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Creative Nonfiction by Andrea Badgley

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Last post: Sep 24, 2026
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Be human
Sep 24, 2026 · original
I can’t believe I live in a time that I have to say this, but I don’t want to read blog posts or work memos or marketing materials that are clearly written by AI. That the human behind the AI did not go in and add their own personality and remove the generic mediocrity. I cringe now at certain words and patterns because it’s obvious they come from Claude (“lands”, “matters”, “honest”). I look at LinkedIn and see posts that are so repetitive in their structure that the pattern can only be explained by AI (an intro of multiple one-sentence paragraphs in a row, followed by a couple of multi-sentence paragraphs). I want to read words written by my fellow humans, from their hearts and minds, through the effort of trying to clearly express what it is they’re trying to communicate, because in that effort, they figure out what it is that they actually think and want to say. It’s hard work to do
The longest book
Sep 16, 2026 · original
My favorite book podcasters keep talking about how long Lonesome Dove is. Every time they do, I think, is it really? I want them to read it for their Zero to Well Read podcast. I even wrote in to put in my vote for it. It’s so good. So good. Maybe the best. I mean, I remember it having heft, but it moves. It moves and I wouldn’t have thought of its length being a blocker. My son has a copy of it on his shelf, so I went to check how long it really is, and okay, it’s long. I think his paperback copy is 850+ pages. If I had to guess, without looking up page counts, I would have guessed Moby Dick was longer. It certainly felt longer. As did Les Miserables , which I never finished (and apparently is longer). This exercise sent me on a quest to guess the relative lengths of big books I’ve read. This is harder than it sounds because I don’t have most of them on my shelf, and if I did, they’d be
Riding the high seas
Sep 12, 2026 · original
Last week was a wild ride at work. My chest hurt, my stomach churned, I felt the ecstatic terror of freefall, I laughed at gallows humor. A wise leader once told me that the job of a leader in times of instability is to provide stability. That can feel like a tall order when you’re weaving on the deck and are seasick yourself. The best way to tackle it is to take your dramamine, provide a safe space for people to experience the roiling swells without trying to make them feel a certain way, focus on what’s necessary in the moment, and ride it out. The waters will calm and the sky will clear eventually. My dramamine was to ground in the work to help give folks focus, to check in with everyone, and for a burst of good-vibes, to ask a friend for new photos of their baby. One team member shared pictures of cosmos flowers she’d grown from seed. Another shared photos of their kids’ crazy hair d
Unsealed
Sep 6, 2026 · original
Every summer morning, we open the back door before the heat of the day settles in. We open it to the sound of the quiet mountain world, when no lawnmowers or weed-whackers whine, when no cars growl to life or rumble across asphalt. The only sounds are birds chirping and maybe a gentle rustle of leaves in a soft breeze. Today, the back door was open when the air conditioner clicked on. I sighed, got up to shut the door to the loud hum of the outdoor unit, and plopped into my chair by closed windows. “Back to being hermetically sealed.” We’re tired of being sealed in. When we first moved to this house 12 years ago, we only had to turn the air conditioner on maybe 15 days of the summer. It’s been running now, almost nonstop, for probably 45. “The high is only supposed to be 76 today.” I sat in my chair and drummed my fingers. Picked up my book and put it down. Walked to the sliding glass do
Whistler
Sep 2, 2026 · original
I am reading Ann Patchett’s newest novel right now, and I wish I didn’t have to work or sleep so I could just read straight through. I’m here writing to keep myself from opening it before work. I don’t want to have to wrench myself away. Patchett is one of those novelists that I’ll read everything she writes. I click with her characters—I love Eddie in Whistler , as everyone in the book does as well—and how beautifully she exposes the hearts of humans, and the intricacies of our relationships with one another, with family, with children and parents and lovers and friends. She doesn’t create cheap drama. Bel Canto is a marvel. I’ve managed to stretch Whistler over three days so far. I’ve now succeeded in holding myself back from opening it before work. I don’t think I’ll be as successful on my lunch break.
Lo intento
Aug 29, 2026 · original
I made a bucket list a while ago. On it was to learn a second language. I’m awed every day by my colleagues around the world who speak multiple languages. I’m inspired by their ability to drop into cultures, drop into countries, drop into conversations. When I added this item to my bucket list, when I wrote it down instead of it just floating in my mind, I didn’t know what language I wanted to learn. It was some time around my trip to France last year, and I thought I might want to learn French. I love the sound of French: it sounds beautiful and elegant and chic. I also thought it would be practical to know for travel around France and Belgium, and French phrases are always showing up in literature. I’d love to understand them without having to look them up. But French eluded me. None of the letters are pronounced! I found myself continually confounded when trying to learn French. With
An appreciation for typography
Aug 26, 2026 · original
I’m reading Matthew Butterick’s Practical Typography , and with each section—Why does typography matter?, hyphens and dashes, letterspacing—I think, ahhh, so that’s why I love the way The New Yorker looks. They are attentive to every tiny detail of publishing. The finished product is gorgeous as a result. Our son gave me a subscription to The New Yorker for Christmas. While I waited for the first issue to arrive, I downloaded the app. I opened it and blurted, “It’s so beautiful!” I love the shapes of the letters, the clean layout, the negative space, the humor of having to scroll to get to The Lede section. But mostly I love the shapes of the letters. Every week when my physical issue arrives, I get a jolt of pleasure to see the iconic New Yorker font on the cover, with its crisp, tall characters and jaunty flips on the toes of the Rs and the K. I love the curls in the 2s in the date, an
Fahrenheit 451
Aug 13, 2026 · original
I thought I’d read this book before, but after finishing it this week, I’m not sure I have. I thought Fahrenheit 451 was a book about book burning and censorship, which it is, but it’s moreso a book about feeling threatened by ideas. In it, government didn’t insist on banning books. A particular political wing didn’t insist on banning books. Instead, society elected to stop reading books. Life felt easier and less dangerous and “happier” when people didn’t have to be confronted with the conflicts, tension, messiness and open questions of what it means to be human and alive and interacting with the world around us. 451 ℉ is the temperature at which paper burns, and in Fahrenheit 451 , the burning of books is the hook that catches the reader. Rather than putting out fires, firemen burn. They respond to calls that report neighbors who own books, and they show up with their flame throwers in
Be still
Aug 1, 2026 · original
It’s a lot harder than it seems to do nothing; to not distract ourselves. A couple of years ago, I read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. I wanted to cultivate my creative self. I was game for all the exercises, and I performed them like the good student I am: morning pages, artist’s dates, ten tiny changes, lists of people I admire, of friends who nourish me, of buried dreams. I threw things out to open space for newness to enter. When I got to the section titled “Reading deprivation,” though, I said no fucking way. Absolutely not. If I have to stop reading in order to tap into creativity, I’d rather not be creative. I actually felt sick to my stomach when I read the assignment. There’s no way I will give up reading. At the same time, she’s not wrong. It is a paradox that by emptying our lives of distractions we are actually filling the well. Without distractions, we are once again thr
Home to the beach
Jul 29, 2026 · original
Over the past decade, I’ve come to love our home in the mountains. So much so that I thought that despite a lifetime of deep soul connection to the ocean, the coast no longer moved me. In recent years we’ve vacationed as a family to seashores and I’ve thought, meh. It’s fine. That changed this summer. A couple of weeks ago, we visited family in Sarasota then spent a few days on a Gulf island in Florida. I woke every morning before dawn, walked to the white beach with my coffee, and sat in the sand to watch sandpipers stroll in the splash zone. They teetered on toothpick legs and plunged their needle beaks in wet sand to feed on coquina clams. Whatever mountain wall I had put up crumbled, and I fell in love with the sea again. This past week, I returned to my childhood home on Tybee Island to help my parents after a surgery. On my way down south, and on my way down a mountain, I was sides

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