Hello! I'm Aruna Gobalan (pronounced Go-bah-lun). I'm a writer navigating midlife with varying degrees of grace, currently working on a memoir about the most unexpected pairing of my life: a cancer diagnosis and running 26.2 miles. It turns out crisis and stubbornness have a lot in common.

I'm also the author of Take My Money, Please (2020), a collection of essays about a 21-day secret giving project I embarked on during the pandemic. It turns out pressing money into strangers' hands is also more awkward than it sounds. I have a type.

This blog, Partably, has been my thinking-out-loud space for the past several years — on productivity, wellness, and what it means to live intentionally when life keeps insisting on happening anyway.

I live in California with a multi-generational household and the ongoing delusion that I will someday have an organized inbox.

If you'd like to reach out — especially if you're an agent, editor, or fellow reader — I'd love to hear from you. [Contact me here.]

Never underestimate the power to inspire or be inspired.