A full instructional blog post on how to use semi-cured gel nails.

Why couldn't I come up with something? Was I repressing some sort of trauma? Did I experience a brain injury that I can't remember because, hello...brain injury! Do I have some sort of amnesia?

I started wracking my brain wondering if I had done something or said something that would make them all hate me. I mean, that was obviously what was happening…what other reason could there be for them to purposely leave me out? My throat tightened as it became more obvious that they didn’t want me to go with them.

My 2023 goals and my word of the year

The fact that God was intimately involved in orchestrating the minutia of my life to bring me to those hills, where he would reveal himself through introspection and environment, is a stunningly beautiful sign of what a loving and caring God he is.

As I’ve been feeling aimless, I have realized it’s because I’ve been feeling like I've reached a sort of edge in my life, when in reality, I'm no where near the edge. It’s less of an edge and more of a very sharp corner that I can’t see around.

So as I think about what my best selling book would be about, there is just no way I could focus it on one subject. I'm way too much of a generalist for that.

I had been swimming since I was a kid and running, well that's just walking faster so I'm sure I could figure that out. But I was well past the age when people normally learn to ride a bike so I was going to have to figure this out.

Fleetingly, I felt the disappointment.

That’s it for me. I’m done right? I’m officially old and uncool and there’s nothing left for me. I might as well just pack it up and start making funeral arrangements.

Right?

I was stuck in the mindset that if I personally wanted to do one thing, then God probably wanted me to do the other thing.

But at the center of our world and theirs, humans were there feeling joy, sadness, anger, frustration, and hope.

My days were spent learning about sentence structure and dividing decimal points while my nights were spent slaving over a hot stove, mixing up dough, adding a few drops of food coloring and packing up my bags of green, blue and red cookies for sale.

The facilitator caught my eye and gave me a nod, and that was the final push that got me out of my seat and up to the microphone. THE MICROPHONE for goodness sakes.

So many questions, no good answers. But the words have been welling up inside of her and they need to come out. So despite the questions and the worry, she knew she had to go.

…and most importantly: focusing on being my authentic self without apologizing while at the exact same time making sure I don't say anything remotely "problematic" that might get me cancelled.

Writing feels to me like one of the most vulnerable things you can ever do. It’s like sharing your deepest thoughts on a giant billboard for everyone to see. Maybe it’s a friend walking by, maybe its a complete stranger, but either way you don’t have control over who sees it and you can’t explain things to them if they misunderstand or disagree with what you are trying to say.