recent posts

    • What is the “One Notebook Principle?”

      What is the “One Notebook Principle?”

      Note: This post is pinned since it serves as an explanation to the site. At some point I will likely move it to an “About” page. Until that happens please scroll down, or use the left sidebar, to find more recent posts.

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      When I was in high school and college, I had a tendency to start off well organized. I had a notebook and folder for every class and every intention to use them faithfully. “This will be the year,” I used to tell myself, “that I will finally stay organized.” I was always wrong. It would never be that year.

      Now I am almost 40 and I’ve been kidding myself for at least the last 15 years or so. Every time I had a project or idea, which is often, I start a new notebook, or blog, or social media account, etc. I have dozens of these, at least, all half-filled and unfinished. You know what isn’t half-filled? The notebook I’m using that only has about half the pages because it’s my old English notebook from my junior year of high school (the one I had before I stopped using it in favor of whatever subject I eventually used for everything). This notebook includes: journal entries, to do lists, brainstorming lists for work (I’m a teacher), websites I should remember, appointments, etc. This is not to say that I don’t have a planner. I even use it. Yet somehow everything I tell myself I will keep organized in different notebooks has ended up in one notebook again.

      The thing is, I’ve been doing the same thing with websites and blogs. Everyone seems to think that you can’t have a successful website or blog if it’s too broad. You can’t overly specialize either. You should diversify, but not so widely that you confuse your audience. You need to be clear with what niche you’re filling and what audience you’re writing for. Websites and blogs are full of advice and how to’s and seem largely devoid of anything actually resembling real life and hobbies. Maybe I’m just reading the wrong blogs and sites.

      I found myself the other day missing Livejournal, back when it was at its peak, where everyone wrote about anything and everything all in one place. Sure, people specialized and could have a tendency to write about certain movies, books, or hobbies. There was also, however, a great deal of variety in general. No one thought twice, or so it seemed, about writing for a specific audience because we all seemed to be writing, primarily, for ourselves. No one seemed to be selling or appealing to anyone in particular.

      This website is my attempt at having “one notebook” in website form. Rather than attempt to have numerous websites/blogs that get updated when and if I feel like it, I will instead have have a variety of posts and topics on one website. If you’ve made it this far, and are curious, this can and probably will include the following: general life reflections, my efforts to get healthy again, home projects, crafting, playing World of Warcraft, writing and world building, teaching (oh yeah, I’m a teacher), my pets, book reviews, etc.

      Oh, one final note: The first few posts will likely be cross-posted from (and maybe to) some of my other blogs and websites while I debate shutting them down for good. So if you, by some chance, happen to see them on another website that’s likely why.

    • The Search for the “Perfect” Planner

      For the past decade or two I have been, off and on, obsessed with the idea of the perfect planner. Does this sound familiar to anyone? I wanted a planner I stuck with, that allowed me to be flexible but productive, and was easily stashed in a purse or a backpack. I wanted a planner where I could write down notes and plan for all my projects and ideas. I wanted it to be a calendar for appointments but also have a space for house projects, garden projects, blogging, etc. I wanted about a bajillion different planners and notebooks in one small, easily carried book.

      If this sounds impossible it’s because I’m fairly certain it is. I’ve tried the bullet journaling method but for various reasons (mainly wanting the journal to look pretty and be perfect) it didn’t work for me. I tried having multiple planners, one for the garden and one for the home, etc., but that didn’t work out either. I found it too difficult to keep up or lug around multiples. I recently (about six months or so ago) bought myself a travel notebook system thinking it would be the best of both worlds but have yet to even try it. I bought myself, even more recently, an academic planner thinking that, instead of tracking classwork for different subjects, I would track different projects and to dos for different categories of my life. It felt like a brilliant idea. I stuck with it for about two weeks.

      That was back in early September and I’ve largely steered clear of planners or planning for anything but work (a teacher kind of has to plan). Tonight, however, I felt that itch to plan a planner. It would be, I thought to myself, the planner of all planners. It would be the one to finally be perfect. Then I thought briefly, guiltily, of the mostly empty planners in a cabinet in our snug (a small library/music room). Then I realized I was doing it again. I was getting sucked into the myth of the perfect planner. I was one step away from Google, Pinterest, and Youtube videos all touting examples of perfect planners and planning systems.

      Don’t get me wrong, if any kind of planner actually works for you then more power to you. But I realized something important tonight, something I feel like I keep needing to remind myself of. I could either feel guilty about abandoned projects, blogs, writing ideas, etc. and spend hours developing a planner and system I’ll likely never use or I could actually do something. Then I realized I had a blog topic and it was all about my realization.

      That said, I have had another realization. Sometimes it’s just fun to experiment with different planners and systems. It’s like a thought experiment. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Happy planning!

    • Internet Reflections: Personal Curriculum and Bullet Journaling

      Something that always astounds me about the internet is how much it seems to reinvent the wheel.  Every few years there’s some trend that arises which sounds like a brilliant idea until I realize I’ve already been doing it.

      Bullet Journaling, for example, I tried for ages without too much success.  Everyone’s on Youtube and various blogs seemed so pretty and fancy that I wanted mine to look the same.  I got caught up in aesthetics and missed the practicality.  Then, while packing to move, I came across two of my journals from college (circa 2005-2009).  

      There were journal entries, books I wanted to remember to read, movies I wanted to watch, appointment dates and times, assignments and their due dates, etc.  As I looked through these books it occurred to me that, without all the fancy prettiness, I’d been bullet journaling for years.  I had just never formalized it.

      A similar thought occurred to me partway through a Youtube video on creating a “Personal Curriculum.”  The person in the video kept citing TikTok people and other Youtubers and halfway through the video I stopped watching.  Contrary to what the video claimed, no person on TikTok had created this.  I’m not even claiming that I created this.  

      In fact, the idea of setting yourself hobbies and interests to focus on, especially in the colder months, is pretty old.  People used to try out new recipes, plan for the new seeds to start come the spring, learn a new sewing pattern, or learn a whole new craft hobby altogether.  There are whole lists that show up on my Pinterest boards, and have been for years, about new hobbies or skills to learn in the winter time.

      Knowing this, and having loads of Google Docs that outlined my own personal curricula (I’ve kept ones that date to as early as 2015), I just couldn’t finish watching the video.  Must we make content that we pretend is new?  Or do we just not know that it’s old?

      All that said, I’m all for learning new stuff, and I have about ten years of experience on creating personal curricula, so let me give you some advice.  Stop focusing so much on formalizing a plan unless that really works for you.  None of my plans actually worked for me and I always ended up winging it.  Progress was made, but never at the exacting levels I planned.

      Second, don’t spend so much time planning that you end up not doing anything.  I’ve written about this before, but it’s my biggest pitfall by far when I want to accomplish something.  If you’re interested in art history, to pull from my own list of interests, then don’t make a curriculum.  Find a source (book, documentary, podcast, blog, etc.) and focus on that one source.  If it bores you, put it down and find something else.  Don’t stick to a plan that proves not to work for you just because it’s “the plan.”

      Finally, don’t attempt to learn it all or create a sort of 101-course for yourself.  I always have grand plans for learning, systematically, new crochet stitches but the truth is that I don’t need to know them all.  I just need to know the ones that are required for what I want to make.  Those are the ones I’m motivated to learn and putting that off as a sort of later-in-the-course thing is just going to ensure that I never learn it.

      Anyway, as always, do what works for you.  Happy learning (however you go about it)!

    • From the Archives: Autumn Feels

      From: September 2, 2017

      Today we had our very first cool day.  Temperatures last night were predicted to be in the high 30s (Fahrenheit; approximately 3o Celsius) and today it is not supposed to get above 70.  This isn’t cold, really, in an area that generally has below freezing temperatures in the winter, but it is very different to the 80 degrees we had two days ago and will have again in another two days.  Welcome to New England or, more specifically, welcome to Massachusetts.  

      The leaves haven’t started changing colors yet, at least not where I am, and September has only just started, but if there’s one thing this area excels at it is reminding you that seasonal changes happen – sometimes in the middle of other seasons.  Autumn, or Fall, which technically hasn’t officially started yet, feels very close on days like today.  As a teacher, the beginning of the school year marks what feels like the end of summer, but it takes a really cool, crisp day (the kind of day where my hair brush crackles with static electricity – yes that did happen this morning) to make me think of the upcoming season.

      The idea of a New England Fall is one that has been romanticized in books, movies, and television programs but it really can be quite the beautiful season.  My childhood, while happening in the late ‘80s into the ‘90s, often sounds like the 50’s instead – a fact I took for granted until college brought me into contact with people who didn’t shop at farm stands, go apple picking, and go on hayrides.  We bought our pumpkins at a farm about ten minutes away, used fallen leaves to stuff shirts for decorative scarecrows, and drank locally-made apple cider.  The woods behind my house erupted in color and, on one memorable weekend, my sister and I hand-fed a family of migrating Canadian geese in our front yard.  The town I grew up in didn’t have a Dunkin’ Donuts until I was 10 and, though I do not currently live there, still does not have a grocery store or a McDonald’s (or Burger King, or KFC, or . . . you get my point).  It does have at least three farms which sell their produce, a town fair day on the town common, and a town carnivale on the town’s fairgrounds.

      It took me about twenty years to fully realise how much my childhood sounds odd to many of the other ‘80s and ‘90s children out there.  It took me a few more years to really appreciate what that means.  Most of the time, I am as caught up in the day to day grind as anyone else.  I spend more time than is probably healthy in front of some sort of screen, while the rest of my time is divided (not always evenly) between my family, my job, housework, and sleep.  It takes the first hint of impending autumn to make me slow down and think of mulled apple cider, fires in the fireplace, and wintery crochet projects.  In a way, though I’m always sad to see summer go and winter come, I can’t wait for autumn to finally arrive in all its New England glory.

    • Looking Out My Back Door

      Once upon a time, in the older days of the internet, we used to offer digital cookies (the chocolate chip kind) to people who understood references the poster/author thought were clever and somewhat out there. Do people still do that? Anyway, this title is a song reference and once it came into my head I had to use it, even though it’s only partially accurate to this post.

      This morning I let my dog out in my fenced-in backyard and, instead of walking away to continue making my breakfast as usual, I decided to watch instead. I kind of love where we live for its closeness to amenities but also for the ecosystem we have. Our next door neighbors own two acres behind our house and, thankfully, are adamant that it remain woods.

      I’ve never actually lived anywhere that wasn’t within walking distance to woods. I grew up with woods in our backyard (quite literally, we had about one hundred feet of grass and then the woods started) and was lucky enough to go to college in a fairly rural area. Woods weren’t on my doorstep, or in my backyard, but I could see them from my dorm room and knew that I could walk to them if I chose to. I studied abroad for one year and woods were on the opposite side of the street from my dorm building. I visited a friend of mine when she lived in Germany and woods were visible from her house and only took a fifteen minute walk across a field to get to.

      My husband, who has lived in cities for the last couple of decades or so and grew up with a highway on the other side of his backyard fence, thinks it’s “kind of cool” that we live in a house that feels surrounded by trees. When we were looking for a house I was fairly flexible but woods “in the backyard” was one of the items on my “ideal house” list. As I was looking out my back door this morning, to bring it back to the title, I was reminded of why I find woods to be so important.

      We have chickens, so of course those were milling about in the yard. Alongside them, though, were two chipmunks and a collection of small songbirds. Slightly off to the side were a pair of mourning doves. While I was watching, a bird flew overhead. It looked a bit on the large side, so I’m guessing either a blue jay or a crow. We do have a pair of hawks but the chickens have apparently gotten big enough that they don’t try for them anymore. A few months back, our motion sensor deck light would turn on because a fox would be wondering through. I’m not sure how the fox got over a 6-foot fence, and there are no holes that suggest he went under, but he only comes after the chickens are safely roosting in their locked up hen house. One morning, a couple years ago, I came face-to-face with a coyote that was hanging around in our driveway. I had my dog (who is slightly smaller than the coyote) with me and we all just looked at each other for a bit before the coyote turned and headed back along the garage towards the woods.

      I could keep going. I could tell you about the occasional deer, the groundhog my husband took a picture of because he didn’t know what it was, or the turkeys that you have to brake for sometimes when your driving down our street. I could mention the squirrels who also frequent our yard. I could tell you about the bees that have taken up residence in the old chicken coop out front, and the rabbits my dog is utterly uninterested in (thankfully) who seem to live under our overgrown raspberry brambles in the front yard.

      We have lots of bugs, in addition to the bees, and not all of them are ones I’m fond of. With the mosquitos, however, come dragonflies. We have a few butterflies and, as my nephew pointed out yesterday, a couple of praying mantises. I see ladybugs every so often, and I know we have a large amount of spiders and little flies and all the other smaller insects I never really see.

      We are a very busy property, not in terms of work (see the “overgrown” description above), but in terms of what and who lives here. Whenever I hear people talk about the dying bee population, I think about the huge colony we have in the old coop, and I feel better about not having torn it down yet. The raspberry vines are overgrown in part due to laziness but also because I know they’re providing a safe haven for the bunnies. I like visiting the city, but this morning, looking out my back door, I was reminded of why I would never actually want to live in one.

    • What is the opposite of writer’s block?

      No, really, what is it called when you have too much to write about and you don’t know what to write about first? Is it called anything?

      Anyway, this has been my problem lately. There is so much I could write about that I just haven’t written anything. Then it occurred to me that I could write a post about that, except I’m not sure I can expand on it enough for its own post. So instead let’s talk about what’s going on with me. Life update time!

      First, I am somewhat waiting on the upcoming Amazon Prime sale. I know lots of people put out lists of items on sale and/or are affiliates, so let’s get the disclaimer out of the way first. I am not an affiliate of any company and no products discussed in the post are specific or recommendations. I will not link you “must-haves” because I don’t agree with them. Who am I to understand your life and needs enough to tell you that you should buy something?

      I bring up the sale, not to encourage you to buy from Amazon (whether you do or not is up to you), but because I am waiting to see if a heat gun will go on sale. As an aside, if anyone has any recommendations of good heat guns I would welcome a recommendation. The previous owners of our house painted the stairs so that the treads are black and the risers are white. We’ve lived here for about 3 years now and lately I’ve been thinking of trying to take off the black paint and see what’s under it. The stairway is a bit dark right now and the stairs have started to remind me of a cow. It’s time for a change, but I’m waiting on the heat gun.

      Also in life update news is the prep work for the upcoming school year (teacher, remember?). I took the last year off due to anxiety and mental health reasons, so I’m starting to review the history curriculum to refresh my memory. The curriculum is currently in the process of being revised, so I feel like it’s extra important for me to get a good handle on at least the first unit of the two grades (6th and 7th) I’ll be teaching. To help me focus on work stuff during the summer, I’ve started using a productivity game called Ithya: Magic Studies (available on Steam) which so far is working out really well. It’s a bit like Finch (mobile app), which I also use, but on the computer. It also has timers for work sessions, and background music, which I really like.

      Getting back to home projects, we’re also trying to figure out new paint colors for the upstairs bathroom, the upstairs hallway/stairs, and the kitchen. My husband says we’re painting the whole house slowly, and he’s not completely wrong. There are some rooms that we don’t need to paint (the green in the guest room, for example, is a very pretty shade of green) but over the past three years we have already painted almost half the house. One of these days we’ll be done with painting and then I imagine I’ll feel like new colors in a decade or so. I think my husband hopes we’ll just be done once we paint over the old owners’ paint jobs, but I painted my childhood bedroom twice between the ages of 8 and 16 so I know better.

      It turns out I have more life updates than I thought, despite the fact that I live a pretty boring life right now. Anyway, hopefully I’ll have more posts about painting, stair redecorating, and maybe even a more in-depth review of Ithya for those who might be interested. For now, have a cute picture of Winston (one of the 5 cats living in this house) and have a great week!

    • Doing Things Badly: Weaving

      Anyone who read my last post about weaving should remember that I found it slightly scary to finally weave on the loom I’ve had for probably about a decade now. I kept getting bogged down by all the things that need to happen before you actually weave, like measuring out the warp and then actually putting it on the loom. Several years ago I actually did attempt to warp the loom but I kept doing it wrong and then I just stopped trying. I never actually got to to the weaving part of weaving.

      So a couple months ago I finally decided that I just wanted to try weaving. I decided I didn’t care about a pattern or the length or even the colors and type of yarn I would use. I told myself that, as it was my first time weaving on an actual loom it was just going to be bad–or, at least, not good.

      With this in mind I resolved to just weave badly. To anyone who actually weaves, I apologize in advance for all the rules I broke. I tied the warp to the loom, although I did thread the yarn through the heddle. I had trouble looping the yarn back into the weaving to anchor it to the warp so, rather than stress about it or stop, I just tied it. It’s super loose and prone to sliding along the yarn, but my goal wasn’t to have a good warp and beginning. I just wanted to actually weave something, to move the shuttle and create something that resembled cloth.

      You can see my pictures of it below. It’s not great , or even good, but it’s something. More importantly, I actually wove something on my loom. I don’t care that I did it badly, I just care that I did it.

      Now I just to figure out how I want to take it off the loom and whether I want to do it badly next time or actually learn how to do the warp.

    • From the Archives: Drop Spindles

      From: November 4, 2017

      A long time ago, when I was a child, I read Little House in the Highlands by Melissa Wiley where the main character wants to learn to use a spinning wheel like her sister.  Her parents think she is too young but her mother digs out an old drop spindle so the girl can feel like she’s learning to spin her as well.  At the time, I didn’t have much interest in spinning wheels (that would come later), but the girl is described as going all over happily spinning on a drop spindle and I decided rather firmly that I wanted to learn how to do this.  I then promptly told no one and, while the idea of it never went away, it became buried under school, books, computers, etc.

      Flash forward about twenty years or so and I finally put a drop spindle on my Christmas list (apparently I’m hard to shop for so I still get asked for a list by family and friends).  I provided a website of a fibers store where you could buy a drop spindle and did my best to explain this seemingly odd request to my family.  On Christmas Day my mother came through in her usual, fantastic way.  I received two drop spindles, two books, one instructional DVD, and a giant box of ready-to-spin wool from various sheep breeds.  

      In a flurry of motivation and excitement, I promptly started reading the instructional book, watching the DVD, and trying out the spindles.  Then I promptly lost interest as my time was overtaken by work.  I’m a teacher so my enthusiasm and free time lasted about as long as winter break.  I’ve taken out the spindles every so often, and attempted to use my misshapen “yarn” for dryer balls (more on this later), but have yet to get back into them in quite the way I’ve wanted.  It’s something I want to change and will require a good amount of attention and discipline, especially as I also have a new-to-me spinning wheel.  Interestingly, and for reasons I’ll write about later, I think I like the drop spindles a bit better.  There’s a certain level of control with the drop spindle that is missing for me right now on the wheel, though of course I’ve been using the drop spindles for a bit longer, even if I’m still not very good with them.

    • From the Archives: The War Between Humans and Myths (fiction)

      Another bit of writing I found while looking through old Google Drive folders!! Clearly I need to organize my writing better. This short bit of writing is from July 24, 2014 and included the quote. Enjoy!

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      “Like legend and myth, magic fades when it is unused — hence all the old tales of elfin kingdoms moving further and further away from our world, or that magical beings require our faith, our belief in their existence, to survive.That is a lie. All they require is our recognition.” ~Charles de Lint

      They say that for awhile humans reigned with their science and technology.  That Earth herself took a step back to let them rule, and all the creations of magic and myth fled.  The stories tell of grand towers reaching up to the sky and of a human’s ability to replace a man’s heart and have him live.

      Until one day it all stopped.  Some say the humans went too far and Earth herself rose up to humble them and push them back.  Others say that the creations of magic grew tired of taking a back seat to the arrogance of humans and rose up against them.  

      Nowadays they all tell of the Great War between the humans and their technology and all that is magic.  The humans speak of the truces that were made to fight against a common enemy.  “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”.  The creations of magic say the same.  

      Now those great towers of old have fallen, and much of what once was has been lost.  The humans and the creations of magic live in an uneasy truce hard won, some say even forced upon us by the Earth, in order to save her from destruction.

    • From the Archives: a bit of writing

      Seriously, this is very very short. I found it while going through old Google Drive folders. It is originally from December 23, 2023. I thought it was interesting enough to post even if it is short.

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      The problem with writing anything that isn’t human, especially creatures we’ve never met, especially creatures who may seem human but most definitively are not, is that they’re not human.  We have no idea how their minds work, what their priorities are, how they feel or show emotions, or why they do whatever it is they do.  We can guess, we can imagine, but if we were capable of truly understanding these then they would be only different, not truly inhuman.  Some species may be closer to human, to be more understandable, than others but ultimately they must work differently to be truly different.  So how do we write what we cannot understand?  How do we imagine what our own minds cannot comprehend? 

    • Saying Things (and not saying things)

      Alright, so I don’t ever want to make this blog political in any way, shape, or form. Trust me, I’ve been tempted, but have ultimately decided not to. It’s not what I want this blog to be about, for one, and also I just don’t want to invite that kind of discourse and traffic. So I won’t write about politics and, shockingly, it’s that simple.

      I will never quite understand, at least not fully, the urge to comment or write about a topic in a nonproductive way, or in a way that isn’t supportive, constructive, or making a personal connection. People write on about the “anonymity of the internet” and human nature but honestly I think it’s just a choice. I might think whatever I want in my head but I can decide not to write it down and, perhaps more importantly, not to put it out in a public forum. My father used to say, and I’m sure he was quoting someone else, “You are the master of the words unspoken, once spoken they are master of you.”

      I wrote a whole thing (before I was attempting to seriously blog) about not really being a sharer and then blogging anyway. I even posted it as a “From the Archives” post when I was setting up this blog. Ultimately, though, I think that sharing is part of being human. We want to be noticed, to feel important (or meaningful), and to make connections. This urge isn’t unique to the internet generations; I think it’s probably part of why newspapers run editorials and opinion pieces.

      So sharing is human, but we all have brains which can decide whether something is worth sharing or not. A student of mine, from a few years ago, once told me that he could say whatever he wanted because “I have freedom of speech” and I replied that he also had to brain to think about it first–or something like that. He’s not alone in his sentiments though, as reading the comments section just about anywhere will demonstrate. Plenty of people seem to see freedom of speech as permission to be rude, to engage in bullying behavior, and to assert their own opinions over the right of others to have opinions.

      Admittedly, my parents raised me to be polite and respectful. As such I go into every encounter, whether online or in person, with the idea that whoever I’m dealing with is due a minimum level of respect simply for being a person. It should be said that, judging by the reactions of those around me, my minimum level is apparently higher than some others’ level. One woman I used to work with even asked me why I was so nice to her. She seemed confused when my answer was “because I don’t have a reason not to be.”

      I think sometimes we think that not saying something means being seen as having no opinion, or as having an opinion that agrees with whatever opinion has been shared, but I’m not sure that’s the case on the internet. Someone posting something from across the world has no idea whether I’m even reading what they wrote, never mind whether I’m tacitly agreeing with it or not. I can always reply or comment with “I don’t agree with this” or “I think differently because” (note: as a teacher I can tell you the second option is better), but the truth is that the original poster or commenter probably doesn’t care. They might even never see it, depending on how close a watch they keep on their own comments.

      When I was little, about three or four years old, I had a simple way of dealing with adults and children I thought were being silly. Mostly, for adults, this meant that they baby talked (or slow talked) down to me. My parents didn’t do this and I always thought it was weird and insulting. Condescension is still one of my biggest pet peeves. I have a brain, thank you, and it even works. Anyway, my response was simple: I wouldn’t respond. To my parents’ relief, people just thought I was shy. The truth was that I was staring, judgmentally, at them with running commentary in my head about how ridiculous they sounded.

      My reasons for not saying any of that commentary aloud are pretty similar to how I feel as a 38 year old adult. For one thing, saying all of that would just be unnecessarily rude, especially to a complete stranger. Perhaps I could have said, “Please talk to me like a functioning human capable of thought,” but those kinds of boundaries are things you’re better at navigating with a bit more life experience, I think. I also just didn’t understand why the person would need to me to say it. They were, to put it in an unflattering kind of way, unimportant. They would come into my life and they would leave it, pretty much as quickly as they entered it.

      As a child, I had the luxury of not engaging and it’s a luxury I delight in online as well. If I think someone is being silly, ridiculous, mean, or what have you, I can just roll my eyes and move on with my life. The world doesn’t need to me to point out what people have so clearly demonstrated themselves. More to the point, the kind of argument that inevitably ends up as “you’re wrong, no you’re wrong” always reminds me of the pointless bickering my sister and I used to do as kids. It’s not going to solve anything, and neither of you are going to change your minds, so why are you wasting your time?

      I keep waiting for this post to come naturally to its conclusion but, apparently, I have a lot to say about this topic. I am, however, at the point where I think I’ll mostly be repeating myself. I do that, at a certain point, when I’ve run out of new things to say but the emotion behind it is still going on inside me. Perhaps, ultimately, that’s the real reason some people comment, reply, and post online; the emotions they feel won’t let them not say something. That said, I still believe we can think about we say first, and notice when it’s no longer productive. So, at this point, I am going to follow my brain, which is telling me that to say more would be unproductive, and stop writing here (even though it feels super abrupt).