5 Mantras and 2 Gifs for Managing Perfectionism
You are not helping by pretending you can do it if you can’t, Katie.
Katie is a doctoral student in English and education at the University of Michigan. She loves the New York Times crossword puzzle, advice columns, oceans, and dogs of all kinds.
by Katie Van Zanen | Mar 25, 2021 | 4 comments
You are not helping by pretending you can do it if you can’t, Katie.
by Katie Van Zanen | Feb 25, 2021 | 2 comments
“That’s who you’ve always been. You were always into that stuff.”
by Katie Van Zanen | Jan 25, 2021 | 12 comments
If you’re really interested in other people having babies, you could channel your energies into advocating for affordable childcare.
by Katie Van Zanen | Dec 25, 2020 | 1 comment
I don’t have Christmas cheer to offer.
by Katie Van Zanen | Nov 25, 2020 | 2 comments
Like everything magical, though, the airship project was riddled with realities.
by Katie Van Zanen | Oct 25, 2020 | 5 comments
But writing about my anger also moved me to remember that there are no clean lines to be drawn here between villains and heroes.
by Katie Van Zanen | Sep 25, 2020 | 23 comments
Does it matter that this particular person voting for a corrupt, anti-democratic, avowedly racist and misogynist leader is also a “prayer warrior” and a “champion of the faith”?
by Katie Van Zanen | Aug 25, 2020 | 8 comments
On good days, I think about John and that chalkboard and the dog under the lectern and I remember the joy of learning new things and the inexhaustible opportunities the world presents for just that.
by Katie Van Zanen | Jul 25, 2020 | 8 comments
The very hard thing I am learning right now—about race, and about myself—is that the rules I have been living by are not very good ones.
by Katie Van Zanen | Jun 25, 2020 | 4 comments
This is not an anti-racist reading list, per se.
by Katie Van Zanen | May 25, 2020 | 2 comments
Moral courage and curiosity means listening to yourself: where did this idea come from? Why am I moved to defend it?
by Katie Van Zanen | Apr 25, 2020 | 3 comments
But I will say that—for me—being confined to my home has sometimes felt liberating in a small and quiet way.
by Katie Van Zanen | Mar 25, 2020 | 8 comments
It’s tempting, as the writer, to make a trite connection here to challenges I have previously risen to (a potentially boring speech about crossword puzzles).
by Katie Van Zanen | Feb 25, 2020 | 4 comments
I feel like I was sold a story of America, and a story of my people and who we were, and it turns out that it was mostly a lie,
by Katie Van Zanen | Jan 25, 2020 | 4 comments
Each week during the prayers of the people I make a mental inventory: do I know anyone who is ill? Anyone who is grieving? Anyone job-searching, traveling, celebrating?
by Katie Van Zanen | Oct 25, 2019 | 3 comments
I was tired. I was also tired of myself. So I started class with a poem.
by Katie Van Zanen | Sep 25, 2019 | 2 comments
But I am not paid for caring about my job.
by Katie Van Zanen | Aug 25, 2019 | 1 comment
I spend a fair bit of time with first year college students. I am sometimes envious of them.
by Katie Van Zanen | Jul 25, 2019 | 2 comments
I suspect that we sometimes use the language of blessing as a neat way to sidestep the questions those things raise.
by Katie Van Zanen | May 25, 2019 | 0 comments
Perhaps it was outside of Ottawa, where yet another AirBNB featured a drip coffee maker but no filters or beans.
by Katie Van Zanen | Mar 25, 2019 | 0 comments
It is so hard, in the midst of it, to see online dating as anything other than a means to an end—but it became much more palatable for me once I began to understand it as a life stage in its own right.
by Katie Van Zanen | Feb 25, 2019 | 1 comment
It’s unclear to me, still, how much of this was based in an adolescent desire for male approval.
by Katie Van Zanen | Jan 25, 2019 | 0 comments
Perhaps my first mistake was expecting that I would ever entirely grow out of it.
by Katie Van Zanen | Dec 25, 2018 | 0 comments
“I just need to know if it’s worth hoping,” we say. “Is this guy the One or not?”
by Katie Van Zanen | Nov 25, 2018 | 0 comments
The trouble was, though, that when I tried to imagine the stream of gold going on forever, my head would begin to thrum.
by Katie Van Zanen | Oct 25, 2018 | 0 comments
B: I think that it might be important to take a minute and savor the fact that you no longer actively think you’re terrible
by Katie Van Zanen | Sep 25, 2018 | 0 comments
Five bags of MAPEI Self Leveler Plus Indoor Self-Leveling Underlayment later, our living room is rather more level than it was before.