The garden is overgrown. Slate had been laid across the dirt to create the patio, but weeds have grown up, died, and grown again between the slabs. I remember when I was a child I would get on my hands and knees and pull on the weeds, the hot summer sun beating down on my […]
Work continues to be overwhelming in the extreme, so I took another dip into my archives and pulled out some material from one of the other periods in my life when I was incredibly overwhelmed; grad school. Here are a few musings from November 2018 about why I write things down, with a side of […]
In this endless game of choose-your-own-apocalypse, its easy to forget that the world was a struggle before 2020. As I was wading through the waters of my Google Drive I found these notes from October 2019, and was reminded. I’ve decided to share them, both as an opportunity to explore this as a time capsule […]
At this point, it is a cliche to say that I am unsurprised by the actions and ideology of J.K. Rowling when it comes to trans individuals and their identities. I have lost much of my hope regarding whether or not she will come to see us as we see ourselves, and not as the grotesque caricatures that she writes about in her novels.
We’ve all seen the memes: 2020 is canceled, person throws garbage labeled 2020 in a dumpster, etc. So much about 2020 has been so strange, the wildfires, the pandemic, the fact that it took so many people this long to realize what life is like for those of us who are Black and the fact […]
A year and some months ago, in March 2019, my worldview was entirely different, both in its scope and in its perception of reality. I was taking a critical race theory class at the time, and I was quite frankly frustrated by it, partly because of the material (which was at times triggering) and partly […]
In many ways, Harry Potter taught me how to be. And yet, it wasn’t really the books that taught me that, was it? Because the thing is, so much of what I learned from Harry Potter, I also learned from outside Harry Potter. So many of the lessons I learned from the series were not quite things I learned from the books directly, but because I took my love of the books, and sought out others like myself.
“Values don’t matter unless they describe behaviors and people are held accountable for them.” @PaulSchmitz1 Those words have been echoing in my brain ever since I attended the AADO-CASE Conference on Diverse Philanthropy and Leadership last week. What do I value? Where do I spend my time? Who do I spend my time with? Thinking […]
I’ve always been kind of obsessed with the word “normal.” And these days it’s coming up much more frequently, because people are talking about how the normal has disappeared. In the wake of COVID-19, what many people once considered “normal” is now gone. And it’s creating panic. People are hoarding toilet paper. Grocery store shelves […]
There is a common and cliched saying, which goes something along the lines of “it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.” There have been multiple riffs on this, and I don’t mean to reinvent the wheel here, but I am interested in using a few different lenses that I’ve come across lately to […]
I had 18 resolutions for 2018 and 19 resolutions for 2019, so can you really tell me that you weren’t expecting this? That said, this is the year I’m capping it, because coming up with 20 resolutions was actually pretty difficult. But here they are: Read 120 books (average 10 books per month) Improve my […]
Part I: Personal Reflection 2019 came with so many changes in my life it makes me dizzy just to think about them. Most of these changes aren’t really things I want to talk about with the internet, since they pertain to my personal and private life, and not all of the stories are only mine […]
Fanfiction was my solace, and my rescue, and it showed me that everything was OK. It gave me happy endings, as well as one’s that weren’t so happy, and a way to explore the darkest parts of myself with no consequence. In fanfiction I found a friend and a partner in myself and in my writing, as there were no stakes, no pressure, and yet plenty of reward. Escapism, but also family, and creation.
Moving is exhausting. Both mentally and physically. I read somewhere once that moving is in the top five most stressful things that a person can experience in their life. Over the course of the past month and a half, as we have been settling into the apartment I took a hiatus from writing on this […]
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately, one book after the other, each word churning in my head rapidly after the one before it. Rarely do I read a book all the way through before I have the rabid need to switch to the next, not because I find the subject matter of one […]