Vacation!

 Just a heads up that I'll be on vacation for the next 2 weeks! Woo! 

Regularly scheduled posting will be back week of the 22nd.

Summer Vacation 2021

 This is just an announcement to say that I'll be on vacation for the next 2 weeks! I finally am getting a break and I'm super excited about it. I'll be back posting the second week of August, so have a fun time until then!

Regarding some recent US events:

 Hey white people, you all better stop being angry/surprised at the events happening in Washington D.C. and better start examining how you might have contributed to white supremacy and what you can change to fight against it in the future.

That is all.

Holidays 2020!

 Alright well this year has been hard enough without prolonging it, so I'm taking the next two weeks off to rest and recover. The end of the year is an arbitrary time point to mark endings and beginnings, but it'll be some well-deserved time off for me that I don't want to cut into too much. Hope your end of year plans are similarly restorative and I'll write more in 2021!

This Is Beautiful: My Ace Journey

The main point of this post is to announce that I finally put together an asexuality tag for this blog. I don't know why it took me this long since I've been posting about it for over 5 years now. I suspect that I initially didn't want to make a big deal of it, but here we are and I'm still making a big deal out of it. 

It's really interesting going back and reading my early posts. My original post about coming out is from March 1st, 2015. The writing isn't super so I'm not linking to it, but it's very easy to search for it. And it's strange to see how my priorities haven't changed so much. I talked a lot about awareness, and not understanding crushes. Both things that I am still working on. I also have a couple posts lamenting that asexuals are rarely included in popular discourse about the LGBTQ+ community, which still sometimes happens. 

I don't think I would love going back to my previous self, I have a feeling that I'd think that she's an idiot, but it's interesting to take a glimpse every once in a while. Just to see how much I've grown. I would never have guessed back then just how invested in the community that I would become. Or maybe I actually would have seen this coming, I knew that those were my people almost instantly. It's hard to tell now, since hindsight is 20/20.

Regardless, this identity has been a large part of my life for over 5 years now, and it's safe to say that it will stay a part of it for a while longer.

Campus Strike

 Look, this week has been rough, I'm just going to take off a week from writing here. The graduate students, residential life, some faculty, and numerous others have been striking all week at my university to protest the reopening plan as well as many other things. It's just been exhausting since I've been doing my best to support the strike and I don't really have the energy right now. 

Support people working to improve conditions. Striking and making your voice heard is beautiful. That's all I got right now.

Taking July Off

In the spirit of enjoying my last summer before grad school, I am going to be traveling around Europe for the month of July! So you won't hear from me again until August, so I fully intend to be back in business once I am back in the country with some posts about the new cities that I've visited. Have a nice summer!

50th Anniversary of Sgt. Pepper!

Plot twist: I'm sick so this is going to be short.

LET'S PARTY LIKE IT'S 1967!!!

The Beatles album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" came out this week, 50 years ago! I'm celebrating (or trying to).

This album has been dubbed the best of all time by Rolling Stones, and has won numerous other awards. Whether you're a longtime Beatles fan or not, give it a listen, it deserves that much. :)

HEY NOW

I graduated undergrad on Sunday so I'm not posting any more than this. Happy Memorial Day!

Happy Holidays!

Taking the next 2 weeks off because holidays, have a happy and healthy end of year! See you in 2017!

Orlando

tw: the events of Orlando over the weekend

I’ve been thinking for a while about what the best way to respond to the Orlando shooting would be. And as of now, I don’t have a good answer.

To be honest, I’m really tired and fed up with all of this. I’m tired of hearing about mass shootings like Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, and now Orlando. I’m tired of all the hate circulating because of it. I’m tired of having different groups of people being pit against each other on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. And how many innocent people need to die before anyone in our government decides to do anything about it?

But I also know that the only way to fight against this kind of hate is with love. Love for each other, love for the LGBTQA+ community, love for people the media will try to pin this on. Yes there is a time and a place for mourning and anger, but ultimately we must respond to this with love and only love, since to respond with hate would put us on the same level as the sicko who caused this in the first place.

I have no idea what will happen as a result of this tragedy, but I do know that everyone needs to help the victims (by donating blood, etc) and stay determined to not let the media cause them to give up on love and the dream of peace, as remote as it is.

Happy 2016!

Good job everyone for making it this far! 2015 for me was a year full of surprises and changes and adventures (and much better than 2014 haha), and I hope yours was as well!

I'll be traveling around for most of January, so there will be more of those fun stories to tell, but then I return to school and our regularly scheduled nonsense, so that should be exciting.

Anyways, hope everyone who sees this is hanging in there and celebrated our arbitrary position around the sun in their favorite way. <3 Lots of love to everyone out there!

Updates on Things

So just so we're all clear, I'm heading off to Scotland today for my semester abroad! (In fact I think my plane is arriving when this post is scheduled to go up, so that's exciting!)

As a result, posts are going back to once a week after this. I'm probably going to post things about being abroad and all that. If nothing happens though, I do have an incredible backlog of book reviews from this summer that I didn't get to post yet so those may show up. (I ended up reading a lot, it was great!)

I'll see you all on the other side of the pond! (If I fight the Loch Ness Monster I'll be sure to let you all know.)

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

So I'll be going back to school today, and my free time is going to dramatically decrease. I'll probably post maybe once a week as opposed to everyday now.
Bring it sophomore year!