words and music.

So WINO is still in the works, but I figure I’d start crossposting these things instead of sitting on them. You’re obligated to acting surprised and reading this again when it does go live on the WINO site. Edits and crits very much welcome. The first post is an introduction essay.

This is the part I’m supposed to come up with a witty introduction to myself using my cool and collected writer’s voice. I’d usually come up with a way to cram Venezuela, Texas, Catholicism and bourbon into a few sentences. Spoiler alert.

I spent a small portion of my childhood wanting to be an astronaut, with a brief stint as aspiring anthropologist so as to be buddies with Jurassic Park’s Dr. Grant. But when I hit the transformative age of nine, I decided to forgo any possibility of wealth and fame when I told my parents I wanted to go to Columbia University and be a journalist.

“Why would you want to go to Colombia?”, goes my dad’s well-rehearsed response. “You might as well go back to Venezuela.”

Apparently the nine-year old in me didn’t have much of a sense of humor. I spent afternoons and summers on the Soria household beat, co-opting my dad’s electric typewriter at work to draft a small circulation newspaper. I spent most of my middle school years contributing to the Cat Trax newspaper, competing for headline space with the “Newest Couples” column, and spent all four years of high school working on The Oracle looking for any excuse to overturn the Hazelwood decision.

I ended up staying in Houston and going to a small, conservative Catholic university where I would eventually run the anti-Catholic, liberal, occult-named Cauldron newspaper. I’d later have the occasional alt weekly article or blog post, but my journalism career ended before it began. I soon settled for corporate job with a massive oil company where I pretended formatting technical reports meant that I was still attuned to the publishing world. After a year of making sure everything was a banal Garamond size 12 with six-point spacing before and after each graph, I took a chance. Hello, New York.

It’s been two years since bought my one-way flight to New York City. Like anyone here would likely clue you in on, the city’s highs are high and its lows are lows. One of the highest of highs is having the distinct privilege to meet and talk to some of the most brilliant journalists, editors, writers and fellow people in between.

They, more than anything else, are a constant reminder that I’m only a WINO as long as I let myself to be. And while I hope that my WINO ways are strictly a phase that I am meant to grow out of, I’m happy to work alongside Sarah and whomever else may want to take the ride with us on the road to career recovery.

Oh, and I love bourbon.

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I’m soon kicking off a new, very humble project with my Nation buddy Sarah Arnold.

It’s still in the final rounds, but I can tell you that it’s called W.I.N.O. and will hopefully reignite and focus some career aspirations.

Stay tuned.

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Chances are that anyone who reads this today has already heard me sloppily recount the second part to my Christmas excursion, maybe more than once. If you haven’t, the short version features five hours worth of transportation by land, five hours in a flight reaccommodation line and going to the wrong airport. Easter eggs include but are not limited to losing my digital camera, accidentally formatting my laptop’s hard drive and cracking the screen on my fancy phone.

Speaking of trips home, I wrote this while flying over Alabama at around 450 miles per hour, surprising my family with a visit. Only a privileged few knew about the trip before hand, which has me morbidly excited at the possibility of giving a few heart attacks. I wasn’t planning on going home until about a week ago. Consider it reparations for what turned out to be a rather stressful Mother’s Day visit by my mother and sister.

The super short version of that story includes stress, tears and sushi. It was capped by my mom’s first Broadway show since Le Mis in 1989. Pro-tip: look up plots for Broadway shows before purchasing tickets, especially if the musical features the story of a bipolar mother and her dysfunctional family. Happy Mother’s day, Mom.

Actually, it was a great musical.

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