Somedays it seems like I am so disconnected from the world without Facebook or solid internet access. My feelings on that are quite ambivalent. It’s freeing but my global reach seems to be much harder to grasp, as if I’m suddenly without nerve endings in my skin: I know the outside world exists (politics, global economics, etc.), and I see it pop up from time to time, but if I get too caught up in my own tasks, I lose sense of what’s really out there. Even this blog seems to feel as ...

For those who don't know, when I was seven years old, I spent about three weeks in a children’s hospital after a gun accident incapacitated me. Seventeen years later, the hospital stay itself is but a distant memory—except one of the parts that I distinctly remember from that time is watching the Disney Pixar movie “A Bug’s Life” nearly every single day. The once-traumatizing “flashbulb memory” of the accident is psychologically associated with that movie. Recently, I came to...

The last 10 days have been pretty crazy. I started off 2017 by driving from Wisconsin (thanks for letting me couchsurf again Meredith and Dan!!!! <3 ) to South Carolina to pick up Paige and Isaac from South Carolina. I went from -20 degree weather to 75 degree weather in a matter of 24 hours. The drive to SC was brutal; being trapped in a metal box without being able to move around or look away from the road for 15 solid hours felt like a form of torture. Granted, I was able to listen to...