self-reflection

  • By Definition

    They say doing the same thing over and over again is crazy. Some of us call it consistency. Consistency looks crazy to people who have none. The rest of us keep on keeping on because it is what it is. There was a shop at the end of a narrow city street that only appeared…

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  • I closed my eyes because someone told me the answers were inside. I thought that was bullshit. Most advice given to people who don’t know what to do with their lives eventually involves breathing. Breathe deeply. Be present. Clear your mind. As if the mind has ever agreed to be cleared simply because someone asked…

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  • Whose House?

    There was a woman living in my house who looked exactly like me. I noticed her before I saw her. That is how these things usually begin. Not with apparitions standing at the foot of the bed or doors slamming themselves in the middle of the night. Nothing so theatrical. It began with a coffee…

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  • Throw Me

    There is stone that reads throw me sitting on a random shelf. Nobody remembers who put it there. That is the strange part. It isn’t decorative. It isn’t polished enough to belong beside the books, candles, and little porcelain angels collecting dust beneath the stained-glass window. It is an ordinary gray stone. Heavy. Cold. Imperfect.…

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  • The Un-vacation

    Everyday starts off like an ordinary day until it isnt. That’s probably how most things happen. Nobody wakes up Tuesday morning expecting Tuesday to become the reason they start looking at plane tickets by lunch. The coffee tastes the same. The computer turns on. The same people need the same things they needed yesterday, except…

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  • A person who sits with their demons long enough realizes that they are all teachers wearing masks. I used to think they came carrying pitchforks. Turns out they arrived holding mirrors. Funny how disappointment always introduces itself as punishment until enough years pass for you to realize it was simply an instructor with terrible bedside…

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  • Borrowed Things

    Maybe it is just boredom that has brought me here, tired of human suffering. Not because suffering is unusual. Because it repeats itself with remarkable dedication. I sat watching people today and couldn’t decide what they were actually chasing. A better job. A bigger house. Someone else’s attention. An argument they intended to win before…

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  • Somewhere today someone is celebrating a birthday, but I truly wonder if they are celebrating the way they should. There it is again. The writer’s block. A great big stubborn wall parked right in the middle of my afternoon like it paid rent to be there. I stared at the blinking cursor hoping it would…

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  • There is a strange kind of silence that only writers hear. It doesn’t sound like silence at all. It sounds like an empty room where people were laughing five minutes ago. I never thought I would run out of things to say. Writers joke about writer’s block the way fishermen joke about rain. It exists.…

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  • The Cosmic Audit

    There are moments when the universe does not knock politely. It arrives with a clipboard. No lightning. No trumpet. No dramatic warning written across the clouds. Just the unmistakable feeling that something old has begun moving again. It happened exactly the way it was supposed to. Saturn showed up, simply in reverse. No panic. No…

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