My friend Jenna has always wanted to go to Machu Picchu, and I have never been interested in joining her. But when travel blogger Nomadic Matt recommended this book about a guy researching Machu Picchu’s discovery while exploring the Incan ruins for himself….I got totally hooked! Where is my ticket to Peru? I’m ready to go!
Well, not really. If Adams did anything successfully, it is convey the physical toll of climbing up and down numerous mountains. I’m not hugely into exercise, but he’s also brilliant at describing the stunning views from those same moutaintops. I’m willing to work through the pain for the reward. Continue reading →
I’m a planner, so although I’m two months away from moving to Peoria from Dallas, I have already started thinking about packing. Which, and I know this might make me extremely weird, genuinely excites me. I love packing! I love moving! And I think it all comes down to simplicity.
The physical and psychological weight of clutter depresses me. I like to have a few things I love very much (my cat and my books), and the rest is cycled in and out of my life. It’s too easy to accumulate junk when you live in a full-sized house for year after year. The more you have, the less meaningful individual things are.
In addition to the relief of having less, there is something very cleansing about starting over. I love routine, but only to a point. Eventually I grow tired of these things always being in this place, and assuming that this item can only fit here. Moving into a new room in a new house offers a chance for creativity. You get to see your favorite possessions in a new light, because they’re featured in a new space. Old things feel new again.
Moving can be stressful. But there’s a reason I’ve lived in four places in the last five years. I love getting to de-clutter and start over!
Mallory and I both lived in Senegal at the same time, working for the same organization though in different cities. She knew the girls I was working with, so occasionally we would all meet and hang out in the capital city of Dakar. I got food poisoning from a sushi restaurant one weekend, and when I suggested she sleep in a different room because I would be vomiting all night, she said, “Nah, it’s fine,” and fell asleep. Her chill reaction immediately made me want to be her friend. Continue reading →
If it were acceptable book review practice to simply post paragraphs of “!!!!!” over and over again, I would. Pierce Brown seems to delight in leading his readers to believe that one thing will happen…and then making everything fall apart so that you’re left staring at the page, wondering how in the world Darrow will escape this time. And by “this time” I mean every fifty pages or so. The big moments come hard and fast, and nothing ever goes as I expect it. I LOVE IT.
While Rising Red was a small(er) stakes revenge story, Golden Son widens its scope to the whole solar system, and this time Darrow has matured into a desire, not for revenge, but for transformation. He doesn’t shy away from the battles he needs to fight (and agh! the battles! the enormous death counts of actual main characters!), but his overarching goal is to redesign the Society into a place where every color can be and do what they will. It’s a more complex goal, but nobler as well. Continue reading →
During my last semester in college, I shrank away from friends and became an almost-recluse. I was anticipating leaving the people I loved, and the fearful part of myself thought it would hurt less if I left them emotionally before I left them physically. Thankfully, my best friend called me out on my actions and made me aware of the fact that, although it might help me, it was hurting her.
In the last ten years, I have moved five times (I’m jumping forward to include my move to Greece in a few months). Each time I left people that I loved deeply and considered family. There is still a part of me that wants to avoid getting close to people for fear of inevitably being separated. But I’ve learned that there is a particular kind of bravery that allows a person to keep opening their heart to joy and pain. I’ve learned that I want to fling myself into loving people, experiencing the heights of friendships and depths of loneliness. Continue reading →
Whenever I feel guilty or ashamed about liking something, my coping strategy goes like this: casually mention it in a way disassociated from myself. Bring it up again, with a little humor added. Talk about it ALL THE TIME ALWAYS until people beg me to shut up. Write a blog post about it.
Although I have grown in self-confidence and I don’t quite care as much what people think about me or my opinions, my guilty pleasures are still pleasures that make me feel guilty, as though I am too old, too mature, too whatever to like the things that I like. I will probably always have the spectre of Other People’s Judgments hanging over my head, but today I’m saying “I don’t care!” by fangirling real hard about the dumb things that I love. Continue reading →
There is a growing awareness amongst Christians that the Church in America has often become a place of meeting for the healthy and privileged. Nadia’s church, House of All Sinners and Saints, deliberately fights against this habit, reaching out to the culturally disenfranchised–the alcoholics, the homeless, the queer and transgendered. Reading about her passion (based on her history as a conservative Christian turned Wiccan alcoholic turned Lutheran pastor) was completely invigorating.
What really impressed me, though, was that her knowledge of God’s love doesn’t stop there. As an outsider, it is easy for her to love outsiders. But when her church started attracting middle-class suburban men and women, she felt many of the same emotions of disgust and tight-lipped smiles that are usually directed for her crowd. What is amazing about Bolz-Weber is her commitment to live out her faith, no matter how hard or how long she spends fighting against it. So against her natural inclinations, she welcomed the “normal” people into her church and created space for conversations between the different groups of people. What resulted–friendships and healing relationships between two often opposed groups of people–was absolutely beautiful to read about. Continue reading →
I’ve always fallen hard for male singers who can rock a falsetto, so it’s no surprise that I loved Darren Hayes’s Insatiable when it came out in 2002. I never owned the song, but I distinctly remember shrieking with joy every Sunday morning it cracked the Top 40 on the radio. I would dance around my room, singing every word as I got ready for church.
Ten years later, idly searching for new songs to buy on iTunes, Insatiable came to mind. I bought it, downloaded it, and listened to it. My mouth dropped open and my face grew beet red. I imagined myself singing the lyrics on Sunday morning, one door down from my mom getting ready for church. Had she listened to me sing this?
Nearly five years ago, I created this dance video while I was living in Senegal. Today, I am traveling to Tennessee to visit a whole bunch of people who lent their groove thangs to the making of this work of art.
There’s so much I love about this video. There are, of course, my hilarious and beautiful friends awkwardly dancing in restaurants, grocery stores, and on rooftops. There are the “oh no, how do I fill this space?” moments where I single-handedly address the camera. But mostly, I love how so much of my Senegal experience is captured in these tiny moments.
That’s the school room where Liz and I taught English and practiced the Kochibama skit with high school students. That’s the rooftop where we sang hymns until the sun set and I couldn’t see anyone’s faces. Those are the birthday decorations for Liz and Kim’s combined birthday party, hosted in the guest house in Dakar where I once had horrifying food sickness. That’s my tiny bed with the mosquito netting I used regularly after hearing about a lizard snuggling into someone’s pillow. Those are the pictures of friends I brought, assuming I would be paralyzed by home-sickness, only to find a new family in Fatick.
My Fatick family. I shared life with them for five months, and that could have been the end. But I love them, and five years later, I never want to stop hanging out with them.
It Is Trish 