Published by Heartwood INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW TO LIVE MY LIFE if I should die. Use resistance as formaldehyde. Refuse to accept the fact of change. Reserve the right to refuse, and refuse the right to be reserved. Stop eating when you’re upset. Burn off the rest in punishing workouts. When you hear about emotional eating or exercise addiction, don’t identify. React to every word or change like it’s a harpoon. Pump your cortisol day and night ruminating on safety. When you hav

First Published on HealthyRich A week before I turned 30, I went to a new counselor. I’d been to therapy before — when I was in high school and for a brief time after undergrad. I wasn’t sure I’d truly resolved what was holding me back from the life I’d wanted, but I’d at least been able to identify it. And knowledge is half the battle, right? The problem is that more knowledge does not equate to more than half the battle. And, if the battle here is for the life I am excite

First Published in Roi Fientantor Gaffes Will Be The Glory To err is human, to something is divine. I could Google it. But I have a problem with the whole setup. Pit human against divine, it’s obvious: humans lose every time. But where it goes from there—I’ve had enough. The planet would be better without us. Machines can do everything better than humans. Humans are only special in how much we suck. What happened? Why do so many of us hate us enough to believe the world wou

First Published on EQ Iris Dating If you're disoriented just trying to navigate regular life, you're not alone. It's not just the level of change society has undergone the past two years or how fast that change has happened. It's the fact that pandemic policies differ wildly depending on where you are in the US — not just by state, but by county . Two counties that are a 30-minute drive apart can be miles apart ideologically; this makes it even harder to connect with people

First published on Mad in America . I used to think therapy could be beneficial if only you went through the trials of finding a good therapist—and by “good,” I mean one that is not only well-trained/well-educated, but one that is a “good fit” for you in particular. There are no easy ways to find such a “fit,” of course; it all has to be trial and error. Poking around on the Internet and making the most of the shockingly little third-party information that’s out there about t

Originally Published in the Bacopa Literary Review " Oh. There Is No Going Back " came to me in an instant, nearly whole, on the day in April 2021 when I realized that we as a society are never going back to normal. I had long since stopped wiping down every screen and surface with hydrogen peroxide and I wasn't washing my hands raw every 12 hours anymore like I had the previous year, but I had truly thought that the end of this would at least be in view by the second Easter