Nihilists Have More Fun

It feels so strange having posted something about losing my mom finally and then going back to posting unrelated things. I always think too much about how things look from the outside, how hard it might be to make sense of them without context. I wonder if it seems too sudden to have such unrelated things together. For over a year, I felt like I couldn't speak publicly because I was too sad. I was thinking about missing my mom constantly and couldn't put anything out there for anyone to see. I still miss her every day, but I'm starting to recover enough that I can do and say other things too, and I have a lot to catch up on. My mom raised me to always look on the bright side of things, and I know from every word and action of hers that she would want her family to enjoy our lives fully, even while missing her. Every day I'm so sad not to have her with me, but at the same time I'm able to enjoy the people around me and the things I get to do. Healing is an uncomforta...

Dear Mom and Dad, I want to tell you more about what I think and why I’ve changed my mind on so many things—I want to tell you because of course, just like anyone, I like to feel understood, and I’d like there to be more of an understanding between us so we can be closer as a family as well. I don’t like that nowadays I avoid talking with you about a lot of the things that are most important to me and do little more than nod and smile when you bring up the things that are most important to you. The reason I haven’t talked to you about any of this more extensively than by sending you that one brief text message, just detailed enough to say that I had changed my mind about religious things and didn’t want you to worry about me, is that I’m afraid that having to think about any of this makes you sad, and it’s been easier to let everyone act like nothing has really changed than to make you think about the specifics of things that make you sad. Most importantly, I don’t want you to think I’...

In many ways I never liked politics. Certain discussions on how nations should be administered could be interesting, but as a whole the field was so ugly, so reminiscent of a poorly-made and outdated website: gray and unaesthetic, broken, inefficient, frustrating. What was worse, it always seemed to be usurping the place of supposedly nobler and more important subjects, like religion. According to the voices that shaped my understanding of life, the love of Jesus was the thing that would change the world. We were to “seek first the kingdom” and “all these things” would fall into place as we did. Politics, I knew, didn’t change hearts; changed hearts added up to cultural movements, which in turn led to political change, and the way to change hearts was to love the people around you, be real with them, listen to them, and be there for them. But despite this understanding, I often saw political allegiances clawing their way up to the level of religious importance and even supplanting what...

- originally October 27, 2019 I've been gone for quite a while already. I took a break to fall in love. And also to write a book. The book is probably three quarters of the way done with a good outline to go off of for the rest, and I'm more in love everyday with the man who's certainly better than my dreams. I've been spending my free time on writing that is not this, so it's been a bit longer than I hoped before I've managed to get a second post out, but at least it's still the same year, and that's not too bad given my record! I could say a lot of things about love. That shouldn't be surprising given that out of the pie of things people say, a wide slice has to do with love. But it is a little surprising to me to find myself having things to say on the subject. I was never one to think ahead much to what it would be like to fall in love. Never the kind of girl who daydreamed about the perfect wedding. (And believe me, I am feeling that n...