I really don't want to write this blog post because my inner editor is warning me I will sound stupid. But I'm forging ahead because my inner editor needs to learn some manners.

I finished RoS2 a week ago. It's hard to believe I stuck with it for four and a half years. It's even harder to believe that I finished it, and it came out semi-coherent. After two lengthy false starts, I finally hit my stride last year and started putting out one chapter every month or so. I learned that...

Well, it's been a while. The last semester of college is no joke. I've been running around trying to pass my classes, earn a small and almost steady income, and figure out to whom and for what to send in job applications. Amid all the insanity, my body decided to force me into a full stop by releasing a not-so-deadly weapon into my system: a stone gone rogue, this time from the opposite kidney. It may not have been "to the death," but it was certainly "to the pain"... Princess...

Almost every New Year, for as long as I've been self-aware enough to do so, I've made New Year's Resolutions. It seemed like a good idea to make goals for where I wanted to be by the end of the year. But this year, I rebelled against tradition in the most insulting way possible: I simply didn't care. After all, every New Year, most of my temporary goals are ones I'll accomplish by necessity, and most long-term plans don't actually change much from year to year.

Goals, such as resolutions,...

It's that time of year, when many of us exist in tension between the ideal Norman Rockwell, Irving Berlin, and Hallmark versions of Christmas we're told we should be experiencing and the stark reality that the holidays can be anything but happy. Now, I recognize the value of holidays in reminding us how we got here and what's important. But in our commercialized society, throwing...

They say artists spend their whole lives repeating themselves. Composers do. Painters do. Writers do. But I think in a sense we are all artists. We all see the world from a different vantage point, some from the eagle's nest, some from the top of the anthill, some riding the river on a log like an adventurous raccoon (or maybe even having the time of our lives digging through what someone else considers garbage). Each of us sees life from a different angle, and therefore we see a limited part of...