Saturday morning, ten o’clock. The sun is shining, the air is just the right amount of crisp with the promise of warmth later on, and …
How the “Coffee Walk” Became a Pandemic Go-To Recharge Activity
Random Coffee-Fueled Musings
Why I Stopped Glorifying Being Busy & Burned Out
“How are you?” “Busy.” I’m so busy. Three powerful, tiny words. Three destructive words. Three words that burned me out, that hurt my mental health, …
Waking Up Early to Write
Or, how I joined the 5 a.m. Writers’ Club and stuck with it. Since mid-April 2021, I’ve been waking up earlier than usual to write. …
Recovering from the Dissertation and Learning to Like Research Again
After I defended my dissertation and received my PhD, I made a promise to myself: I was going to take a break from history. A …
What NaNoWriMo Taught Me About Writing
National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), which takes place every November, might seem like a crazy endeavor: write 50,000 words–a short rough draft of a novel–in …
A Healthy Sick Day? Or, How A Cold Helped Me Sort Out My Priorities
Recently I came across this unpublished piece that I wrote several years ago, while I was still living the faster-paced city life, and wanted to …
A Connecticut Yankee in the Blue Ridge Mountains
I could call this post, “How I worked up the nerve to finally move exactly where I wanted to live.” Another apt title would be, …
Small Gestures of Kindness in an “Unfriendly” City
Beep-beep-beep-beep. The streetcar door was closing, its little red light flashing. Rain was starting to come down harder. The woman ran toward the door, feet …
Coffee and Language Barriers: Remembering the First Day Living in Austria
After a transatlantic flight, I have one first order of business, and one only: Coffee. (The second, if I’m landing in the UK, is to …
23 Times the Little Things Were the Best Part of Traveling
True to my own personal mission to stop and appreciate the small, often unexpected things in life while everything is go-go-go, today I’d like to …