Real Talk: The Wonderful Thing About Triggers

Is Triggers are Wonderful things… Just kidding. Triggers fucking suck. What is a trigger, you ask? Good question. I didn’t start hearing the term myself until this past fall, and then it made sense. A trigger is a reminder of a troubling event, thus triggering negative emotions. Pretty obvious. I’m surprised I hadn’t heard that term sooner, […]

It’s All About Perspective

Third Annual Clottiversary It’s easy to complain about life, because shit can get hard sometimes. It’s like, man, my love life is in shambles because dating mustachioed cyborgs isn’t that rewarding and I owe back taxes for 400 years and I have this wedgie that I cannot pick out for the life of me; literally, […]

If The Plane Goes Down

When I was little, I was so scared of flying that the second I got on the plane, I would curl myself up into a ball in my seat and force myself to fall asleep. My rationalization? It would be better to die sleeping during takeoff than awake. Because, like, if the plane were to […]

Fourth of Ju-Lame

Listen. I’m not about to get all Debbie Downer on you, but I have some problems with the 4th of July. Mainly, it tends to inspire blind patriotism. Lots of shouts of “‘MERICA!” and copious amounts of burnt cow and pig and probably too much booze. Definitely too much booze. I even had a booze or […]

Get Down with the Sickness

I returned to the state that bore me, and hoped it would welcome me into it’s mountainous bosom. You know what I got instead? A fucking sinus infection. The first sinus infection I ever had was so painful that I literally could not move my face. I’ll state that again, because it’s ridiculous: I could not […]

Top 5 Things I Learned in Graduate School

Part two of a two-part series. Here we go! 5. Routine is really, really important. I’m still learning this one, and it’s really difficult. But a lot of what I did over the school year was get my homework done the night before or the hours before class, and turn in a story that I […]

10 Things I Learned in Graduate School (Year One)

10. Graduate programs really, really differ depending on what your focus is. My biffle Batman had 30 page finals and conferences to attend and research to do and calculations to run. Me? Oh, I ate dinner with my classmates and we talked about our writing a little bit. That’s not to say what I did […]

Seriously, Brain?

I woke up yesterday drenched in a cold sweat. My fists were clenched into balls and my arms were crossed. I have a lot of nightmares, so I’m used to waking up like that. What I’m not used to is having a really, really dumb nightmare. But, in all honesty, I should probably expect that […]

Conversations With Anxiety: Late Night Worries

I find myself staring at my ceiling a lot at night these days. It’s less insomnia and more me wondering about what it means to be a grown-up and wishing terribly for the days when I was so scared of being on my own that I literally slept on the floor of my parents’ bedroom […]

Live A Little

Welcome back, friends! Back where? you ask, confused. You didn’t go anywhere. I went somewhere. You know, for a person who generally doesn’t like going out, meeting new people, trying adventure sports without an ambulance and a stretcher waiting nearby, spending money, or getting out of my comfort bubble, sometimes I really surprise myself. And then […]