15 Things I Learned From My Mother
3. A clean sink goes a long way. Even if your carpet hasn’t seen a vacuum in months, do the damn dishes.
Playing Hot Potato with Kindness
I want selfless people to have blissful, perfect lives. When I argue with someone about selfishness—“it’s a virtue. The Golden Rule just makes betas feel better about not standing up for themselves”—I want to point to loving families and say, “See? This is possible. This is good,” but I can’t.
I Joined Online Dating…And I Met Someone and Now We’re Married
I know several people who met online and then made up a meet cute to tell friends and family. There’s less of a stigma around meeting online today, but it’s still not considered especially romantic.
What They Don’t Tell You About Campervans
He took a lap around the vehicle, got in the driver’s seat, and tried the key. The van roared to life… as if nothing had been wrong, as if it were just born, as if it were doing it just to spite me. I stared at the van in silence.
More Than a Fish Needs a Bicycle
It all turned out fine. We weren’t abducted or murdered in our beds. Our host, whom we met later that evening, turned out to be sweet and ostensibly normal.
Scaling Down Giants
I’m not painting out such writers, or any writers, for that matter, to be dull; rather, what’s been more fascinating, and all the more reassuring, is that such giants were people first and writers second.
Pouring from an Empty Cup
People aren’t talking about the twenty-two-year-old case workers crying in their cubicles at the end of a particularly hard day.
The Comfort of Discontent
“I know this sounds potentially ungrateful, but I don’t really know if I see my work as significant.”
Dear Loved Ones
I cannot help but think that we owe each other those small expressions of gratitude and that through them we are able, in small but meaningful ways, to break down these barriers that build up so easily in this life.
Memo on Hell
They have entered the physical realm of the heaven but are too wrapped up in their own expectations to notice. They’ve allowed themselves to become too tainted with the promises of the world to recognize the promised land.
