If I see another engagement post, I’ll throw my phone against the wall. 

Americans are known to talk to strangers. We are overbearing, we are verbose, we are often overly friendly to the point where our genuineness is put into question. As an introverted child growing up in the Midwest, nose buried in a book, I never thought I’d live up to this stereotype, this image of the Southern woman in a Hallmark store I had conjured up in my mind. But last week I talked to a Trader Joe’s cashier for over twenty minutes, so it’s time to address a truth about myself:

I was tasked with writing a 25 page memoir for my Creative Nonfiction class in the Fall of 23, so I chose to write about my early childhood during the 2008 recession and my relationship with my family. You can read it here.

Zuihitsu is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. I experimented with this genre in one of my English classes in Fall of 2022, and this is what resulted.

A pink haze settled over the outline of Esja from the kitchen window in Mosfellsbær, Iceland, clouds hanging heavily over its peaks like a rugged Monet painting. The newness of the previous week began to wear off as I grew comfortable with the weight of my bedspread, the bitterness of the Keurig coffee, the laughter and screams ringing from the living room at seven in the morning. But my attention to these daily rhythms of life in Mosso would soon be interrupted—Laufey was house sitting for her friend in the countryside, and I was joining.

“The 10:15 flight to Reykjavik begins boarding in half an hour.” The announcement boomed from the speakers of the Chicago O’Hare airport. In six short hours, I would be landing in Reykjavik, Iceland to start a month of au-pairing for the family of a fisherman. Ever since watching The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in 2013, it had been my dream to visit the land of fire and ice, but the reality that I was actually going had still not settled upon me.

The root of my identity was questioned at a party on Halloween night in the latter half of my twentieth year.

Sundays in Northern Ireland are for long runs, oatmeal, and church (not necessarily in order of importance).