Click here for September's Photo Gallery!

publisher profile

Nikki Hardin

Founder and Publisher of Skirt!. A native of Kentucky, I left home at 17 to elope with my high-school boyfriend. Twelve years later, divorced with three children and unskilled at almost everything, I started college at the age of 29. Earned a B.A. in literature from American University in 1976 and attended graduate school at the University of Virginia on a Governor’s Fellowship. I never completed my master’s degree, however,...

READ MORE

The True Confessions Issue

nikki

publisher@skirt.com

I’ve spent all my life trying to be braver. A couple of months ago, I was driving to a beach near my house when I spotted a Tsunami Zone warning sign. I almost ran off the road, because it was as if the highway department had zoned in on my deepest secret fear and given it credibility. See that little stick figure desperately trying to outrun the tidal wave racing toward its back? That’s the subtext of my life story. I hate being out of control, overwhelmed, under-prepared and out of my element, so of course a tsunami is going to be in the top 5 on my list of Omigod-Middle-of-the-night Worries. (I also have an irrational fear of finding a scorpion in my shoe, but that’s a getting-out-of-bed worry.)

It makes me nervous that I can’t rehearse for, have a contingency plan for, make a list for a tsunami, any more than I can for life. I told someone recently that skirt! was a bolder,  stronger version of me, and I think it’s time for me to get closer to that alter ego. To live less cautiously, more intensely, closer to my fear. We’re all here on borrowed time and I want to stop running, turn around, and face the waves head-on.

What about you? Do you ever wake up and realize you’ve been stuck in reruns for too many seasons of your life? I read somewhere that every seven years our cells are replaced by new ones. I don’t know if it’s true, but I love the concept. New cells, new point of view, new me-new you? If you could change one thing that would make a startling difference in your life, what would it be?