If you walk into the public entrance of the Library of Congress expecting to gain access to the Main Reading Room, you will be sadly disappointed. The main entrance is for tourists and exhibits, and if you just want to sit and write in the reading room assisted by free federal wifi you first need to create the universe — or at… Read more →

There is an ad going around the internet; you may have seen it. If not, part of me wants to be all “just watch it!” and not spoil anyone but also part of me wants to be all “content note for implied violence!” I’ll put my own lengthy take below so you can watch it first without spoilers if you… Read more →

I’ve maybe never gotten writing retreats completely right. In collaboration with my dear friend, colleague, and occasional internet doppelgänger Marianne Kirby, I have tried more than once, but the writing has usually been somewhat less forthcoming than the local explorations, and the expansive and deliberate meals, the antique shops and the needless yarn purchases to add to the stack of… Read more →

Recently I read an essay by an extremely lovely average-sized woman in response to being weight-shamed by a stranger on the internet. I’m not calling out this essay or author in particular, as this isn’t about her (I think she is pretty great) or even the essay itself. It’s a common subject that has been tackled with varying success by… Read more →

I looked into floating locally after reading an article about it as a potential treatment for PTSD. I don’t have PTSD myself, to be clear, only a standard form of decades-long anxiety that I am sometimes good at managing and sometimes not. The science of whether floating in a dark, soundproofed tank filled with ten or so inches of heavily… Read more →

When I left my job of nearly five years in January, I was anticipating all the free time I would have to dedicate to new creative ideas. My job had me working a lot of hours — more than full time, if I’m honest — and required a lot of emotional investment and near-constant stress, so creativity wasn’t something I’d… Read more →

Sex confused me. It did many kids, in those shady years between sex being a vague idea spoken of in huddles of lowered voices on middle school playgrounds, and sex evolving into a real thing our peers were actually doing. The latter revelation struck my social clique possibly earlier than others: in the seventh grade, our group’s bouncy, pouf-banged leader was a… Read more →

Miss Piggy is not a positive figure for self-acceptance because she demands and receives respect from her colleagues and the public at large; she is a positive figure because she doesn’t. She is a character who has to fight against the pressure to internalize the negativity that surrounds her; she refuses to allow the assumptions and aspersions of other people… Read more →