A week ago Almost a month ago, I was sitting in a hotel conference room in Lisbon, filled with peers I deeply admire and respect and have the best time working alongside. The night prior, I’d lamented the fact we lost a coworker recently, shrinking the number of us who were non-white, non-male, and leading teams in our division (a number that was already small to start with). Sitting in that conference room, I recognized, as I usually do in most rooms, how visible parts of my identity are:...
8 months ago • 2 min read
Tomorrow is the first day of my sabbatical. Y’all. Y’ALL. That is three months of paid time off. Earlier this afternoon I powered down my work laptop, stashed it in the closet in a random drawer, and tore down my whole office desk setup. Out of sight, out of mind. It feels so weird. So empty! Put the monitor and laptop stand and keyboard under the desk. No idea what’ll go here but I’m excited for the extra (temporary) counter space. The sabbatical is something I became eligible for after I...
about 1 year ago • 3 min read
I’m still trying to figure out the shape of my grief. Does it have a shape? A box, maybe, or a suitcase. Something made to carry around with you. Or it could be like a lake; a hazily-bordered body. Doesn’t easily show its depth. At the whims of whatever’s thrown into it. To me, at least in this moment, it looks like something more mundane. The way it’s woven itself so closely to the fabric of the everyday, so I don’t notice until it’s poking at me: a snapped thread, skipped stitches. That’s...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read
Part of this newsletter is dedicated to Big Emotion, and I experience that a lot through music. I love everything from the drama of swelling orchestral accompaniment, to a stripped-bare melody someone plucks out on a lone guitar. It makes me clutch my chest? My face scrunches up? If you’re anywhere within my very general vicinity, you’re gonna hear about it. Upon hearing this for the first time as I listened through the album, I choked out some approximation of a mourning wail, and threw a...
over 1 year ago • 1 min read
The only body lotion I buy religiously, when it goes on sale at the drugstore, is Curel. It has to be the unscented one with the green packaging. No-nonsense. Does a great job. Truly an icon for a dry-skinned babe like me. Before I turned thirty, I was one hundred percent That Guy™️ who used body lotion on my face, because I was a heathen (by many passionate accounts). To be fair, I never really had any visible pores or wrinkles, and as far as I could tell, the Curel was doing its job to keep...
over 1 year ago • 2 min read
When I was a kid, I could never imagine myself past the age of twenty-five. No idea why that was the cut-off, really. I mean, it’s a nice enough number; feels very official, somehow. A milestone, more than eighteen, nineteen, or twenty-one ever did. The image in my head was always pretty vague, too. I didn’t know much about what I wanted out of adulthood, at that age, save for what was mainstream to want: maybe a house, maybe a husband, maybe kids. No thoughts for what I would actually be...
over 1 year ago • 3 min read
Ghosts. Are. Scary. Something able to appear out of thin air, when you’re possibly not expecting it? Something that indicates you could get stuck, maybe miserable and full of rage, even after the trauma of death? Hell no. So much no. Would really rather not, thanks. All that being said, it feels a bit ridiculous to tell you, then, that I love ghost stories. (Why are the things we love the things that hurt us the most??? lol) I think ghosts, or something like them, are real. But - I also think...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read
We used to joke I had a black thumb. I don’t know that I ever actually killed anything, but over time the aversion from not wanting to kill anything became so ingrained that I just… started to believe it. When my parents left on vacation in the summers, we were supposed to go out at dusk every day to water the roses and hydrangeas; the grass and shrubs and wild strawberries; the vibrant clusters of lily of the valley. I’d remember to do this every few days instead, but half the time it was...
over 1 year ago • 4 min read