Morgan Longford
Bio
Stories (58)
Filter by community
Maybe slightly agoraphobic.
If you ever wonder if you are truly an introvert, have surgery. I know this sounds weird in all the ways, like who doesn’t think they’re an introvert? What introvert actually things they are an extrovert? For some of us extroverted-introverts, it actually can be confusing, believe it or not. It used to be confusing for me, until I read the book Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. I thought, because I have always had very social jobs, have always been very chatty, and can show up to be the life of the party, always got in trouble for talking too much in class- I thought I must be an extrovert. What introvert talks that much? But then why do I prefer to be home? Why am I so exhausted after socializing? Why can I spend hours upon hours, if not days upon days, by myself in complete silence and not go mad? And then I read that book, learned that extroverted-introverts DO exist, that I am one of them, and the true marker of an introvert versus an extrovert is not necessarily what the world sees, but how we recharge. This was life-changing for me.
By Morgan Longford6 months ago in Confessions
Find me in the gold.. Runner-Up in You Were Never Really Here Challenge.
She can still see me. It’s rare, but on occasion, she can still see me. When she does, it comes in glimmers of light and shadows, the way water reflects off the bottom of a pool, but every so often, she can still see me. My friend. My real, living, breathing, atoms and molecules shaped into the body of a real girl, friend. When she does, when she sees me, the electricity courses through my entire being. The joy of being seen literally electrifies me, and sometimes it makes the lights flicker, and I know she shrugs it off as a power surge or something else as equally rational of an explanation. This is what always happens, as they grow up, but I was hoping this time it wouldn’t. She was the girl I loved the most.
By Morgan Longford7 months ago in Fiction
RIP Hank Chinaski
I know it’s a timeless debate: do people change? Some people say, absolutely. Others would argue that no, you don’t, you are who you are. I probably land somewhere in the middle, but veering towards yes, of course we change. But I think it’s also complex. Does maturing equal change? Does becoming firmer in our beliefs equal change? Or is that something that would qualify as something else? What actually constitutes the change we are talking about when we ask, “can a person change?” I sure as shit don’t know, but I do know this: if you want to see how much you have evolved as a person (or not,) revisit a favorite book from your twenties.
By Morgan Longford11 months ago in Humans
I guess this is 2025
Happy New Year. According to some. Not all. Some people celebrate their New Year on different days throughout the year (as discussed here.) But if January 1st is your go-to New Year, then I hope it is happy. I hope that all of your resolutions stick, and you reach all your personal goals for the year, and I hope we don’t all die or lose our rights or our healthcare or the ability to vote or aren’t swallowed whole by the rising sea levels or tornados in places there shouldn’t be tornados. Truly. I hope that we all survive the next year, and at least the three years that follow. I’m not feeling confident about this, but I’ve been wrong before. So, cheers to being wrong! And speaking of healthcare, here’s a special cheers to Luigi Mangione, who I do not believe did anything wrong (literally I think he is a fall guy,) but cheers to what he represents for a lot of us. Cheers to raising awareness of social injustice, class warfare, and the ruling class of oligarchs and billionaires. Let them eat cake for once. It’s been awhile.
By Morgan Longfordabout a year ago in Journal
A day in the life.
Photo by Julia Joppien on Unsplash Writing is weird. Or rather, being a writer is weird. No, that’s still not it. Being a person that writes, is technically a writer even if very few people read what I write, that wants to write books and to have people read them and to make money from people buying them is weird. It is a job that is not yet a job, that I need to treat like a job around my other two jobs, that doesn’t pay.
By Morgan Longfordabout a year ago in Writers
It was going to be about trains.
I have romanticized trains for as long as I can remember. I don’t know when my love for them started, or how my love for them even got nurtured, because I didn’t grow up taking them (although my mom just told me we did a long train trip together before I could even walk, so maybe that sparked something in my almost brand-new brain, who knows.) I have long convinced myself that if I could just spend a month traveling around the country by rail, that I could write the great American novel, inspired by the gentle rocking and the whispered chug along the tracks. I have convinced myself that that is truly the only thing I need to craft a masterpiece is a long, uninterrupted train ride. (This, and/or a month in Manhattan in a brick-laden loft, plants hanging from the rafters, colorful carpets and loud neighbors and flashing neon from the bar across the way.) The characters would be formed by the passengers, back stories imagined and woven together based on their stops, their clothes, or from watching the woman and daughter waving at eachother through the window until we turned the bend. I have painted my own self as a mysterious passenger, typing away as the countryside ebbed and flowed from rolling green hills to flat, brown fields, people wondering who I am, creating their own stories about me. Who is that woman? Is she an author? Is she writing a book? Have I read anything she’s written? Maybe she’s a spy. Maybe a food critic. You get the picture- I would, in short, be mysterious, my fingers clicking away, creating my own story within a story because in my head, this is how an author, since the beginning of time, creates something worth reading.
By Morgan Longfordabout a year ago in Humans
From Grief, Gratitude
Some days, I don’t want to do hair. Some days, I don’t want to do hair ever again. I don’t think I can explain the taxing nature of being a hairstylist well. I’ve tried, and I don’t think I can capture what it feels like to people outside of the industry. Every job has its challenges, of course, but I think anytime I’ve tried to help someone understand why I’m exhausted, I fail to capture the breadth of it all. I can say, it’s exhausting to talk all day, and that doesn’t feel like an accurate description, and people say, oh, I know, I work at, say, a bank, I talk to people all day too and I know that they don’t understand. They don’t understand that brief interactions with purpose, followed by a break in between customers, is not the same.
By Morgan Longfordabout a year ago in Humans
Dog Thirteen, Eeyore
Eeyore June 19, 2023 Almost all my litter mates are gone now, and I understand what is happening. We are all going to new humans. I don’t know what happens when we go with new humans, but I know that new humans come, they look at us all very closely, they pick us up, handle us in a variety of ways- some nice, some not nice- and either put us back in our area, or say, “I’ll take him!” Or her. Depending on the dog. Everyone keeps putting me back in the area, and I don’t know how I feel about that. I have some confusing feelings about the whole matter.
By Morgan Longfordabout a year ago in Chapters
Linus
LINUS June 4, 2023 Today I woke up from a sleep and the sun was on my face and I remembered I had a new dream. It was the same but different from other dreams because I was running really fast like I always do but it was different because I felt really light and also because I talked to a rabbit creature and rabbit creature gave me a message and this is new. I cannot tell you what it is just yet because it was a secret, and even though it was a dream secret I know I need to keep it a secret in awake time too. Also I called out a name- a name is what you call something- like my name is Linus like I told you, and also Bubba and Bubs in case you forgot. But I called out Charlie and that is weird because I don’t know a Charlie but sometimes Mom says, “Linus, like from Charlie Brown” so it must be that. Also she says, “He carries around a blue blanket like Linus from Charlie Brown, and I didn’t even train him to do that, it is so perfect!” I want to tell her that I carry a blue blanket because she only gets me blue ones but she seems so pleased by it so I wouldn’t correct her even if I could. That is how much I love Mom.
By Morgan Longford2 years ago in Chapters
Gold Stars and Losing Streaks
This week marks 26 weeks of consistent writing, a streak that is exactly half a year long. Except it doesn’t. Somehow, between weeks 24 and 26, I missed a deadline or something because even though I published a piece every week- whether it was a poem, an essay, a chapter from my book, or just a little blurb- I got an email saying congratulations on your ONE WEEK STREAK.
By Morgan Longford2 years ago in Writers
