I am still writing. I have moved from Blogspot and Medium to Substack like everyone else but it feels like I am sending my writing off into a black hole so I am posting here in case I can snag a reader or two.

I finished an essay about a month ago titled "What if We All Worked Less?" I started the essay on maternity leave, when I had a week to myself before my daughter was born. In that week, I read two books in one week (!) and wrote a draft of this essay, as I was trying to work through what was to come and exactly how I was going to manage being both a mom and working full time. i.e. How could I do it all?

I kept writing and tweaking the essay after I became a parent, as I was living my question, juggling parenting and working full time. It took writing the essay to find an answer to my conundrum that seems obvious and easy enough though in our society feels impossible to find: part time work! Wouldn't it be nice if I could go down to part time work and afford a mortgage payment with my partner? We will see. 

After publishing the essay, I came across a quote from David Cain posted on Substack that the 40+ hour, five day work week is too much for all us. He sums it up, or reiterates what I was trying to get at with my essay, and I guess I will leave with that here: 

"The eight hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people do in eight hours... but because it makes for a such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work."

Here's to hoping I can find the time for some of my ambition outside of my work - for reading and maybe even writing, even if that is just an essay a year.

Just wanted to sign on to say hello, post photos of a magical hike I took through Millcreek Canyon last week, and make a list of favorites of the year, which I can't help but do.

Not surprisingly, most of the writing that stuck with me this year was activism-related. This Rebecca Traister piece kept replaying in my mind all year. "Seek the organizing that is already underway," she wrote, among other illuminating advice. 

Then there was Rebecca Solnit's piece "When the Hero is the Problem" that was incredibly refreshing in its messaging. We don't need heroes, she theorized. We need community work, community efforts, community action! I also loved Naomi Klien's "How I Get it Done" interview. Her bluntness about how hard and urgently she works on environmental issues was comforting, as I feel a similar urgency / lack of balance this year. 

In terms of beautiful things that crossed my paths, I stumbled on Nikala Marie Peters' photography this year and couldn't stop scrolling through her photographs that so beautifully portray domestic life and what looks to me like a midwest childhood.

FKA Twigs "Cellophane" was the most captivating thing I heard all year. Her music video and live performance of the song left me speechless.

Alex G's House of Sugar and Angel Olsen's All Mirrors were so dreamy that I couldn't help but play them on repeat.

Jenny Odell's interview on the Longform podcast was delightful.

This Modern Love piece "Taking Marriage One Year at a Time" absolutely destroyed me in how much it spoke to me as I made the difficult / incredibly healthy decision to postpone my wedding this year. 

Of course, I woke up most days this year and read my way through books, as I do most years. 

Braiding Sweetgrass was the shining gem of everything I read and I wish it were required reading. Imagine if our schools taught a book that raised the question: "What would it be like to be raised on gratitude, to speak to the natural world as a democracy of species, to raise a pledge of interdependence?" 

Like most people, A Little Life consumed me and left me desperately sad, but mostly in a way I appreciated. The Golden State also stuck out as one of the best books I read this year. The whole novel flowed so naturally and in some magical way, seemed to leap from the page.

In terms of favorite things I watched, I can't emphasize enough how much I loved America to Me and Minding the Gap. Such important pieces of art / documentation made so close to home. Parasite and Shoplifters were also mesmerizing.

And then of course, there was Fleabag: Season Two. To me, that show was such a quiet, profound feat. I laughed a lot but I mostly sat in awe of the imperfect love that it was trying to display and so incredibly did. 

Some other things of note that made my year: finding a healthier relationship with Instagram and Twitter (haven't deleted them entirely but logged off a lot more), going to regular therapy sessions, discovering Weleda's Skin Food, fitting in a lot of twenty-minute yoga sessions at home with Adriene, getting a little bit better at learning how to live without a plan.

All I can say is, it was a year. Now on to the next decade (!).

A few months ago, I had a work conference to go to early in the morning and so I rushed to the hotel, grabbed a plate of the hotel breakfast, and sat down to listen to the opening speaker. He was an Ironman athlete who had completed the extreme triathlon more times than I can count. Granted it was 7:30 in the morning and I was just beginning to wake up but I looked at him the whole time, deadpan. I ate my eggs, I'm sorry to say, rolling my eyes.

I know I shouldn't be so harsh — and I don't know why it irks me so much — but mainly I was just thinking about how refreshing it would be to sit down and listen to a motivational speech from someone more modest in their ambitions, perhaps steady or quiet or balanced. Since then I've watched Free Solo and The Dawn Wall and Homecoming and countless other documentaries of people achieving the unachievable and I walk away from so many of them thinking, can you ever achieve your dreams and still have healthy relationships with people you love and get eight hours a sleep a night? (Eh, probably not.)

To be fair, I loved the aforementioned movies and think people should pursue absolutely anything they want within reason I suppose but at that conference, I kept thinking that I wanted nothing more than a co-worker of mine to go up on stage and give a motivational speech. He lives in the woods of the Pacific Northwest and does his job just fine and looks completely inconspicuous but also like maybe he really has life figured out. I can't be sure but I feel like his speech would go something like, Hey, don't work yourself to death. 

That being said, I probably could benefit from the stories of accomplished athletes more than most. I told myself that I would be done with a second draft of my novel before I left for a two-week vacation to the Southwest last month and I failed to meet that self-imposed deadline. It's been six years since I started the first chapter of this novel and I'm still chipping away at it. My deadlines for the book are usually arbitrary and unrealistic considering the other things I have going on in my life (and the fact that I don't focus solely on this novel) so it's laughable that I didn't think it was going to take 6+ years. But still, that number: 6+ years. It's longer than I thought. 

In the end, the important thing is to see this thing through, which I will do, but I should knuckle down. I should just get this thing done but as someone with a slower, more "everything-in-moderation" demeanor, I can't help but be drawn to hard work and balance. A blessing, I suppose, but also a curse.

I am a writer, not an athlete, but in light of this post, it's interesting to note that I have recently moved to Salt Lake City, a city of outdoor enthusiasts, and have been dabbling in things I never thought I would. By my nature, I am drawn to the slow, steady activities of hiking and backpacking but I have also have been trying my hand at more extreme endeavors due, a bit, to my partner. Ever since the move, the riskier, more intense, more testosterone-prone activities of climbing and mountain biking and skiing have been pushing me past my limits, for better or worse.

Just yesterday, I was walking my mountain bike up a trail, huffing and grumbling, and thinking the thing I always think when I'm struggling: When is it good to push yourself? When is it good to just accept who you are? It seems a question there is no real answer to. It seems the question I am getting at.

Basically all of this rambling and lamenting to say, if I had my way, I think I would have invited a poet to be the opening speaker of the sales conference (can you imagine?) because you know what has been invigorating me lately? The words of Mary Oliver and Nikki Giovanni and Bernadette Mayer. The poetry of Tony Hoagland and essays of Robin Wall Kimmerer.

"I really don't think anybody ever listens to poets so it doesn't matter what you say," Nikki Giovanni said laughing in her interview with WNYC, and then added: "If they did, it'd be a whole different world." I can't help but agree, though I'm biased. 

I do hate posing questions and just leaving them there so I will end with this: I have learned a lot in the past year. I have learned, for example, that you can get over your fear of, and even enjoy, hanging from a forty-foot wall if you do it enough. I have learned that you can write a novel slowly and still, hopefully, get it done. 

Pictured above: shots from a recent two-week long adventure through the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Santa Fe and Moab

I'm back on here because another year has started and I love using the new year as an excuse to take stock of the art that sustained me the year prior. Things that I think deserve sharing, acknowledging, taking time with. Not everything on this list came out last year, just crossed my path in 2018, but here it goes...

Of the longer form pieces on the internet I read last year, the ones that I particularly loved include:

Courtney E. Martin's series on On Being regarding the benefits of sending your children to "underperforming" schools (the discussion continued here, here, and here).  Also loved her piece in Bright Magazine on the reality of why social change is so hard (wonderfully titled "Shooting for the Moon, Missing the Point").



Other great writing on the internet I stumbled on: Anand Giridharadas critical look at philanthropy in "Beware of Rich People Who Say They Want to Change the World" and "Democracy is not a Supermarket." Molly Fisher's piece on the #MeToo movement in "Maybe Men Will be Scared for a While."  And it doesn't sound uplifting but Mari Andrew's short essay "Optimism is Exhausting" was actually really lovely.

In terms of podcasts, I probably should have started with this but if nothing else, I wish everyone would listen to Alain de Botton's On Being interview, "The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships". I've listened to it twice and will probably give it another play soon. Also This American Life's "LaDonna" episode stopped me in my tracks.



Favorite books I read this year have to be: 

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera
Prisoner of Zion by Scott Carrier



Albums I listened to on repeat include (linking to my favorite songs in case you want to take a listen):

Saba's Care for Me
Rosalia's El Mal Querer
Marissa Nadler's Self-Titled Album



And then I probably watched too much TV this year but there was so much that was good, mainly: 

High Maintenance: Season 2
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette
The Letdown
Ugly Delicious
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
and of course, Queer Eye 

My heart is filled thinking back on all of this genius. 



Finally I have to mention that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave me so much joy in 2018. Her outspokenness, her strength/joy in the midst of countless trolling, her refusal to give into imposter syndrome, her candidness breaking down Washington politics, her hoop earrings — it's unprecedented. I know she must not feel confident all the time but the fact that she refuses to let people take her power away inspires me every day.

So there you go, 2018 wasn't all that bad (though it was also horrifically bad). Thankfully, there were some gems that helped get me through / reminded me that change is being made.

Though of course, as I'm reminded every day as I check the news, there's always more work to do. 

So I finished another essay recently. As is the case with most of my writing, it doesn't get at exactly everything I wanted to say but alas, here it is. (It's also on my Medium page, which you can see here. I half-heartedly pitched it to a few places but heard nothing so to the Medium page it goes!). I've been following the zero waste trend for a few years and finally got around to organizing some of my thoughts about it below. I hope you enjoy ‒ especially all of my zero waste friends, who may find it critical but hopefully it comes out as more thoughtful? Here's to hoping, and to calling this one done. As always, comments and thoughts encouraged!

The Allure of Zero Waste

It seems reasonable to say that we have a problem with plastic.

I’m often shocked at the amount of packaging — plastic or not — that I use every day, and the effect of this is often anxiety-inducing. All of the waste amassing in our oceans and landfills and alongside our sidewalks deeply disturbs me, mainly because I like things to be neat and clean but also because I know that there is little hope of it going away anytime soon. Still, the 4 million tons of trash we produce a day is a problem that I never knew what to do about until I stumbled on the term “zero waste,” a new lifestyle trend that advocates for living without consuming any single-use plastics or trash at all.

I first learned about the idea over ten years ago when Colin Beavan, a New Yorker, attempted to live the most sustainably a human possibly can. With his blog “No Impact Man,” Beavon lived a carbon-free lifestyle for a year, forgoing electricity, gas-powered transportation and packaged food to see if it were possible to live without any environmental impact. Beavon’s project stuck with me, though I never went through with it myself, and years later, I was reminded of it again as the zero waste movement began cropping up on the internet with more and more fervor.

Like Beavon’s “No Impact Man” project, zero wasters attempt to do what, to many, seems unachievable: they live without producing any trash. Rather than take a 13 gallon trash bag out to the curb every week (as I do), zero wasters collect their trash in a small mason jar, filling it up over the year, if that. Subscribing to a zero waste lifestyle intrigued me from the beginning. The purity, sanctimony, perfection of it all drew me in, especially since I try to live an environmentally responsible life and often, overwhelmingly fail.

After reading through zero waste blogs incessantly, I began taking on some easy zero waste swaps myself: cotton cloths instead of paper towels, reusable bags at the grocery instead of plastic ones, bulk tea instead of the packaged variety. I kept telling myself that I’d go full zero waste for a month but then each week crept in, never the right time for the experiment.

Initially I thought that I would start on a Sunday at my neighborhood’s farmers market but I often woke up hungover and in need of a Gatorade, or I had brunch plans with a friend on the one day the market was open and couldn’t make it to buy local fruits, veggies and cheese unpackaged before it closed. Reality set in that going zero waste was really hard, and so I kept putting it off.

The most daunting aspect of zero waste for me was figuring out what to do about groceries. In order to avoid anything wrapped in plastic, zero waste calls for buying unpackaged fruits and vegetables, and then grains, pasta, legumes and snacks from bulk bins (using your own reusable bag for filling of course). This means making all of your food from scratch, which, for a mediocre cook like myself, sounds almost impossible.

While there’s a rhythm one develops when they do more of their own cooking, it’s hard for me to fathom how I can make three meals a day from unpackaged ingredients while also working, maintaining friendships, seeing family, exercising, going on a weekend trip, taking up a hobby or dealing with an illness. I know it can be done. The internet assures me it can be done. But while I subscribe to the tenets and the idea of zero waste, I just can’t see how one makes food without plastic wrap working its way in.

Take for example, a veggie burger and chips for dinner. The zero waste way of making a veggie burger and chips means setting aside a few hours one night to make the burgers from beans, onions, peppers, spices and an egg, and then frying one’s own potato chips. Perhaps this is doable but then what happens when I want to add ketchup and mustard? Do I grab my mustard seeds and start grinding? Also, do I have to start the whole process the day before, soaking my own beans and cooking them on the stove in order to avoid an aluminum can? Would every meal be a two day affair?

This is not impossible. Many people around the world make their meals from scratch but they are usually a) women in rural areas with no other choice or b) full time homemakers with someone else’s salary supporting them. As writer Taffy Broddeser-Akner’s mother says to her in a Bon Appetit essay, “You can either cook or work.” I work, which means I buy my grapefruit juice and almond milk in plastic and cardboard containers thank you very much.

In a way though, I am spoiled, as we all are. So much of what we buy comes in some form of packaging, and the zero waste movement is undeniably a response to this modern fact of life. I don’t go a day without consuming something (if I include the most vital act of feeding myself) and what comes along with consumption is its nasty byproduct: single use packaging. So the question is: how then do I stay sane and live my life, avoiding a pesky product I see everywhere I look?

Most zero wasters would say that the end goal of zero waste is not necessarily to arrive at a place where you produce no trash but rather, to rethink habits and reduce where you can. As Celia Ristow of the blog Litterless says, “Zero waste means progress, not perfection.” That is a sentiment I can get behind. I can rethink what I buy. I can forgo plastic in some areas. And yet, the world doesn’t really know what to do with the moderate so there tends to be a novelty in the end goal of zero.

This is bad for me, considering that I have the opposite of an addictive personality. I’m much too indifferent to go to extremes, too curious to not want to try everything. And so, while I have taken on some easy zero waste swaps, I mostly scroll through zero waste feeds on Instagram and wonder how anyone gets to that end goal. Do they have hobbies? Do they ever crave a frozen pizza? In my more cynical moments, I find myself rolling my eyes, believing it a scam (no secondhand garment has ever fit me that good, I think, staring at the young woman in her “thrift store” jeans). But of course, I am not actually opposed to the trend, just wish that social media acknowledged its difficulties within the context of real life.

Part of my objection to zero waste is laziness, sure, but also part of it is gendered. The work of making one’s life zero waste means more time spent in the kitchen, doing women’s work and part of me fears that while women slave away to curb our reliance on plastic and put as little dent in our landfill as possible, men won’t offer to help us in this fight. In addition, there’s the possibility that while women stay at home in the kitchen, men will spend their time working, rising to positions of power, perhaps making decisions of graver environmental consequence.

Of zero waste bloggers, the majority are young millennial women or stay at home mothers, a trend which makes me uneasy. I went to a zero waste meet up once and walked in to find a table full of women. A table that soon began lamenting over how to get their boyfriends or husbands on board with these new, more tedious habits. Most women are still fighting for society to see household chores as a task of both male and female head of households, and so what will happen when we add to this task list?

And what’s more, there may be deep-rooted patriarchal notions at work behind the female buy-in of this trend. Underneath it all, I wonder if there is an uneasiness in women to take up space (either in a room or via trash in a landfill) or a tendency to sacrifice so others don’t have to. I wonder if women feel they have more power in their homes than their workplace or senator’s office. Of course, perhaps it is none of these things. Perhaps it’s just an effect of its styling; marketed toward women, it leaves men hesitant to pick it up.

Regardless, I do feel there would be some resentment if I spent my nights prepping to make zero waste lunches and dinners and condiments and cleaning products while my boyfriend buys his Chipotle and goes off to rock climb every other day, as he does. While I’m busy being zero waste, will he be busy training? What then if I want to climb alongside him too?



The nuances of modern day feminism can be confusing, and ultimately a woman’s choice of how she wants to work toward change is her own. Colin Beavon, aka “No Impact Man,” ran into similar issues that many homemakers face in his “No Impact Man” documentary, saying to his wife at one point, “You only eat local food but who provides it, who cooks it, who gets up in the morning and makes you breakfast every day, does your lunch, does your dinner then generally washes the dishes when it’s all done?” Ultimately both his concerns and his wife’s as a working mother are valid. It brings up the most important theme that zero waste brings to bear, one I think that confounds us all: what are we willing to do, what are we willing to sacrifice so that we can preserve our planet?

The work of change is hard, as zero waste reminds us. Working toward social good involves difficult things like running for office, organizing over the long term, putting our kids in public schools, adopting or fostering, using our time to help a friend or a family member or stranger overcome addiction, depression, what have you. And when it comes to the environment, I think if we’re honest with ourselves, it involves similar sacrifice. It means reducing our trash, living in smaller spaces, taking public transportation, living closer to the things we need, consuming less, flying less, eating less meat.

That being said, I am far from perfect. I fly 3–4 times a year, a number I morally can’t feel right about even if I buy carbon offsets at the end of the year. And jealousy pervades me often. Daily I see clothes I would like to have; I see friends and strangers traveling places I would like to go; I think about living someplace with a yard. Still, I know that I could be doing more. I can’t help but think of my Grandpa, who grew up during the depression and still wears slippers from thirty years ago, the hole in the big toe patched up and worn away a thousand times over. Living in a world where temperatures rise and natural disasters intensify, I question what I really ask of myself (honestly, not much).

It is perhaps one of the most unpopular of opinions, that change will come with a cost to ourselves but it is one I wish we would all start to embrace. As of right now, I am not zero waste but I am making zero waste changes, trying to lessen my environmental impact. I’ve begun to feel the pang of sacrifice — either through the time that I spend preparing my own food or the money I donate or the bus trip I take instead of getting into my car — as a token, an acknowledgement that I’m doing the hard work. And when it hurts, I reach out to others doing the same to find some joy in it all.

Of course, change won’t come from just changing my own habits, as many critics of zero waste will say (an argument that honestly, I find quite banal). If I wait for everyone to become magically selfless and anti-consumerist, the results will be disastrous, but I do think there is hope that when a select group starts adopting new habits, pressure will accumulate for larger, systematic changes. Perhaps one day, plastic will be cast aside and a new, compostable version will come to fruition. Perhaps, a carbon tax will finally take effect. Until then, all I have is the power to reduce my consumption and maximize my political power.

Still, I wrestle with the hypotheticals often; my critiques of and compassion for zero waste. There are certain scenarios I wonder about, like whether it would be better to stay at home and prepare a zero waste, local, vegetarian dinner or just grab whatever I can (in whatever packaging it comes in) because I have to run to my senator’s office after work and protest whatever needs protesting. In this case, the latter may be a worthy exception.

In the end, with gender and privilege and ability wrapped up in all of this, the practicality and effectiveness of a zero waste lifestyle can be difficult to decipher but I think working toward a sustainable future will always be a hard battle, full of a thousand nuances. It’s confusing — but I suppose working toward any worthwhile goal always will be.

I have been in Oaxaca for about two weeks now and must admit, I've become a bad tourist. There is much to see and do and eat here but I've found myself forgetting to explore, mainly writing, reading and wandering off when I need food. To be fair, I came here to write so there should be no guilt there but of course, in my mind guilt and anxiety always find their way in. 

Which leads me, I guess, to a fun story: a few days before I left, I had a scare that my arm was at risk for paralysis. It was my last week of work and I was frantically tying up loose ends, finishing up every project I could while also ignoring the fact that I was about to solo travel down to Mexico in a few days, and all of sudden my arm went numb. Fully numb.

My initial diagnosis was that it was due to the fact that I had cut my wrist while doing dishes a few days earlier. A ceramic plate broke in my hand while I was washing it, and I was worried that the plate had dug in, hitting a vital nerve. But after a trip to the doctor's, I realized that no, it was just too much computer use and most likely, anxiety. In all of my years, I've seen my fair share of ways in which anxiety can manifest itself but that was definitely a new one for me.

Now that I'm here, I'm trying to be anxiety-less. Honestly, it's almost absurd to have any anxiety, being that I'm able to spend a month writing in 80 degree weather. But talking to other writers here, I see it everywhere. The anxiety that you're not writing enough. The anxiety that you're not enjoying yourself enough. 

An interview with Chicago author, poet and sociologist Dr. Eve Ewing stumbled into my inbox this week and summed it up so well. Her motto? "I always forgive myself for what I'm not doing."

"This is really dramatic," Ewing later says, "but when I finished my dissertation at two in the morning in my house in Boston, the very first thing I thought about was Harriet Tubman and slavery. I burst into tears. And I was like, 'I just finished my dissertation, and my ancestors were enslaved and if they tried to read people would punish or murder them! And they were ripped apart!' That was straight to where my mind went. I also was extremely sleep deprived. But you know, when you get that perspective, it's like, 'Uh, yeah, I got it pretty good.'"

So as of right now, I'm channeling Ewing, forgiving myself for whatever I'm not doing, being as easy as I can on myself, acknowledging that I've got it good. I've picked an achievable daily writing goal and every day, I do it. I am here, I am fine, I am writing! It is sometimes torture but it is also sometimes pure bliss.

Okay, one last reading list because I can't help myself...

I enjoyed all of the books I read last year but I think I'm at the point where no matter what, I find most of the writing I pick up if not good, at least interesting. It's like blogger Kara Norman wrote in her recent post:

"The point of making things - songs or books or cookies or blog posts, I would say - is not necessarily to arrive at an aesthetically-pristine product, but for the artist to go through the process of making it and the audience to go through the process of receiving it. It's perhaps why, at this point in my life, I'm not sorry when I read a bad book by a favorite author. It's exciting to watch someone I respect keep trying, whether they sometimes miss the bar or not."

Only once I started creating (actually creating) did I stop looking for, as Kara says, an aesthetically-pristine product. Still of the books I read, there were some that stood out and so here they are, in no particular order:

* The Interior Circuit: a Mexican City Chronicle by Francisco Goldman: Like I said in a previous post, this was my favorite book of the year. It had a perfect mix of the personal, the political and some travel writing as well. Goldman's ode to his favorite city and his complicated love for it knocked it out of the park for me.

* Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks: Brooks chronicles her narrator's every day, the small tragedies, the beauty in the somewhat mundane and all of the little moments that equate to a life. It's a classic and deservedly so.

* Working Hard, Drinking Hard by Adrienne Pine: An anthropological study on Honduras, this might not be everyone's cup of tea but it was incredibly eye-opening for me and also, somewhat applicable to life in the states. It mainly looked at the violence in Honduras and those who are seen as perpetrating the violence and how they are victims themselves of even greater violence by the state. So, you know, a fun read.

* Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri: Not a word missplaced or a story line that falls flat. I'm mesmerized every time I return to her work.

* Homing Instincts by Sarah Menkedick: I've been following Menkedick's journalism for a while but in her first book, she shifts gears a little, writing about motherhood while she adjusts to life stateside in Ohio. There were some really poignant moments in this book that have lingered on after reading. 

* Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: What a masterpiece of a book. It's meticulously researched and such a creative feat, telling the story of seven generations, starting in Ghana and weaving it's way through most of American history. I can't recommend it enough.

* Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown: A bit dated but I think that's why I liked it. The novel also serves as a slice of history, telling the story of a woman navigating life as a lesbian in the eighties.

* Scratch: Writers, Money and the Art of Making a Living by Manjula Martin: This one was right up my alley, as a group of writers discussed how they came to make a semblance of a living off their writing. Each essay describes a different journey, which served as a nice reminder that there is no one way, it seems.

* Woman Hollering Creek by Sandra Cisneros: Like Lahiri, I love everything by Cisneros. The title story was phenomenal (I read it twice because I was so in love).

So alas, there are my reads for 2017. What about you? Any recommendations for 2018?

2017 in a nutshell: I learned how to just get through when it came to work; I woke up before the sun came up and read, surpassing my goal of reading 24 books in one year (!); I wrote very rough drafts of three chapters of my novel; put away some money (though not as much as I would have liked); went to therapy for the first time; traveled, protested, called my senators, donated time, donated money; and planned for a cross country move, making compromises/decisions along the way.

But enough about me, what I really want to share is the writing that I stumbled upon online this year which fed me. If you have the time, I recommend making yourself some ginger tea and reading through word for word. For whatever reason, these essays and articles (and one podcast and one piece of fiction) took hold of me and have been stored away in the back of my mind ever since. Hope you enjoy.

Home is a cup of tea  /  The gap between memory, desire and (ugh) reality  /   The work you do, the person you are  /  How homeownership became the engine of American inequality  /  The ungrateful refugee  /  Let's talk about babies  /  Failing at important things  /  Under the apple tree

Lastly, I can't end this post without mentioning SZA's Ctrl, which I listened to more times than I can count (also fell in love with Juana Molina's Halo, which is great if you ever need background music while working). Played at full volume, it can make you forget about this world we live in; a wonderful escape, if only for a moment.

And with that, onto another year, which means more writing and more art that gets us through and more working to make things better and hopefully in many ways, more of the same. Hoping you're well!

It's been a while since I've written here. In the past months, I put on an event for work to a rough degree of success, I struggled some days for many reasons (personal, professional, political), and I put down the pen for a little bit only to get really excited about coming back here.

Things are looking on the up and up these days, which makes me feel ridiculous that I felt like such a mess just a few months ago, but hey emotions, they are what they are.

In other news, did you know that Las Vegas is incredibly beautiful? I didn't, until I went there this past weekend to chase the sun and go on a climbing trip with my boyfriend for his December birthday. I don't want to speak too soon but after climbing with my boyfriend for the past year and a half, often times begrudgingly, I think I have finally caught the climbing bug. Those rocks above did it; and also maybe the realization that I can do things that I think I can't.

While my writing practice has waned these past few months, I have kept up reading as much as ever, and devoured Francisco Goldman's "The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle" a few weeks back, deciding that it was my favorite book of the year. The book blends travelogue, memoir, and the political into one, which I think is a wonderful, perfect mix. The way he describes the country-wide grief in Mexico and how it simultaneously informs his own personal grief after tragically losing his wife is stunning.

A few years ago, I read Goldman's novel "Say Her Name," which chronicled losing his wife due to a swimming accident off the Pacific coast, and while it was beautiful, it was almost too heartbreaking to ever want to read it again. But as Goldman continues on processing his grief, his latest writing is a bit easier to digest (although the subject matter in "The Interior Circuit" is often just as dark). Some particularly gorgeous passages:

"Concentration and hours to write come more easily to me in the DF than anywhere else, especially when it rains. Time in Mexico City, at least to me, seems somehow slowed down, so that days feel twice as long as they do in New York. A mysterious energy seems to silently thrum from the ground, from restless volcanic earth, but it is also produced, I like to think by the pavement-pounding footsteps of the millions upon millions who labor every day in the city, by their collective breathing and all that mental scheming, life here for most being a steadfastly confronted and often brutal daily challenge, mined with potential treachery, but also in the best cases, opportunity, one sometimes hiding inside the other as in a shell game; also by love, desire, and not so secret sexual secretiveness, the air seems to silently jangle with all that, it's like you breathe it in and feel suddenly enamored or just horny; so much energy that in the late afternoon, I don't even need coffee."

"Though I will never be able to comprehend Aura's death, I do think I live with it now with less resistance, less corrosively, with less inner panic than before. Aura has her place inside me now, I told Nelly, though I hate that phrase and its false impression of gardened cemetery, neatness. What is Aura's place? Death and memory, never neat or orderly, always a forest and an ocean."

I mean, how perfect are those words?

In a few months, I will be off to Mexico myself for a month-long writing residency. I've been planning a trip to Mexico for a while now and am that glad it's working out, though there are many anxieties surrounding it (money for one, and also the fact that I'll be alone every day with my thoughts and a blank page. Fun!). Still, I'm excited for change and a new year and a few posts heading your way with more of my favorite writing of 2017.

Glad to be back.

I spent two weekends away this August; first going to Nordhouse Dunes in Michigan for a backcounty camping trip and then to San Francisco where my friends and I rented a cabin three hours north of the city. Both weekends were spent without much cell service, soaking up the August air in all of its glory before coming back to the heartbreaking news I had missed (first Charlottesville and then Hurricane Harvey). 

I'm still digesting both incidents. Still reflecting and trying not to let the nonstop news cycle keep me from taking some time to process and react.

In other news, I finally signed off my Instagram this month. 

I wanted to write something thoughtful and introspective about the move here but really I don't have much to say except that I'm happier without it. I can guess as to reasons why but I think in the end, it's a fairly simple conclusion. Scrolling through other people's supposed highlight reels is probably not good for the psyche. There are other things to do, other things to focus on ― plus I like getting updates of my friends' lives in real time, preferably at a kitchen table over coffee or tea.

While Michigan and California were lovely, most of my summer looked exactly like the shot above, in my air-conditioningless apartment, where my boyfriend and I spent our days, feeling content and lazy. My summer was full of work anxieties and a few breakdowns but it was also filled with quiet nights, where a 15 minute walk through side streets to get to my neighborhood Walgreens was a highlight in itself.

And so with that, another summer (almost) gone! I don't know how I feel about it quite yet but one of these nights, I'll pour myself a cup of mint tea and embrace the change in the air.