Staycationing This Year? Here’s Five Ideas to Make it Feel Like a Vacation
For us, this past spring brought cancellation after cancellation. Small trips Tony and I were looking forward to fell quickly in succession up against shelter in place orders. And all the unknown factors surrounding COVID, has definitely kept us from planning any faraway trips for this summer. So other than trying to squeeze in a possible trip to see family, it looks like we may be staycationing this year. Anyone else? Only, we also don’t want to spend the entire time doing things around the house or catching up on our to-do lists. The point of a vacation is to [...]
Summer Reading Week 2020, Part 2: Five Fantastic Fiction Books
Reading some books is like eating chips and salsa. In the same way you can’t stop taking another chip and another chip, you can’t stop flipping the pages. But when you’re through you don’t always feel completely satisfied. Sure it was fun, delicious even. Only something inside you, still feels a little hollow. Reading some books is like eating chips and salsa. In the same way you can’t stop taking another chip and another chip, you can’t stop flipping the pages. This is how I feel about a lot of beach reads. They are fantastic escapes for a few hours [...]
Summer Reading Week 2020, Part 1: 9 Great Nonfiction Books!
One of the most surprising side-effects of social distancing, for me, was not feeling compelled—or at times even able—to read. As someone who can, in some seasons, put away more than one book a week, you’d think I’d have been excited for all this extra time to bury my nose in some printed pages. Only often, I couldn’t read. My brain felt overwhelmed by all the information we were getting on a daily basis. My heart was heavy for all those who were suffering, from all we were collectively losing, and—I was missing time with my dad. For all these [...]
To Fight Racism, We Need to Better Understand Racism (A Few Resources to Help)
If your friend called you in the middle of the night, upset, what would you do? Before getting up and driving over to their home, before making a plan on how best to help them— You’d listen, right? You’d ask them to take a deep breath, then to tell you what was wrong. You wouldn’t come over and fix the problem—because you don’t even know what the problem is yet. You wouldn’t tell them to call you in the morning; you care too much about them. You would listen. On Monday, I shared where I am at on my journey [...]
On Learning How to Fight Racism as a White Person
Recently someone on twitter asked writers what is one thing they are really good at that their readers may not know. In the moment, I couldn’t think of anything, so I kept scrolling. But later I realized, because of all the words I share, you may not know—I am a really good listener. Listening, for me is like a superpower. Not that I always do it perfectly. But for some reason, there is something about me that makes people feel comfortable sharing information about their lives with me. Especially, if they don’t know me at all. The first time I [...]
Creativity—Why even Try?
This post was originally slated for March, but then the Pandemic hit. Today, as we begin to open our world back up, it feels like a good time to revisit the topic of Creativity. As now, more than ever, we may need to be creative. A few years ago, Tony and I went to our first Michelin Star restaurant—by accident. We were on our dream trip to Tuscany, and we were late getting back into the town where we were staying. Online, I’d found three possible places for us to eat, but when we went to the first two, there were [...]
