Year: 2026
-
The time when I most felt the humble awe and joyful wonder was when I was high above the open waters, parasailing with my husband. The only thing that kept us from floating away entirely was the tug of the towline. It stretched down to the boat that kept getting smaller and smaller as we…
-
My 2025 planner’s year-in-review reminded me that I had a full year despite how mundane most days felt. And as I read or watched end-of-year summaries on social media, I kept thinking about what made 2025 truly different for me. I thought about how it wasn’t really about what I accomplished that year, but what…
-
I remember a friend asking our small group, as a way to challenge our ability to think deeply, “Would you follow a leader even when the leader is doing bad things?” We never really discussed how bad is bad, but I can remember how each of us had conflicting responses—about how we shouldn’t be naive…
-
Following the New Year celebration, we still had some guava left, and to keep them from spoiling, I decided to eat them. While sharing was an option, nobody wanted to have them, so I ended up eating them all by myself. What’s fascinating is that while I was still slicing them, I started recalling childhood…
-
Being away from traditional forms of employment (you can simply put, being unemployed) enabled me to spend more time with my family and my thoughts. I might be speaking from privilege, having the luxury not to participate in traditional work while still having my basic needs met. But if you have access to resources by…
-
It is strange what we are willing to sacrifice to prove our worth as working people. In the metropolis, the ability to stay awake and keep going on empty, running on too many to count cups of coffee, to grind despite of extreme exhaustion, has become a marker of productivity. But in smaller cities, sleeping…
-
I can still remember how I found out about the vacancy post of what eventually became our apartment unit. I was about to be married and desperate to secure a place for my husband and me to live once we did. Counting the days before we finally move in together, I saw an ad on…
jessa 