Tag: mental health

Learning To Walk Away From Arguments

What is one way you have grown this year?

When someone is attacking your character, threatening pillars of security like your house, your cars, your bank account, for their own revenge, and is inciting derision in your relationship, how do you stay calm? I’ve been wrestling in these thoughts for the last month as a very unexpected thing happened that threw us for a major loop. I’ve been slow to write for this reason, because I felt so angry and bitter. All is good now though, in spite of the stress and the anger at the perpetrator of this stupid drama, but it begs the question, what does one do with these emotions?

When someone is attacking me, it’s a real struggle not to fight back and defend myself, or respond from a place of past pain and fire back with more gusto than the other person in an attempt to shut the argument down. But does that actually work? A younger me thought it did, but then younger me got the butt kicking of a lifetime by my uncle, who took a declaration of frustration at him and him alone, and manipulated it into a full on family fracture to hurt someone I love very much, my mom.

Lesson number two came from another family member, on a different side of my family, who doesn’t stop arguing. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, this person won’t stop nagging, or pushing their agenda. They refuse to take responsibility for their choices. They are the final boss of arguing, and it has taught me that fighting with this person in any way is futile. It doesn’t matter how wrong they are, they will not concede and so arguing, although it may feel good in the moment, for the temporary release of the emotional pressure valve, is dumb. There is nothing fruitful in addressing the problem with them, because they are denial of what the problem is really about. It’s terrible.

This has a paradoxical shift in my mind. Addressing the problem and dealing with it, is what I believed the healthy purpose of arguing was based in, but life is not that simple or noble. People are far more complicated and broken for that simple notion to be true. Learning to not engage, and walk away, even when someone is hurting you with their words, is the only way through sometimes. And it is incredibly difficult to master. It’s something you usually don’t learn until you are faced with impossible people. In the moment, you feel like the weight of their words outweighs what you know to be true. It feels like giving into manipulation, but it is not about surrendering at all. It is about preserving what is left of the relationship and moving on.

It is the art of learning not to argue. In both examples, my uncle and this other family member, created a stressful environment for me that left one option left. I have to walk away and not defend myself. I have to leave the argument behind. It is not weakness but instead a firm boundary rooted in the promise of a better tomorrow. It is taking the space to breathe and realize this relationship meant more to you than it did to them, and letting them go to fester in their own creation of chaos. You want better for them, but you can’t change them, or control them.

I have not mastered this, not even close. And to be fair, I have had many one sided arguments in my head. Their has been tears and lots of ranting. But not trying to explain myself or defend myself has helped me understand that their minds are already made up, and peaceful co-existence not being possible, is a them problem. I can’t want it more than them, I just have to let that part of our relationship evaporate into the sunshine. I have to focus on protecting my mental health by releasing the stress and hurt in healthy ways, like laughing, exercise, and quality time with family and friends that value the relationship with you, and want the best for you.

In time, walking away from arguments will get easier, I hope. This has been one of the most difficult lessons I have learned, in life. With both of these people, being members of the church, it has been a rough one for my faith. There is such hypocrisy in these relationships, and they both claim the high ground.

Leaving these relationships unsettled and broken feels like a failure, as we are supposed to live in harmony with each other, including other believers. Why doesn’t this bother them, like it bothers me? It makes me feel like a bad Christian. But that is probably another argument I need to just walk away from too.

Do you ever feel this way? Have you mastered the art of walking away from arguments? What helped you develop this skill?

I’m Going to Miss Watching Colbert

I was pretty late to the Late Show party, becoming a fan after it was canceled by CBS, for ‘purely financial reasons.’ What a shame that is! I think what we need more of is laughter. Pure, intelligent comedy for the sake of the joke. Not for the algorithm, or to bow down at the altar of tech bros, or the gold Nebuchadnezzar statue of Trump. But to instead frustrate the heck out of these life-draining entities with comedy.

In both my personal life and the greater world around me, the stress level is high. Morale is low. I think we’re all feeling tired by the burden of man doing what is right in his own eyes. But wait, there’s more! Now, the so-called “Christians” are whoring themselves out again, like the Israelites did in the Old Testament, raising up idols for their own gain and neglecting the covenant God made with them. It’s infuriating to be an adult and realize that this story is not a Bible story from the past, but a living example that continues to evolve with the generations, in repetitive cycles of taking God’s name in vain. Being the absolute worst representatives of God’s image, and claiming their actions are blessed by God.

As a kid, I naively thought this was what people from the past did, not us. In our “Christian” nation. I feel so dumb remembering how duped I was by the authority figures around me. As I got older, like we all do, we begin to see the signs of hypocrisy and corruption around us. Nowhere was it more apparent than in the Christian bubbles and institutions I interacted with. I remember my parents and grandparents warning me that the deepest cut would be in these circles. That sinful actions would feel more harmful in these environments, because we expect the believers around us to play by the rules, but we don’t. We treat each other just as badly, and sometimes worse, than the non-believers around us.

Politically, the age of MAGA and the culture wars of the last decade have exacerbated the tension in this dance of Christians being terrible representatives for the gospel, but wonderful representatives for their political parties, and the sin patterns being held onto, instead of being transformed by the sanctification process.

What I have the most irony, as I reflect right now as I write this, is that for my whole life, I have heard that the problem with America is that the church doesn’t preach sin anymore. This is usually targeted at things like unmarried couples living together, promiscuity, homosexuality, and gender expression. But I realize that, yeah, this is one of the problems with America, but not for any of the reasons listed above; instead, racism, bigotry, political idolatry, Nationalism, greed, capitalsim, extraction of the global south, ICE, Fascism, and more recently, worship of Trump, are some of the sins that are not preached about in the majority churches – and these sinful behaviors are running rampant in our world, destroying whole nations like Palestine, Iran, Congo, Sudan, and Lebanon for the sake of these bloodlusts “sanctioned” by people who aren’t being taught by churches that this is sin.

Getting back to the point of this post, all this darkness has felt like a dense fog spreading across all the light and truth, but comedy, by those like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, has cut through the complicit silence. Now we only have one of these shows left, although Trump calls for Kimmel’s job constantly. I’m going to miss Colbert’s voice in the void and hope that he finds a new place to do the same thing – call out the evil and stand for the truth, while making us laugh. The sweet pressure valve release of laughing through things that scare us is essential, I believe, for us to maintain our humanity.

It is a non-violent fight against fascism, an unwillingness to buy the crap they are selling us, and remain focused on what is good and true, when the propaganda tries to drown it out. That’s what is happening here with CBS, a complicit, chicken-sh*t response to pressure from above. What they have chosen to silence is the reminder to be kind, to be unwavering in our beliefs, and to not let the bad around us determine who we will be.

I’m thankful for the time I got to watch Colbert’s show, for the comfort pause to laugh through the ‘Hormuz news you can uz’ segment, in the middle of a war that none of us want but can’t depend on our leaders to stop, while watching our tax dollars be ripped from social programs to bombs and guns. It was like a balm to the soul, a place to reset and breathe, with a laugh. A way to process together. Thank you, Colbert!

In the meantime, what will I do? Watch Jimmy Kimmel. Rock out to the Piedmont Raging Grannies, and laugh my butt off watching RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Learning to Start Seeds With Calmness

tomatoes, peppers

Being completely transparent, I started this post with the intention of writing about my struggles with seed starting and how I’ve been questioning my abilities to do so. Part of that was because I was initially having issues with starting seeds this year. I actually wrote about these problems in a post titled When Is It Time to Restart Seeds? In it, I described the struggles I was having with our pepper seeds. Germination rates were low, which led me to question my ability to start seeds and figure out what went wrong. In that post, I mentioned that I was going to take a patient approach with them and not restart seeds too quickly. I followed that up with a post about how happy I was that I took a patient approach. I let my first set of seeds go for an extra week or so, and the majority of the cells germinated. It was because of this result that the direction of this post has changed.

Success Has Been More Than Patience

Although being patient with our seeds has played a large role in the success we’ve had this year, I think the success is the result of more than simply being patient. That thought stems from a conversation Magz and I recently had. A couple of days ago, I was showing her how successful our starts have been, and she commented that she thinks it has something to do with how calm I’ve been when it comes to this year’s garden.

In the past, I’ve approached pretty much everything with a degree of excitement or agitation. I wasn’t necessarily overly excited or agitated, but I struggled to control my emotions, which resulted in not being chill. When it came to gardening, it led to rushing through things, making mistakes, and working hastily. I’ve tried to have a different approach this year, both because of how poorly certain aspects of last year’s garden went and learning how to manage my emotions better.

tomatoes, peppers
Our pepper and tomato starts

This change started by delaying the seed-starting process a few weeks. Last year, I started them when the packets said to, which resulted in leggy plants by the time the weather cooperated enough to transplant outside. This year, I nearly started them too late and forgot to buy some of the supplies we needed. But despite those hiccups, the result has been overwhelmingly positive.

What Does Calmness Look Like When Gardening?

This question will likely have a different answer for everyone, but for me, calmness means a few things. The first is approaching every task with the right mindset. That doesn’t mean having to be in a perfect mood all the time, but it does mean that I need to be focused and not sidetracked. I need to be aware of what needs to be done. This allows me to see things clearly, notice when plants are growing or struggling, and address things accordingly. If I’m unfocused when I go downstairs to look at our starts, I may overlook something or do something wrong.

Things are going to go wrong with a garden. It’s a fact. Seeds won’t germinate, transplanting starts will fail, the temperature will be too warm or cold, and you’ll get too much or too little rain. Those are all things that will inevitably happen on a yearly basis. It’s like baseball: a batter can get on base 4 out of 10 plate appearances and be an All-Star or Hall-of-Famer. Failure is part of the game. But when you fail when gardening, you can’t be too hard on yourself or let yourself get too low. Every failure is a learning opportunity to succeed next time. That mindset helps you stay calm, which carries over to the last point.

peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, molokhia, leeks
Pepper, cucumber, tomato, molokhia, and leek starts.

I think it’s important to be gentle. I think it’s important to have gentleness in all areas of life, even though it’s something I struggle with, and considering mainstream society doesn’t promote gentleness, it’s rare to see it in public. But when we act with gentleness or out of love, the reactions are positive. With humans, it can be disarming and lead to real conversations. When gardening, it can result in healthy and productive plants that reach their full potential and provide great yields. To me, being gentle when gardening means having soft hands and being delicate. When I’m starting seeds, I need to be gentle with the seeds, taking care to plant them at the appropriate depth and to not overwater. When transplanting starts, gentleness means supporting the root system so that the plant has the best opportunity to thrive in its new home. When the plant is growing or it’s time to harvest, it means picking when it’s the right time, not letting plants crowd each other, and ensuring that branches aren’t weighed down, causing unnecessary stress.

It may seem crazy, but I think there is something to having a calm demeanor when gardening. I doubt that there’s scientific evidence to back it up, but I’m convinced plants can sense our stress levels when handling them and respond accordingly. It’s similar to animals: they can tell when we aren’t calm. Perhaps we’re rushing through interactions with them or being short. That behavior affects the interaction and relationship. And I don’t think that this mindset needs to stop with animals or plants. If we all took a second to step back, take a deep breath, and treat others with gentleness, we’d be a much happier society.

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Pivot! An Important Sewing Skill

Okay, as a millennial, I can’t hear the word pivot without thinking of this scene from Friends. But, silliness aside, Ross was correct; you have to pivot and pivot well. The longer I sew, the more agitated I get when I make foolish cutting or measuring mistakes in my garments. Like my shortalls from last year, I tried them on over the weekend because it is feeling warm and springlike here, and I was shocked by how poorly I fit the shorts. The top portion of the shorts fits excellently, but not the shorts. No one wants weird bunching when it comes to shorts, and that was exactly the problem!

At first, I went through the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance that no matter how delusional I chose to be, these shortalls are uncomfortable. I would not wear them. This made me feel so many regrets. The pink overalls I drafted completely from scratch, using a special fabric featuring corgis and bread from a Japanese fabric brand called Kokka Fabric, sourced from my local fabric shop, Firecracker Fabrics. The second pair was cobbled together as a challenge of fabric and repurposing. The fabric was 1 yard of 59″ cotton twill from Mood Fabrics, and the pockets were sourced from a pair of shorts in my closet. I refused to scrap these. But what could I do to fix these? With all the patterns at play, adding in a new fabric sounded scary. Cutting these into bags or future quilting projects was throwing in the towel too soon for me.

My solution came to me one night, as I was washing my face; I didn’t have to make a drastic change. I had to address the problem – the way I cut the curve of the pants. I could remove the section that divided the fabric into legs, and transform the shortalls into pinafore dresses with a few cuts and stitches! It was a success! The shorts are now a skirt, by cutting away the curved line and sewing a straight seam on the back and front of the skirt. I also made a quick swap to the back bib of the brown floral pair, adjusting the square bib to the triangle shape of the pink ones. This adjusted the fit of the dress in an excellent way. The purpose of the triangle, I believe, from the fit change on my garment is to eliminate gapping between your shirt and the back bib, so the fit follows the line of your body.

Now, sewing is not the only place to pivot, obviously. Problem-solving is a fundamental part of the creative process. Projects rarely work out the way you want, from knitting to cooking to building a piece of furniture. In this fast fashion, consume and donate, culture poisoning my country’s culture, we are losing the art of problem-solving. This has been exacerbated by the rise of AI and ChatGPT. Why think at all? Why imagine, ponder, or research? Why try if you aren’t going to get “expert” results? That is what the rise of optimization culture is creating: the fear of trying. But you have to try to become an expert. AI is not an expert; it is a thief, stealing the knowledge of humans who have spent years and decades striving to know, unafraid to try and fail. It’s literally the scientific method. So if you are an impressionable person, who is growing up in this current era, don’t give up your creative ability for AI to do it for you. You will lose crucial thinking and creative skills if you don’t exercise your mind and problem-solve on your own. Just do it.

#81 – Ten is My Magnum Opus

Commitment is scary. It feels like a box that closes around you. My mind wanders to all the negative possibilities. Will I become stagnant? Will I fail? Will I regret this? Commitment is not a bad thing, though; it is a fundamental to our relationships, to building character, and completing goals. Finishing any project, big or small, such as painting a wall or completing a degree, requires commitment. Being there for a friend. Adopting a pet. Planting a garden. Buying a house. Getting married.

The last one fills us as humans, living in the 21st century, with the most trepidation. I think because of how obligatory marriage can become in our human cultures. What is a Jane Austen novel without commentary on the role of marriage in 19th-century England? Women can see it as a burden, a life goal, or a way to survive. It is complex for all people – he, she, they to enter into a legally binding commitment built on the hope that this love we are choosing to pursue until we die, will not fail and consume us both.

As I have mentioned before, my parents got divorced when I was little. It was finalized when I was two, actually, so beyond a PTSD memory that is hard to dwell on, I don’t remember life before my parents divorced. My memory and examples of marriage in my life come from my grandparents and my mom, who married my wonderful stepdad (more like true dad) when I was 16. Without these two positive examples, I’m not certain marriage would have happened for me. It’s hard to understand, unless you experienced it, but living in the aftermath of your parents’ failed marriage shapes your opinion of marriage from a young age.

You are the living proof of failure, and are looked on with pity and dismay from many church people and people in your community. You are the weirdo. People want to “help” experience the normalcy of two parents, as if there is something wrong with the family that you have. I had three parents instead of two, and it felt normal to me. I learned about love, of all kinds – storage and agape, aka “affection” and “unconditional love.”

I think these loves are even more important to grasp as an impressionable youth than fixating on the hope of romantic love someday, because what brings you through marriage is all four loves – charity, agape, philia (friendship), and eros (romantic). Because marriage is built on vows, and keeping those vows is wonderfully challenging some days, but keeping them and not giving up has led to this exciting milestone – our tenth anniversary!

Growing up, knowing that marriage can and will fail for a lot of people, no matter how much you fight for it, scared the crap out of me, staring down the aisle. I didn’t want to fail, like a destiny I couldn’t shake. My parents’ divorce was not a curse to inherit, nor was it Kyle’s to inherit from his parents’ divorce, yet succeeding felt like the highest mountain I would ever climb, and honestly, I do feel that way today. So many things have changed in my life in the past ten years – jobs, friends, locations, family, pets – it’s been a roller coaster, and yet, here we are. We didn’t let the bad times get the best of us – the economy, the pandemic, job loss, grief, and hubris – we figured out how to navigate the things that scared us without ripping the seams to tatters.

What I thought would be the way through this would be never approaching that line, but life actually pushes you to the brink quite often. I think we, as humans, focus so much on perfection that we forget that even when you let your spouse down, you can dust yourself off and recalibrate. Even your worst moments don’t have to break you. Holding on to the highest highs, the wins, is important too. It’s a journey that you walk with your spouse towards the goal. It’s a sanctification process that will break you down with certainty, but I feel refined by the wisdom and the struggle, and the wins.

The bottom may come as close as you can imagine to dropping out, but your fears are not a prophecy for your life. Good things are not there to slip away from you; they are the victories. And so this exciting anniversary feels like a victory over all the voices in my head telling me to give up when things got hard, and to not enjoy the good moments in case something bad would happen. Yeah, good and bad have happened, and will continue to happen, but what Kyle and I are building, this commitment to be there for each other for every step of the journey, is a balm to the soul in these uncertain times. So I encourage you, in these heavy days, to plant your garden.

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce… Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” 

Jeremiah 29: 4-5, 7 NIV

Why I Quit the Clique and Cliche of Twenty One Pilots

So it’s 2026, and if you’re online, there is a good chance you have seen the 2026 to 2016 posts. The nostalgia for 2016 is real, even making me look at one of the most volatile years of my life through rose-colored glasses. But even though the 2010s were full of change for me, beginning with my junior year of high school, and ending with 2019, globally leading us into the pandemic. How weird is that? I got my license, my high school diploma, traveled to Europe, graduated from college, got married, moved out, had my first job (more like jobs), tried to have a career, reunited with my dad, met my siblings, moved out of state, wrote a novel, and lost several loved ones in 2016. My family fractured – it was so much personal change! But even so, I miss the optimism of the hipster era. I miss the simplicity of the pre-AI era and the pre-social media domination of our world. We were less logged in, less screen addicted. I’ve been drawn to watching Portlandia again, yearning for a coffee shop to spend the day in while listening to indie music, a simpler time. This week, I’ve found myself walking down memory lane in the form of 2010’s alternative music. Bands I haven’t thought of for a decade – The Joy Formidable, Phantogram, Joywave, Bear Hands, Sir Sly, etc. But one band, I determined in this holiday, into nostalgia I will not listen to again, even though they were a band I loved in the 2010s – Twenty One Pilots.

This is a bit of an oddball post. I haven’t listened to Twenty One Pilots since 2018, but for a three-year stretch, they were my favorite band. I collected merch, CDs, and ate up the lore. The para-social relationship was built on mental health struggles, faith, and being “quirky” felt comfortable. I mean, this was the mid-2010s and the height of the “not like other girls” trope. I relished in the alternative feel of their music, what I now understand to be noise music, and the darkness I felt in my own life craved the outlet to plug into. Josh understood my shyness, and Tyler understood the anxiety and depression I was feeling at the time. It felt safe because they were “Christians” and their music had “biblical references,” but they were also questioning everything and challenging the void. I didn’t see at the time how much un-aliving yourself idealization there was in the nihilistic moments of their music. The more I listened to their music, the more depressed I felt, and that is where I began to wake out of the dream I was walking in. I haven’t seen them or their music the same way since.

I think right now, with all the ways Christianity is being watered down, misused for political manipulation, and trampled upon by religious fundamentalists, I don’t want to listen to a band that is “somewhat Christian” again. That is not an estimation of their music either; that is what I found when I looked at the TOP subreddit today. That sentiment reminded me of what turned me off the most from their music, Tyler’s waffling. Or should I say deconstructing? That was another discussion I found on the subreddit. Now it is only fair to discuss this, with my own struggles out in the open. There were some things that came to light in recent months about someone I know, who is a pastor, which contradict the Bible, and it made me furious. Combine that with the DHS sharing misquoted scripture to claim their racism and violence as a “holy” thing turned me into this character.

What has my spiritual life been like in 2025 and now in 2026? Clinging to who I know God is in the midst of all these evil, power-hungry syncophants. Have I been reading my Bible daily? No, I have been a slacker. Have I been praying consistently? Yes, more than I have been reading my Bible. Have I been avoiding Christian culture? Yes. Where have I found myself gravitating towards? People who are acting out their faith and non-believers acting in ways that mirror what the Bible calls us to do. Never in this muck and mire have I wanted to imagine a world without God. If anything, it has made me crave God’s presence in this world with more frequency. It has to be a real connection. Faith is not a feeling, and it is not something you choose one day and rip apart the next. It calls for trust and for submission to align every part of your life under what you believe in. Faith is telos. Faith does not exist in a vacuum, nor do our relationships. Some days, having faith in good triumphing over evil feels like an extremely radical thing. There is no space for indecision.

Now, Tyler is allowed to feel and think what he wants, as long as he is not hurting anyone. I don’t care. But do I think he is a good example? No. There is an immaturity to his faith. A fence sitting that is only hurting him. As Earl Smooter says in Sweet Home Alabama, “You can’t ride two horses with one ass, sugarbean.” My need for conciseness and clarity is, for sure, part of my neurodivergence. I like it when people communicate directly. Honestly. I prefer the path laid out by another favorite artist.

I give life to my words
(Yeah, I’m doing what I say)
I reach heights from the dirt
(Yeah, I’m doing what I say)
You know I bite the way I bark
(Yeah, I’m doing what I say)
(Doing what I say, doing what I say)

Creed by Stray Kids

Decision matters. Being aligned with what you believe in, in every aspect of your life, which takes being truly honest with yourself, will bring mental peace. Mental peace was something I never personally felt from their music. I could feel the overthinking, tearing at the seams, the complete drifting in the current. It could be dressed up with lore or cringing lyrics, but the identity was never solid. Taking time away from their music gave me such relief. Ironically, my time of being part of the Clique was followed by a period of listening to mostly worship music for a few years before landing in K-pop. I think I personally matured out of the place where the Clique remains, waiting for identity. Where their leader remains. I think it is easier to not confront ourselves than it is, to have these times of personal crossexamination. But I think it’s a poor witness for your faith to never pick a side. How can something so integral to your life, your worldview, be left with unresolved doubt? What a loose end.

Deconstruct with integrity. Affirm your faith with integrity. I’m all in favor of confronting the church for its cowardice over injustice in America. Jesus showed us how. So did his servant Paul. But to leave it as a vague, Blurryface, is immature thinking. Through my research for this post, my searches for a clear answer about Tyler’s faith left me with more questions. Like a politician, it is vague and hard to define. Answers offered were that he can’t put it into words, he is wrestling, still defining, or can’t put it into words. What? More digging led to answers outlining TOP’s music as his way of communicating his search for understanding. To explore doubt by supposing a world without God – well, that’s why I found their music so dark! I am actively shaking my head. Again, there needs to be more maturity in songwriting, creative writing, philosophy – something to explore these themes with more nuance. I am just not impressed. Especially when you contrast Tyler’s exposition of his faith and the world we are living in, to the faith journeys of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. In summation, I find the faith and doubt of TOP to be cliché and played out. Go deeper. Tell us what you believe in, like fans have requested, concerning the genocide in Gaza.

Now, TOP fans, this is my opinion, and everyone is entitled to their own opinion. None of this was written as an attack on you or your favorite group, just my honest reflection on a time of my life where Twenty One Pilots spoke to me. I’d say really the only part of this “lore” I’ve listened to is these four albums – Twenty One Pilots (2009), Vessel (2013), which was my favorite, Blurryface (2015 the album I started with, and Trench (2018), which I disliked so much I sold my concert tickets and donated my merch. You, Clique, have popularity on your side. I know I am in the minority, but I’m also in the minority of thinking Taylor Swift is a terrible songwriter, and that hasn’t stopped me.

What kind of music did you enjoy in the 2010s? Has your music taste changed? Thanks for spending time with me today, dear reader. Until next time ❤

Emotional Endurance, No Cap

What do you do when you need a break, but you can’t? I’ve been wrestling with this for months. It’s been a tricky thing to discuss on here, and without feeling ready to write without revealing too much, I have been spinning on it, to quote NMIXX.

Any time I feel overwhelmed, I take that space. But what if you can’t? Like what if the thing that is weighing on you is as interwoven in your life as a single thread in the warp and weft of your jeans? It’s a tricky one that I don’t think anyone has taught me; it’s just kinda hanging there. We struggle alone, because we are human.

Relationship University

I’ve been thinking alone, pondering my frustrations, my overwhelm, my weariness for a break because I am a neurodivergent, deep-feeling, overthinker. It does not come easy to me to pause, to force my mind to stop and breathe. It’s something I wish we had learned in school. Any of the schooling – elementary, high school, or college? How wonderful would it be to learn about emotional intelligence and algebra? Traumatic stress coping mechanisms and world history? What about grammar and proper communication tools to de-escalate a tense argument? Literally would be life-changing. Meditation with a side of physical education? We mostly played soccer(football) because it was cheap, and it was monotonous. Both Kyle and I would feel less we are drowning in the complications of personal struggles if we had an education in relationships.

We did the brief marriage counseling, sure, which I guess prepares you for marriage? I think getting through the first year is truly what teaches you the most. (We are a few months away from celebrating ten, so we do have some experience.) We also had the years of friendship experiences, some previous dating experiences, and the lifelong knowledge of being part of families – but they don’t prepare you for the stress that comes with multiple, personal struggles that you and your spouse sometimes have to tackle all at the same time, meanwhile life keeps moving forward, and you feel like a hamster in a wheel.

Burnt Out, Like Toast In Obsidian Crumbs

What I felt the most since these stressful situations began to weigh on Kyle and me was the desire to hit pause and process what I was feeling while the world held still. You know? Just a moment, where you could feel without the expectation to be who you are and do the things others depend on you for. Even the little things, you depend on yourself to do. Of course, that feeling grows to a desire to stop the world for days, and escape to a zone where the stressful things can’t bother you. A yearning for the before and a hunger for the after, this is all resolved and back to normal. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the big emotions of personal things that you forget to have fun together. You forget to just be yourself. It’s a bizarre version of your life that doesn’t feel familiar, and I think after months of feeling like this, 2025 ended with me feeling chewed up and angry.

So why do we pretend like this is a normal state of being a responsible adult? Like if I hadn’t decided to stop drinking alcohol in 2021, this season would have been months of riding out a buzz, ignoring my problems, and choosing unhealthy coping mechanisms. Subbing in a source of temporary joy, depending on a thing or a feeling to get you through, is avoiding the inevitable mess that upset you in the first place. But I think this is the box we put ourselves in as adults, to stop from appearing weak or vulnerable. Substitute a drink for a shopping haul, sports betting, s*x, doom scrolling – what I’m talking about is far more common than we admit. So why do I feel so alone in this feeling?

It is still my present burden to bear, Kyle’s present burden to bear. Contrary to the calendar, your problems on Dec 31 are still there when you wake up on Jan 1. Doesn’t that suck? I felt myself wishing more than ever at the end of 2025 that the “fresh start” effect was real. Because life requires emotional endurance with no cap. That is quite difficult for us humans to do. It requires patience, hope, faith, self-control, gentleness, and love. We grow weary, we hide our struggles like they are something to be ashamed of, instead of a common part of life. We are odd creatures. That’s why I decided to share this, because I don’t think we discuss this enough, and I plan to talk about it more.

Marriage is hard, in more ways than I could even comprehend, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. As we are both kids of divorce, we stubbornly refuse to address the stress that is negatively affecting our relationship because to do so feels like we are already failing, but that’s not true. So I’m writing this for you, the one who feels the weight of their parents’ divorce on all of their relationships, like a curse you are inevitably going to repeat. It’s not true. Keep going and stop bracing for the bottom to drop out, like I waste time waiting for. We are survivors, and we are going to make it through the mess.

More Reflections, A Year With a Bunny Part Two

One year ago, we adopted Mia from a local rabbit rescue. We knew life would change, but we didn’t consider how much we would change and grow from this experience. These are my reflections on how our little house bunny, Mia, has shaped us in our first year together.

Awareness

Today, I accidentally scared Mia. I came downstairs from working out, with music playing on my phone, distracted and not considering the little bunny, snoozing in a deep sleep. As soon as I looked up from my phone, I was highly aware of what my blissful ignorance hath wrought: ears standing tall, eyes wide, and body tense, ready to run at the slightest hint of danger. Before Mia, I was aware of what startled me, but with Mia and her own sensitive ears, it has challenged me to approach life with an even gentler touch. Today was a day I forgot, but with each passing month, these moments of unawareness are decreasing. Getting used to how aware Mia is of her surroundings was intimidating at first. I remember feeling on edge those first weeks, feeling like I was unable to relax – scared to scare Mia – a bit impossible of a standard!

I’ve learned to be quiet, internally and externally. The desire for quiet, for the little prey animal in our midst, has become a craving for quiet coming from a place inside me. What felt like a burden at first has become a blessing, because the awareness of the sound level, the peaceful environment I wish to create for Mia, has become a goal I desire for my own needs. The awareness of the quiet and the peace is something that I need, that Kyle needs. It’s healthier for us, but in this distracted and noise-polluted world, I don’t know if my awareness was going to attune to this again without Mia.

Structure

Mia has a schedule, possibly wearing a little watch somewhere under all that fur. She hops to her dinner spot around 5 pm, and waits for her breakfast starting at 8 am. She knows what time we should go to bed, with a precision I wish I could stick to. I’m not blessed with a sense of schedule. I tend to drift off course, but Mia is teaching me structure, and her needs are reminding me how comforting a schedule can be. Taking care of her is teaching me more about what I actually need to take care of myself in a healthier way. How is this little bunny so wise, so intuitive? The promise to care for her, every day, is a responsibility that I thought would feel heavy and burdensome, but instead, it is a way I have rediscovered purposeful living. I am grateful.

Letting Go

Detachment from physical things is the hardest lesson I’ve had to learn from living with Mia. Mia loves to chew my stuff. She has chewed holes in sentimental blankets, she has forever changed favorite pieces of furniture, and she will take a chunk out of newly made pieces fresh from my workroom. She doesn’t discriminate from store-bought items either – brand new overalls, my phone case, my Nalgene bottle. This has stressed me out. Mia has chewed the couch, a brand new coffee table hand-built by Kyle, the freshly painted baseboards, slippers, and I’m sure there will be more. I’ve gone through the stages of grief. I’ve had moments of intense frustration and questioning it all. But when I committed to adopting Mia, I told myself that I would remember that people are more important than things, and in this case, people and little furry members of the family.

The Floor is Great

I love sitting on the floor. I have always loved sitting on the floor; it grounds my mind – no pun intended. But dating and spending time at future in-law houses and not wanting to be weird, renting with worn wood floors, and moving into adulthood with busy schedules, changed my life from a cozy floor sitter to work chairs and collapsing into couches at the end of the day. Or sitting at my sewing table in a chair with bad posture. I stopped sitting on the floor. But with a rabbit, they like and need you to be on their level. I believe it is essential for bonding with your rabbit. At the beginning, it was hard. It felt unnatural after a decade of not being on the floor. The floor felt hard, unwelcoming. Even with carpet. But after a few months, I felt comfortable. My hips and back hurt less when I spend time on the floor. A year later, I am back to being a floor dweller. Without Mia, would I have ever gone back? I don’t know, but wow, my body feels more comfortable, younger even.

Slow Down, Be Present

The final thing that my rabbit soulmate has taught me this year is to be present and slow down. Mia is already four; she has an estimated lifespan of 12 years, which is not a lot of time when you really care about someone. I don’t want to miss any more moments with her. Kyle and I celebrated 9 years of marriage this year, 11 years together. Time feels like it is flying, and I want to be more present in my relationship with him. My mom and my stepdad are also getting older, and I want to be more present. Mia is teaching me that. Where I can, when I can make the choice to pause what I am doing to spend time with her, and I challenge myself to do so. That has been a challenge. I tend to hyperfixate on projects, which burn me out, but a difficult bad habit to break.

This year, I have created less, but I am feeling the balance being restored to my life. Without Mia hopping over to spend time with me, who knows if I would be shifting my perspective to a healthier state of mind? I can feel my mind and body feeling less stressed. Mia naps a lot, and that is another piece of the slowing-down puzzle that I am learning to accept without guilt. Rest is important. Rest is necessary. Slowing down is good for us. But we resist, because it’s tough to go against the grain. Rest is seen as lazy, even though our bodies and minds get burnt out. Living with Mia is helping me reset those misconceptions and take better care of myself.

Final Thoughts

I would 100% recommend adopting a rabbit if you have been thinking about it. Adopt any pet, actually, or volunteer at a local animal shelter. Do your research and get involved; it will change your life for the better. Animals are so calming. Mia has helped me open up again, in ways I thought I was closed off for good. It’s helped me understand my neurodivergence, my sensitivity, my trauma. She just gets me. She listens, she is there. She has become a best friend, and don’t we all need more of that in our lives? And what about Mia? Well, I’m honored that we got to provide her with her furever home. She has a big space to zoomie around, endless hay, and pets. She gets to watch TV, explore the couch, and have all her toys and treats to herself. She is the center of attention and trusts us. It’s amazing to know a prey animal trusts you. It challenges you to be the best person you can be.

#78 – Can You Feel Optimism in 2025?

This is a bit of a follow-up to my discussion of cultural boredom from earlier this year, a little update to my creative slump, and exciting developments for my hunt to replace my reliable crafting supplies. The world still feels like it is on fire, but I think I am learning how to thrive again. It takes me a long time to process things, so maybe that’s why?

Spaghetti and Gnarly

Le Sserafim released a song that captures the wonderfully nonsensical world of a good K-pop song. Spaghetti is catchy, silly, and makes me crave spaghetti, so that’s what I am cooking tonight. It is what I remember the music videos of K-pop to look like when I took the plunge in 2022. It was fun, and in the last few years, it has lost some of its luster with darker concepts, instead of cute, and a bit uninspired. Although I’m fully into K-pop, it has been repetitive and bland for most of 2025. Except for my favorites – Stray Kids and Nmixx. Enter Gnarly by Katseye. A song that is so jarring it’s bad but also amazing, it’s been a weird one for me, the thesis of this year, it has felt like. “Everything is gnarly.” A phrase that has carried me through bizarre headlines and life’s bumpy road this year. For me, Gnarly was going to be the song that typified what I remember feeling in 2025, until Bleep by Stray Kids dropped in August. But now, I hope I will remember moments that feel like the upbeat wonder of Spaghetti. What about Golden? I desperately need to compile notes for K-pop Demon Hunters because that has been such a gift.

Big Twist at Michaels

Big Twist is back at Michaels, for real, and it’s kind of silly to admit this, but it feels comforting. There’s a Joann Knit and Sew Shop section in the store, and like, maybe it was a bad dream? I mean, all the crafting drama definitely happened this year between private equity, tariffs, and Sci Show declaring the arrival of physicists to help the knitters. The familiarity was maybe all my neurodivergent mind needed to just relax a bit? Now the fabric is not good, but it could get better in time. I’m choosing to be hopeful, I mean, the recent US election showed a strong rejection of the Trump Administration, so as people have said all year, if it can get worse, it can get better. And for me, who hates change with a passion, I’ve learned that if it disappears, it can come back. I just need to work on my patience. I have found a second local yarn store in my own state, and a great local fabric shop. I’d say I’m pleased to the point that I am not missing Joann like I thought I would.

Stitches for Identity

I believe I am finally moving out of the depressed forest that is being laid off due to personal and global trauma. I’ve been listening to Kitchen and Jorn’s Losing Followers Podcast, where they have been talking through the post-Buzzfeed time of their careers. I was in a toxic job at Great Dane Trailers in the late 2010s, and it was freeing yet terrifying to lose that job. Listening to Jen and Kristin talk through the transition of leaving a job that demanded all of them, to be free from that monster, but also lose all connection to the project they built from the ground up, has been a balm to me. When I was laid off, I lost my app and my content calendar, my magazine contribution. I was wrecked, and I didn’t know how to process that for years. I felt like a loser. I dove into crafting, and for years, those stitches of thread and yarn gave me meaning.

The blog, though, and finally this year uploading my manuscript to this website this year connected me back to what makes me feel like me. I have always been drawn to writing, and not having that or a way to work towards something bigger than just sharing my creations on social media was gnarly. But this blog and your community have helped me find my way back. I mean, heck, Udal Cuain and my original blog, where I shared chapters, was the portfolio that landed me the corporate job. Although it’s gone, what I learned and experienced stayed with me and has made me grow into who I am now. This has been a full circle.

It’s been freeing to admit to myself and loved ones that I was depressed by that career loss. Starting over again has been confusing, but it’s not all figured out yet. There is still time to find a new place where I belong. I’m in the process of recalibrating, and that is a direction in itself. I feel freed from the weight of “monetizing my hobby” and the impossible summit of creating a small business as someone who truly is not cut out for the accounting or marketing parts.

Unmasking and Coping for the First Time

Truly, though, as I reflect on this year, getting serious about health – mental, physical, and emotional – for the first time has contributed to the feeling of optimism I have leaving 2025 that I did not have entering 2025. I have healthier boundaries in relationships, more honesty about how I’m doing, and whether I am feeling overstimulated. I recently got into rebounding, aka a fancy term for jumping on a miniature trampoline for cardio. Wow, I like this for my mind! It resets me, and it’s helping me get stronger. I used to feel ashamed of who I am. I didn’t understand why I felt so different, nor did I know how to communicate burnout without pushing friends and loved ones away. Being unmasked was tumultuous for the first couple of months, but now I never want to put that neurotypical mask back on.

How has 2025 changed you? I think it has made me unapologetically empathetic. Bolder to say I disagree with wrong because the stakes have been higher than ever in my lifetime. I hope to carry that forward into 2026, because I think the opposite of late-stage capitalism is community, so let’s burn it down with empathy. Thank you, dear reader, for spending time with me today. I wish you love and kindness.

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Avoiding the Comparison Pitfall & Being Comfortable With Slow Progress

Gardening, garden beds

Something I struggle with is not falling into the trap of comparison. Whether it’s people I know or people I’ll never meet, I find it easy to compare myself to them if there are any similarities. And I think social media is a major factor in creating an environment where we compare ourselves to others. Now, comparing yourself to others isn’t always a bad thing. It can help us set goals for ourselves when done in a healthy manner. However, too often, when it comes to social media, it’s rarely healthy. Social media platforms, such as Instagram, are designed to only tell part of the story. We either don’t get to see the entire story and all the work that goes into achieving something, or the achievement itself is misleading. Either way, it’s not good.

Unfortunately, two of my favorite hobbies, gardening and woodworking, tend to be full of comparison and even being bad about yourself. With woodworking, you can get caught up in the size of a person’s shop, the quality (and price) of the tools they have, and the type of wood they can work with. I don’t remember my dad or grandfather ever working with quarter-sawn white oak, but that’s the bulk of what you see YouTube, HGTV, and Instagram woodworkers use. Most people can’t afford that quality of lumber. When it comes to tools, I don’t know many people who can afford to outfit their shop with Festool, whose most basic sander will set you back $300, but that’s what you see a lot on TV and the Internet. It’s easy to tell yourself that you don’t need those tools, but when a project doesn’t turn out as well as the media personality’s does, you can quickly point to your cheaper tools as the culprit. The reality, though, is that the tools don’t maker the woodworker; the person does. We don’t see how many failed attempts went into a project before the successful final product. We also don’t know all the years a person put into the profession or hobby before working up to the expensive tools and materials.

Gardening is the same: If you want the best results from the start, you’ll want to pay to have all new soil brought in to amend what currently exists or buy the best materials to create an above-ground garden. You’ll also want to have the strongest and tallest fence to prevent animals from gaining access to your plants. And don’t forget to have an automatic watering setup that measures soil moisture and waters the plants as necessary. And when you look at Pinterest or read a gardening magazine, you’ll find the most beautiful gardens that are absent of weeds. If you’re like me, your first thought will be “Why doesn’t mine look like that?” Rationally, I know it’s because that garden that probably existed for years and has been the result of small improvements on an annual basis. But still, we don’t know that, and the standalone image is unlikely to tell that story.

Focus on the Successes

I don’t know where you’re at with your garden or other hobbies, but please know that you are doing very well and should be proud of everything you’ve accomplished. If it was your first year gardening and all you harvested was a single tomato, celebrate it. Feeding, watering, and caring for a tomato plant long enough to reach maturity isn’t easy. If you’re a mature gardener who’s struggled with carrots and finally got to eat one out of your garden, be thrilled. You put in a lot of work for that one carrot, and that shouldn’t be taken lightly. In your mind, it may not be as impressive as Instagram handle 123’s harvest, but who cares? They aren’t you, and you aren’t them. Both are okay. We don’t know the background that’s allowed them to achieve their success. They could be veteran gardeners with years of experience. They could also be commercial gardeners with a personal page. Or, they may not be gardeners at all and are simply posing with someone else’s harvest and garden. I never want that to be the case, but the sad reality is that it does happen.

Be Comfortable With Small Improvements

After you begin to appreciate the successes you have each year, I think it’s okay to start focusing on improvements that can be made moving forward. It can be an achievable goal, such as trying a new vegetable or seed variety that you’re curious about. It could also be finding ways to improve your soil drainage or become more efficient at watering. Perhaps you can work toward buying a new piece of equipment each spring that will lead to more success.

We’ve been working to put all these into practice. We had pretty good success with our plants this year, but one of our goals for next year is to have more melons and pumpkins reach maturity. I also want to find a way to make watering more seamless and efficient. The majority of our watering was done with cans, and it would be nice to have a setup that used soaker hoses attached to a single hookup. Finally, we want to improve our fence system. Ours worked pretty well for the first year and was never meant to be a long-term solution. But we also know that we likely won’t be able to upgrade all of it for next year, especially if we do want a forever solution that doesn’t need to be upgraded again in five years. That means upgrading it a little at a time. Maybe, we’ll upgrade one or two beds at a time so that in a few years, the entire garden will have a fence that is deer-proof and structurally sound.

Reaching that decision and mindset hasn’t been easy. I’ve mentioned before that I’m an impatient person by nature and struggle to take things slowly. My default is to find a remedy for the failed fence immediately, but that isn’t feasible. To upgrade all the fence for next year would be a substantial investment or would mean buying another short-term stopgap that would result in failure again. Instead, I’ve focused on what will be the best long-term investment and use the fewest resources while not spreading ourselves too thin. That means upgrading the fence little by little until it’s all improved. It will also mean that we’ll have some breaches in the fence until it’s all upgraded, but that’s okay. We’ll navigate that just like we did this year.

Find Joy Where You’re At

To wrap it up, I want to circle back to being happy where you’re at. It’s important to find joy in our current situation. Sure, it’d be great to have all the best tools at the start of something, but there’s little gratification in that. Working with what you can afford at a given time will help you appreciate the higher quality items when you can upgrade in the future. You can also be amazed at how much ingenuity you have when you are working with “starter” tools.

For example, I began woodworking with a used compact Craftsman table saw. It had a plastic basic that twisted when I ran a board through it. It was a bit scary, but I was able to build a serving tray with it that Magz still uses. I’ve since upgraded to a larger, more powerful Rigid saw that is capable of doing a lot more work, but I wouldn’t have appreciated how nice it is had I not used the Craftsman saw. Eventually, I want to upgrade to a cabinet table saw that can do even more, and I know that I’ll appreciate that one because I’ve worked with my current one for at least three years.

Squeezing everything you can out of what you have is an important mindset to have even though it’s in sharp contrast to the current mindset of many people. It’s fun to be countercultural in that way. It’s also why we aren’t rushing to spend a bunch of money in our garden when what we have serves us well and instead can slowly upgrade things.

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