They do work, just not in the way people think
For three years, my Monday afternoons, Thursday evenings, and Sundays were spent at a hole in the wall gem shop next to a medical marijuana dispensary. To date, it was the highest-paid and most interesting job I’ve ever had.
We were open from 9 am to 9 pm and were home to a host of regulars who’d come in for mediocre coffees, free crystals, or tarot readings from our resident psychic and herbalist (yes, we had an herbalist on call).
In my typical shift, I’d be a barista, a therapist, and an exorcist all before taking on the role of salesperson. Regulars would come in to soothe their worries with rose quartz palm stones, nervous newcomers would drift around the safety of the jewelry section, and frequent flyers would purchase obsidian and tourmaline for their healing grids, waxing poetry about spirit rituals and sacred geometry that went over my head. …
I’ve killed my internet persona more times than I can count
Born in 1998, I fit myself into the quasi-generational not-Millennial, not-Gen-Z, awkward age that makes me feel at once too old and too young when considering the existence of life online. I was brought up in the era of iPod touches yet raised by tech-avoidant parents, giving me a love/hate relationship with my phone and a distinct distrust of the internet.
Despite my youth, I sympathize with a generation that discovered the online world a smidge too late; my usage clunky and awkward. The 2000s babies I share such a close birthday with intimidate me with their openness online, but I understand the fluidity in their expression, their constant shifting between platforms, their innate desire to find something that means something, and what will let them find it? …
Home to secrets; the spooky, and the spectacular.
From a former “all-or-nothing” friend.
It’s 10 am and we’re thundering up the mountain switchbacks in a heavy downpour; a convoy of two vehicles, three girls, three dogs.
Funny this; the art of casual female friendships.
I’ve always been an all or nothing person. I love you or I hate you, I trust you or I’ll avoid you forever. If we stop talking, there’s little chance of us talking again.
I’m not a mean person. I’m just careful with my affection.
Most of my friendships – female friendships – have ended, most of them abruptly, although not all of them in ways that were hard. Some were well-timed drifts in different directions, those are normal. Expected. However, others were her with him after we broke up, or me making the right choice for me and the wrong choice for someone else. …
Work — your work, not your career — requires various certifications.
Not the type of certification that you hold on your own, Bachelor's degrees and the like, but rather ones specific only to the job. You go home from work every night to fucking study, feeling like you’re still in school, still a kid.
Working in a far off town tucked away by the ocean, financially independent, finally, and still feeling like you haven’t grown up yet.
It’s a textbook and an exam, two hundred true or false questions on a tiny screen in the tiny, semi-renovated kitchen of the office. …
& I Didn’t Realize Until The Year Was Over
My mom has a heavy three-ring binder full of loose lead paper on which she records every book she’s ever read; once she’s flipped the final page, the title, author, and date are jotted down in her perfect, rounded script. She can flip back a few dozen (hundred) pages and tell you that she read that John Grisham thriller in May of 2013, or reread her favourite Agatha Christie in September 2005.
I used to think she was crazy; she can read a book a day some months, and to keep a record of it all seemed like too much work for me to fathom — and to what end? As a child, I read for pleasure; the books of months and years passed were nothing but a memory (or a future reread), not something I need to jot down for later. …
Today, I am a writer. And I’ll probably be one tomorrow too.
I don’t know her well; she’s the girlfriend of the roommate of the Boyfriends’ new coworker — and if that isn’t convoluted I don’t know what is — but we were hiking in the warm coastal winter when she asked the dreaded question: What do you do?
Deep breath.
“I’m a writer. I’m working in insurance right now though.”
It felt like a glorious lie. …
Less is more, especially now.
When new years rolls around, the world of health and fitness takes it upon itself to to answer the call of the masses: more books, more tutorials, more Instagram influencers and 30 day challenges.
New year, new you, same structured mess that you tried last year.
This year, we need to try something different.
Minimalist Fitness
Minimalist fitness is not a new concept, but rather one that is needed now more than ever. The rising danger of gyms and group classes combined with a desire for more functionality and less stress create the perfect storm for this concept.
Like Minimalism™️, Minimalist Fitness takes a simple approach: Doing less, but doing it better. …
Those tall, unnerving desert mountains welcome me back, shrouded in the darkness.
To the untrained eye, the view is nothing but darkness, but as a born and bred here woman, I can differentiate the darkness of the mountain peaks and the darkness of the sky. That’s how you know you’re home.
There’s a certain part of the drive where it’s no longer the in-between — that blurry not the ocean, not the mountains that I’m sure is home to someone but certainly not me — and the paved route becomes a welcome mat. …
If you don’t love the process, you’ll never reap the rewards
I loved writing papers in university. Absolutely loved it. I was thrilled. Joyous, even.
It wasn’t the actually writing of it, but more so the research. Majoring in Sociology gave me a free pass to read up on as many cool and interesting social topics as I wanted, and then cherry pick my favourite bits of information and cobble them together into a paper.
The grades were never my main priority, and my transcript is proof of that. I was in it for the knowledge. The reading. The understanding. …
