteps of centuries of seekers of meaning, faith, or adventure. Personally, I am seeking connection with my friend and as many fellow travele

If you are ever bored on a road trip, needing to distract from minor foot pain on a long walk, or forcing your partner to support your new Improv obsession, we’ve got a game for you. The game is based on the Improv principle of creating a Base Reality , which is defining who the characters are and their location. What you’ll do is start a set with a single word/concept for a prompt. From there, the first player starts a round by using that prompt to assign themselves a charac

Wait a little longer Every afternoon I pick up my daughter from the afterschool program where the pickup procedure requires levels of patience and humility that are probably good for me somehow. I’d like to explain this from my current perspective that has morphed from confusion and frustration to what insiders feel when they use the words initiation or hazing instead of abuse . Before you start commiserating about long car lines, you should know the experience has nothing

When I am not building cool stuff at Option C, I am mostly reading. For real. Cozies, coffee, cats, couch. That's the dream. Another dream I have always held on to is owning a bookstore. I know this is not a very original dream but it has been with me since I first saw my favorite movie of all time, You've Got Mail. Kathleen Kelly is my gurl! Maybe someday I will retire and spend my golden years in some coastal town selling books and minding the shop cat. Until then, allow me

Throughout my career as a software developer, I have worked with some brilliant designers. The kind of visionaries who could add just a little padding to reveal a gorgeous layout that simply needed that minor effortless adjustment, like Rachel Leigh Cook removing her glasses. The designs I worked from would depict the ideal state of the app in order to exhibit all of the features and functionality a user might see on the screen. So, lists of records, photo attachments, line i

Here’s a fun tidbit for you: the creator of the 2021 phenom, Wordle, is named Josh Wardle. I kid you not. He made a fun little app for he and his partner to enjoy. Nine months later, the game was made public and absolutely exploded! Five years later: NYT owns Wordle and the hype has died way down. I will admit that my family and I still post our scores in a text chain most days as a fun way to stay in touch and trash talk each other. (Trash talk is a favorite Tatum family pas

I’d like to take you back to a distant past when Slack avatars were various palettes of gingham. I had just started my first fully remote job and was new to the casualness of communication tools like Slack. My messages were always direct, productive, fully-formed sentences, wrapped with appropriate punctuation. To liven things up a bit, I would sometimes sprinkle in a few exclamation marks. I later felt rebuked by articles lamenting women’s overuse of exclamation points in th

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! I personally don’t really celebrate this holiday, but I did wear green pants today so as not to get pinched, which is...a weird sentence. So, out of curiosity, I went out looking for other significant events that fall on this day and boy did I find a gem ! Let me introduce you to the oh-so-fascinating, Gertrude of Nivelles , with a few fun facts: NUN BOSS Gertrude was born circa 626-8 AD in Belgium. By the age of 20, she was an abbess (head nun) in a

Q: What do Beyonce, Family Guy, the Caribbean, and the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta have in common? I’m so glad you asked. A: These guys: They go by many names: Sky Dancers, Inflatable Tube Men, Air Dancers, Tall Boys, Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tubemen (credit: Family Guy ). But no matter what you call them, I think we can all* agree that they are perfectly designed vessels of pure joy. *All of us except Houston, parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts and maybe

I did it! I made it through my Improv class. And I didn’t just eke it out, I loved it! My experience with trying something new out of my comfort zone mirrored what I loved about each scene I got to do. You don’t really know what’s going to happen, but you step in and find a way to have some fun with it. I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit my initial expectations and compare those to my actual experience to reflect on what I’ve learned. Belonging Expectation I'll be ou

One of the most intimidating aspects of stepping into an improv scene is keeping it alive once you’ve established a base reality (the characters, location, and what they are doing). There’s no script and no plan, and you need to find a way to get on the same page with your scene partners to keep it going in real time. The key is finding the first unusual thing, then creating a game from there that can be played through the end of the scene. The game of the scene is the centr

This past weekend I went to see the US Women’s National Soccer Team play Argentina in the She Believes Cup. I am such a massive fan. Nerd level. Obsessive. The game was…a little spicy . A couple of almost-fights bubbled up. Hair was pulled. Knees were slammed into backs. Yellow cards were issued. Ugly. My US ladies won 2-0, but the win didn’t feel like other wins. It generated a collective sigh of relief that the clock ran out. The team looked frustrated. The fans felt that e

When creating an improv scene, you start from a base reality that specifies characters, location, and an activity. Once this starting point is established, the task of the players is to find the first unusual thing that creates a game that propels the scene toward comedy. Characters can be played straight to explore the base reality and provide background for the unusual thing to stand out. Game characters are played to intentionally break from the expectations of the base r

This past weekend I had the privilege of attending the 4th Annual Rainbow Ventures Summit in Birmingham, Alabama. Just an easy three-hour drive from my home in Nashville, Birmingham is a city that has always held a special place in my heart. RVS is Central Alabama's one and only LGBTQ+ Entrepreneurship Conference. Two days of speakers, vendors, networking, pitch competitions and, most importantly, pure joy! Here are my top 3 takeaways from the event: The Power of Community O

A new gym opened up in my neighborhood and I ran into one of their sales reps on the sidewalk. He started into his pitch on the great features and benefits of this particular gym: "State of the art equipment! Group classes! Special branded water!" (wait, what?) He lost me there. I was off on a scorched earth rant in my head. The top three reasons I should join this gym include BRANDED WATER?! Thanks, I hate it here. So let's talk about the thing vs. the reason for the thing.

My improv teacher gave us some homework (my kind of comedy class) to read through The Upright Citizen’s Brigade Comedy Improv Manual . It’s a really well laid out book that outlines the basic structure of an improv scene and includes some exercises to build basic skills. I hope to do the book justice with a simple overview, and then I’d like to do an exercise with you to show you how Option C uses these skills as well. The arc of an improv scene starts from a base reality tha

I have been trying to challenge myself lately to push into experiences that I have always thought of as “not me”. My introvert credentials are pretty stacked: math major, software developer, multi-pass text message editor (reread at minimum 3 times before sending). I have this unfortunate skin reaction when I speak in public (low bar of more than 2 other people), where my neck and face splotch bright red. This misfortune compounds into a feedback loop now that many of these p

Here’s a little story about serendipity. (not the classic rom com about…I wanna say…gloves?) A couple of months ago I joined a tech community here in Nashville for entrepreneurs. They have all kinds of events for networking and learning and schmoozing, etc. As my first dip into this new pond, I decided to attend a casual coffee networking event. I put on my business lady clothes and worked up the courage to meet a bunch of strangers. And there were a bunch. Maybe 50? Okay, m