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Blog

For a fuller view of my writing beyond my recent posts, dive in below and peruse as much or as little as you’d like. I write about a wide range of topics from WordPress to Surrogacy to Photography to Mental Health. Don’t follow me if you want to only hear about a certain topic as I write based on what comes up for me in that moment of time. As always, thanks for reading.

  • just tunes and lyrics

    No words from me today – just tunes and lyrics on a nasty day. Maybe I’ll forget and maybe I won’t I’m stuck in the moment And so far from home Cause loving nobody It’s breaking my heart But you’ll never know this Wherever you are Well maybe I don’t give up easily But I […]

  • Watch your (irrational) thoughts

    “Watch your thoughts, they become words; watch your words, they become actions; watch your actions, they become habits; watch your habits, they become character; watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” I’m convinced irrational thoughts are simply a part of living. Whether I realize it or not, I confront irrational thoughts every single day. […]

  • How do the Norwegians feed their sick children?

    I’ve taken my mom on a European adventure and I’m so glad I did. After coming down with food poisoning the second day here, she nursed me back to health. She sent this email out to her friends soon after and it just made me laugh so I had to share: Dear All, My Anne […]

  • Day in the Life of a Nomad Happiness Engineer Pt 2

    I work at Automattic, the parent company of WordPress.com and all that jazz, as a Happiness Engineer and a team lead. My team is in charge of creating happiness for our Premium users – Polldaddy, VaultPress, Akismet, and Jetpack. Here’s a glimpse into what my day looked look on the road: Current location: Oslo, Norway. Why? […]

  • Throw back

    I was texting a friend of about life, love, suffering, blah blah. I just recently reactivated my Facebook and noticed this funny throwback feature in the midst of texting her. I used to love timehop back in the day for the exact reason that it was always a curious exercise to look back. All that […]

  • A fantastic lottery

    I finished two books this week which, accidentally, were perfect companions to read together. One fiction. One nonfiction. Both about existence and non existence. Sum by David Eagleman & Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt. Sum is a piece of fiction which, through short stories, helped me imagine an afterlife beyond just what my previously Christian […]

  • 22 & 23

    “My 21st year was about hitting big milestones: graduating, getting a job, moving. This year is about making sure these big changes fit appropriately in my life and that I build upon them rather than stagnating. Graduating doesn’t mean I stop learning. Getting a job doesn’t mean I stop pushing myself to be better. Moving […]

  • You would just love this

    I used to beat myself up for being somewhere and seeing loved ones in my surroundings. It felt like being plagued – shouldn’t I just go somewhere completely new and not bring my own personal baggage with me?! Isn’t that the whole point of traveling alone?! “She would love that coffee shop.” “He would totally want to […]

  • Choose your own adventure

    This time last week I was in Austin with one of my best friends exploring the city. Yesterday I woke up in San Francisco in the Castro district to get coffee with a friend from UNC followed by brunch at a previous coworker’s house. A month ago I was preparing for my cousin’s wedding in […]

  • Keep this feeling

    Sunshine, sunshine, it’s fine I feel it in my skin, warming up my mind Sometimes you gotta give in to win I love the days when it shines, whoa let it shine If I could I would keep this feeling in a plastic jar Bust it out whenever someone’s actin’ hard I was sitting in […]

  • I know the sound of your heart

    I don’t know how I found this song but it’s just my jam right now. Start the morning playing this with my headphones on. dancing to myself. throw open the fridge door. snag a couple of eggs and start cooking. “Well I know when you’re around cause I know the sound I know the sound, of your […]

  • Redefining “home”

    Since I started nomading last May, I quickly realized my definition of home drastically needed to change in order to adjust to the constant change in scenery. There was no longer the option or feeling of “coming back to your own bed” after weeks of travel. Instead I’ve found myself living in hotel rooms, friend’s […]

  • Barriers

    “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” -Rumi This quote challenged me today so, of course, I had to share it. I truly believe love is everywhere and, like the quote says, it is us who create the […]

  • Back to the basics

    Don’t worry this post isn’t about me going paleo or joining a movement community that only believes in crawling on the ground at all times. I played touch rugby this morning for a wonderful hour and a half. I haven’t touched a rugby ball (get it) in a long time and went to play concerned that […]

  • Constants

    I called one of my constants today. Constant == someone who is always there in my life. I strive to be constants for other people – you know – that person you can call at 4AM. I’m lucky to have those in my life. I’m visiting Austin, TX right now and, after having one too many […]

  • {fill in the blank}

    1PM hit today and I hadn’t been outside or eaten lunch yet. I was on a roll though and was already mentally pushing back any sort of balance in my life in favor of getting more done. Do you ever have those days where you do one part of your life really well? For example, today as of […]

  • Double down on vulnerability

    “It’s at this point that people in the midst of difficulty begin to feel a call. They are not masters of the situation, but neither are they helpless. They can’t determine the course of their pain, but they can participate in responding to it. They often feel an overwhelming moral responsibility to respond well to […]

  • Some of us forever

    “We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.” ― Anaïs Nin

  • Like a radio

    “People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us […]

  • The upside

    I’ve been trying to think of clever ways to reframe me being heartbroken. I was slouched in bed watching Pride & Prejudice rejoicing over the fact that I could when I realized the following: I can choose who I want to love without being used as a family bargaining chip for more land, cattle, etc. […]

  • There are no such easy answers

    As Todorov notes, memory is not the opposite of oblivion. Rather, it is the result of a complex interaction between effacement (or forgetfulness) and conservation – two forces that constantly pull our minds in different directions. Thus, memory is unthinkable without selection; when we “remember” an event, it means that we conserve only some of […]

  • Reach out

    “Who would you have dinner with if you could have dinner with anyone in the world?” I’ve been asked this before and I typically answer with dead people – Viktor Frankl, Emile Durkheim, etc. It was a sad reality when the people I so wanted to get to know were long gone. Today I reached out […]

  • Before and after moments

    One of the big questions I get asked when I tell people I was a surrogate baby has to do with “when did you know?!”. Most people are expecting this giant before and after moment where one day I was just an innocent little kid and the next day I knew. I never had that. I’ve […]

  • Childhood tunes

    Believe it or not, one of the first CDs I got as a kid was Maroon 5’s “Songs About Jane”. Angsty. Alternative. Songs you could jam and cry to. Today, I had this overwhelming urge to rock some old Maroon 5 (back when they weren’t cool). To this day, I still love this version of Maroon […]

  • Those people aren’t you.

    So fail. Be bad at things. Be embarrassed. Be afraid. Be vulnerable. Go out on a limb or two or twelve, & you will fall & it’ll hurt. But the harder you fall, the farther you will rise. The louder you fail, the clearer your future becomes. Failure is a gift, welcome it. There are […]

  • Remarkable intersection

    “The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations – all of them rearranging themselves so could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe […]

  • Gift of old age

    Great article on “The Wisdom of the Aged” in the NYT. Here are some of my favorite quotes & questions from it: In New York City, the population age 85 and up has been growing at five times the rate for the city as a whole, doubling since 1980 to about 150,000. For this often invisible […]

  • What you can do today

    When I tore my ACL my freshmen year of college, I was lucky enough to get training from Chris Hirth over the summer while the club athletic trainer was away. I paid literally $80 bucks to get training from the head athletic trainer for UNC’s men’s basketball team. I credit not re-tearing my ACL and continuing to […]

  • More than once

    “You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” -Margaret Thatcher  

  • Mastering Small Talk

    Okay – this may sound ridiculous but, for an introvert like me, this is a real thing. I’m terrible at small talk. I jump from “Nice weather, right?” to “Do you feel like you’re living a meaningful life?” way too quickly. In high school, there was even an article written by the local newspaper that somehow focused […]