Inspiration

  • Travel Resolutions and Other Big Things

    It is my first post of 2017! Hello, new year! Hello, resolutions that will likely peter out by February! Please, stay awhile! (Especially you flaky resolutions. I see you loitering by the door). This year is different in that I, like I’m sure many people have, grown up a great deal. I am not setting…

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  • Florida, Nostalgia, and Ice Cream

    “That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.” -Emily Dickinson This is my eighteenth time visiting Florida. Every winter break has been spent in eighty degree weather, in palm trees coiled with decorative lights and hours soaking in chlorine. Every winter break, I eat at the same restaurants, say hello to the…

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  • Passion and the Things that Break Your Heart

    “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway. I am offended by the blankness of the page before me. If this page had eyes, they would be watching me expectantly, waiting for my next move, taunting me with the blink, blink, blink of the cursor, hungry for…

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  • A Day in Montreal

    I awoke last Saturday morning to winter in Montreal. It was not the biting sort of winter Chicago usually falls victim to, not the kind that says “boo” on one decisive day in late November when the day prior had been a balmy and unostentatious 65 degrees. No, this was winter with poise. But the trees, still dripping…

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  • The In-Between Times and What Comes After

    The other day I heard myself say the following words aloud: “I feel like my life hasn’t really started yet.” I might have been walking beneath the gradually changing leaves or driving with my hands clutched tightly on the steering wheel. I might have been staring into space, mind preoccupied with future things, faraway things, abstract…

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  • The Ambiguity of Pain Made (Slightly) Clearer

    “Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.” -Rumi. When we were little, pain was as simple as a skinned knee or a vaccination at the annual doctor’s check-up. Pain was occasionally stomping our feet because we weren’t allowed to have any more candy. It was having to share our coloring books or our dollhouses, or…

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  • Why You Should Hug Your Best Friend Right Now

    Yesterday, my oldest friend passed away. She did not walk on two legs, nor did she speak. She didn’t have to. She had four paws, a perpetually wet nose, and a big heart. She was more than a four year old could ever ask for. The day we brought Emmy home, she had her shaggy black…

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  • Songs for Thoughts and Feels

    I am a folk and indie music enthusiast. If you do not have an ounce of appreciation for songs that contain thought-provoking lyrics, soul-stroking acoustic arrangements, or chillingly smooth voices that may or may not remind you of butter, you might as well stop reading right now. But I think I can bring you over to my…

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  • The Great Intangible Thing that Makes Our Lives Glow

    “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.” -Mother Theresa. One of the most dangerous fallacies we often give credence to is that at some point our hearts reach a maximum capacity. We place a ceiling on the amount of love we are permitted to spread, and once we hit it, we resign ourselves…

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  • Time, Change, and Why We’re Never Standing Still

    Standing at the threshold of major change, I find myself perpetually engulfed in the heart-rending current of nostalgia. Why is it that forward motion often compels us to turn around and check the dust flying up in our wake? If there is one granule of wisdom I wish to share with those still floundering in the paradoxical swiftness and sluggishness that…

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