My superhero dad turns another year older today. He’s in China on a long business trip. This year, for your birthday, we’ve decided to take you away from your family for three weeks at a time for the rest of the year! Happy birthday. Bitterness on his behalf aside, he is an adventurer at heart […]
When I graduated college in 2010 I came home and had no plan. It was terrifying and exciting to suddenly be so profoundly unsure of what came next. I found myself disconnected from everyone and really unsure of what it was that even wanted to do anyway. And so, I started a blog. Somewhere around […]
January is the accepted time to talk beginnings and fresh starts. In January we talk about the new year and the big plans we make as a New Year’s Resolution obsessed culture. Even people who don’t participate tend to make noise about their non-participation. But spring is that too, and all the more so for […]
I had this big plan to blog more often this year. This blog, specifically. I was going to give myself schedules. Right now, I should be posting Monday, Wednesday, Friday. When I have a lot to say, it’s easy. I draft the posts, fine-tune them, and they publish at 9am on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. […]
A couple days after blogging about getting reacclimated to the sounds (or lack thereof) of falling asleep here in Missouri I received an ARC copy of The Weight of Blood by Laura McHugh. This is book loosely based on an event from a town that is a not insignificant part of my mental landscape. I […]
Academic life has a lot of hard endings and beginnings. Finite markers. Here is where one thing ends and another begins. There’s something gratifying in that because you are given a definitive point at which to pause and process. “You have completed the thing,” says life. “Full stop. The thing is done and now you […]
A few nights ago I heard sirens and I was struck by the strangeness of it. Mostly I was struck by the strangeness of it being strange. We live far away from anything. It’s a tiny city to begin with and we don’t even live within the boundaries of that city. It’s just shy of […]
In the summer of 2012 I got to spend a few weeks in Morocco as part of my graduate program. I wrote some posts about that. I made a short video on an NGO project with two of my classmates and attended a great deal of the Fes Festival of World Sacred Music. While I […]
I’m still vomiting feelings all over your internet, but I get to do that because I have a blog. That’s one of the reasons I have blogs. I also have comment sections, which allow people to respond. I do not, however, have to allow everyone to respond or allow all manner of response. This year […]
If you are hurting, I would like you to be my valentine. Please be my valentine, friend or stranger. If you are hurting, I choose you. I know it’s a Hallmark holiday and we don’t need no damn valentines and we should all profess our love on all the days. Fine. Be my 365 Valentine. […]