When I originally started this blog, I had no idea what to write, but I knew I needed to write something. My first posts were basic updates on my life, 3-5 simple little thoughts, and reflections. At first, they were just meant to help me get started, fill the page, and get used to hitting publish. But over time, those little updates, even if no one was reading them, became a deep-rooted source of self-awareness and fun. I reflected like this every week for most of 2019 and through the first months of 2020 until the pandemic. Now, with life moving forward, if not out, I wanted to return to that practice again and take the time to post openly here again. Feel free to keep up with my life here as well. Hopefully, you find some interest in my ramblings.

What I’m Confronting: An Outspoken Balance

For most of my life, I’ve remained incredibly tight-lipped about my political and social stances. I have the privilege to go through life without fear of policy or activism affecting my life in any way other than conceptually. And, like many in my position, I chose to remain quiet about them for a long time. It was not because I thought my views were wrong or even opposed to my peers, but because my privilege allowed my silence and breaking that exposed me and that privilege. I saw my ability to remain quiet, draw no attention as an asset, rather than the vice it more often is.

And yet, sitting alone in my apartment, watching the tremors of the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the rising tide of insurrection through my place of quiet, the walls started to crumble. I started breaking out into internet fights with the delusions of the conservatives on my page. I doomscrolled through Twitter and scoffed with every passing post. Like a pendulum released, I swung, hard and fast, to the other extreme. Though I was now open to the world about my thoughts, supporting those I cared about, I had no control, no nuance. Now my privilege gave way to a weaponized ego. Trodding wherever I could without consideration. It’s taken time, but I’ve started to find balance. My thoughts and feelings have become more nuanced. I’ve come to resent the years I spent in silence. It’s not perfect, but I am learning when and what to speak up about and when to let others step forward. I come to understand that there is no neutrality in the issues that really matter.

What I’m Reading: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

I’m not typically one for popular fiction, but Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library has me taken aback. The story centers on the approaching-middle-aged Nora, who has squandered every opportunity given to her out of “life-fright.” On the verge of her death, she finds herself in the titular Midnight Library, where every possible path of her life exists as a book she may experience by cracking the spine. Her life as a rockstar, an Olympic medalist, even a glaciologist is all there for her to experience, if only she had done things differently. Reading that description, it’s hard not to think the book is riddled with tropes. And yet, to my surprise, the book subverts them every time. Halfway through, and I have no idea where the story is headed. I have to admit, it has me hooked. Perhaps I ought to give more new fiction a chance.

P.S. I tend to read a lot, and not every book makes it into these weekly recommendations. If you are interested in my other reads and rec’s sign up for my newsletter, where I send out a monthly reading roundup.

A Quote I’m Stuck On:

“People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being. Maybe that’s why they give up so early, too.”

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho