Tracy, California. Tracy, a town of 95,387 souls surrounded by nothing, unless someone considers row after row of almond trees and cow lots something. Maybe, if you squint, the blossoms on the almond trees could be mistaken for cherry trees, could be mistaken for somewhere beautiful. I saw the cherry trees bloom in Japan once; they were lovely. But I've found no pergola-esque structures here. Instead of the experience of a Japanese garden, everything here is tainted with the smell of sugar beet ...

Found some old writing in my dropbox; thought I should save it somewhere. Un-edited, barely read. Maybe I'll come back to it My tickets were booked to India, but my spirit of travel was elsewhere. In twenty four hours, I was catching a cab to O'Hare where I would hop to Delhi, and then to Pune, Maharashtra. Or else, I wasn't. My visa hadn't arrived. I could only assume that the my spirit of adventure and wanderlust must be floating around the postal machine with my passport and visa, possibl...

Limiting Self-Talk and NYR Check-in Well, I started reading something from my inbox (but I already lost track) where the author wrote about their own limiting self-talk. I think it was a finspiration (financial-inspiration) type of person, one of those FI/FIRE/Mr. Money Mustache types, but it got me thinking anyway. It's Jan 10th, 1/3 of the way through my January resolutions. But I've derailed. I guess I had a lot, so I'll give myself a little pass. But it's probably worth a little reflecti...

My love, Yesterday, I was so sad. Or maybe it wasn't that my sadness was a simple state of being for the day. Maybe the simmering sadness in me bubbled to the top and I couldn't hold it in. Or maybe your slowly-building sadness flooded out of your banks, and washed over me. I drowned in sadness. I ended the evening feeling better, but I didn't know why. You say you're not sad. You say you're fine. But you seem to have lost any spark of will to, to what? I see the ways you're falling out of t...

Hello, world. It's 2023. Gosh, the year sounds futuristic. I remember initiatives in college that talked about something happening by 2025. That seemed like lightyears in the future. Now, 2025 lurks just around the corner. I doubt I've written about it here, but I love New Year's Eve. I love all things turn-of-the-new-year. Vast swaths of the gloriously-unwashed heathens (a.k.a. everyone who is wrong about New Year's), believe it to be an overrated holiday. It is not. Here is why: We are en...

I'm trying to learn Spanish and I'm going about it haphazardly. But! I'm practicing vocab. | Estoy tratando de aprender Español en una moda al azar. Pero! Estoy practicando vocabulario. Today, I work on words about food. For each work, I write a sentence with that word. | Hoy, trabajo en palabras sobre la comida. Para cada palabra, escribo una frase con esa palabra. Comida insípida me entristece. | Bland food makes me sad. Cuando como los dulces agrios, pienso en cuando era joven | When I eat...

I just need to force myself to write, to just word vomit onto the page. 1) I think it will make me feel better 2) I think it'll make it easier next time I want to write anything. But the last few times I've sat down to write, just to make myself feel better, to sort through things in my head, my brain goes limp. It's like all the thoughts coursing through it just evaporate. They become thin and hard to pin down, truly too wispy to even put to into words. I've lived in Tracy for almost a month ...

Do Thursday Blues exist in life as we know it? Because I have some. I would very much like them gone. I'm poured onto the lounge chair trying to work and just feeling like I'm in the dumps. It really is a shame, because my morning started out alright. I woke up and had 20 minutes to read my book in bed, which is a treat. I picked up a novel from the Pride shelf at the library and I'm liking it so far; it's about the Midwest, which I understand (as that's where I hail from). But then it turne...

This weekend, I found a treasure while cleaning the house: A nice, half-page sized notebook. It's the type that you get when you start working at a new company, with a hardcover and the tech company logo embossed on the cover, with a little piece of satin ribbon to use as a book mark, with an elastic band to satisfying snap around the notebook when you're finished writing, as if that little elastic can neatly contain all the little thoughts you just jotted down. So, today, a fortuitous Monday M...

You know what? I have been part of this blogging platform for a smidge of time but I'm recommitting. I'm restarting my 100days. Because I need to. I need it. I need to have some kind of outlet for my writing. Weirdly enough, I just simply forgot about writing for a smidge of time. I have no idea how. I've been an avid journaler for... ever. Forever. In fact, I move around a tote of old notebooks of my jr. high and highschool journals because for some reason they feel relevant, important. I have ...

My heart feels yanked, pulled to write. But when I open the laptop, a white screen stares back at me, waiting for something worthwhile to fall out of my fingertips into being on the keyboard. But, I don't have it. I maybe have never had it. For a long, long time, I had hope that I had something worthwhile. I had a dream that I'd do something important. But I've set that dream aside, pushed it to the corner of my desk like a project to be forgotten. Pushed it into the back corner of the closet l...

They say you shouldn't let hate fester, but I hate you. Try as I might, I can't stop it. In meditation, they say you have to feel your feelings. You can't push them out; you must sit with them. I feel waves of hate, waves of despair that I let you so utterly ruin me. I hate you. I will not forgive you. I wish the furies upon you. I wish the fate of Prometheus for you. I wish you to suffer daily. I wish you to know it was me that summoned hellfire and demons to torment you. I want you to hurt, ...

I am making a pledge to you all, here and now. I pledge to submit my novel to one publisher by the end of the month. If I don't, every one of you who reads this can come to SoCal and demand that I take you out for a beer. Every. Single. One of you. It seems like a pretty empty consequence, because I don't believe my readership is that high, but I will pretend like the consequence is actually that I have to pay for thousands of beers. And while I would love to have a chat with most anyone ove...

In the middle of the workday, a good employ happily types away on their keyboard, answering slacks and emails. Tech workers, who tend to be spectacularly spoiled, should be please as pie with their situation. Imagine, a trendy tech worker at their standing desk, whistling tunelessly, merrily doing the tasks of their work, bask in the beauty of zero commute, a fine salary, and other myriad perks. Blech. I have a great job, yet I am disgruntled and bored and grumpy. This job seems all for naught. ...

This is going to be a double-post; it's actually going to go on my for-real blog. But instead I'll just write a draft here, instead of writing a draft on Google Keep, which is the worst process for writing. Actually, I have come round to realize that most of my processes aren't very good. Actually, I've come to feel pretty ineffectual at life recently, and it's hard to label what it is that makes me feel like I've done such a bad job at life lately. I will try to enumerate, before diving into t...

For what has to be the dozenth time, I'm trying to read/listen to Designing Your Life. I can't help but wonder why its taken numerous listens to really get started. I'd really like to design myself into something that works for me. Honestly, taking that much responsibility seems pretty daunting. And due to a lot of recent events in my life, I'm easily daunted right now. Sometimes, the overwhelm of possibilities just seems like too much to face up against and I instead listen to a podcast and res...

I remember back to when the Live Strong bracelets ruled the fashion circuit of high school in Southeast Iowa. Everyone had a couple: different colors, different causes. I'd talked Katie Schaeffer into being my friend. I'm not exactly sure how. She was a year older than me and I always assumed I annoyed her. I think some people just appreciated the attention from my obnoxious antics. Either way, we were in Biology together. We'd sit together and eventually, I talked her out of her bracelet. Reali...

I started to write this without a cup of coffee, then I realized that I'd strayed too far from god or the god-like substance that fills time and space making flowers smell nice, sunsets beautiful and mud feel luxurious between my toes. Anyway, I need coffee first. I hoped that inspiration would come while I made coffee, but alas. The only thing I got from making coffee was a cup of coffee. Which, as it turns out, is a very satisfactory outcome. I wanted to do some clever writing and express...

A lot of times when I write, I'm writing into the void. In this case, the void is just corner of the internet that it's really unclear if anyone reads. I'd say screaming into the void, but the sound in my ears seems a lot more like clacking. On the first day of my 100 days of writing, I'm clacking into my corner of the internet where it's not clear if readers exist or not. But in truth, I don't care. Readers are not why I clack. Well, let's dive in. Apparently, my life looked in the mirror thi...