There’s an episode of This American Life that features David Rakoff just before he died (here’s a link). It was a live, theatrical version of the radio show in which the witty author, in his trademark biting tongue and powerful vocabulary, hilariously explained how he got by doing basic tasks after cancer took the use of […]
There’s a phrase I have a conflicted relationship with. There’s songs about it, memes about it, stories about it, all with one motto: “Live like you were dying.” It’s some kind of an attempt to get us to live in the present, to conquer fear, to jump off that cliff we’ve never known we’ve always […]
I don’t write everyday. Some days it’s hard to know what to say. Some days it’s hard to know what to do other than sit and stare and wait for energy, or motivation, or some kind of return to who I was or who I see myself as. Some days I spend the whole day […]
While social media tends to fill in the gaps of the big moments of our lives a few people have asked what happened so I figured I could write it down here for you. Here’s what happened: I woke up January 8th with a tinge of nausea and a not quite rested head. I washed […]
I’ve been in a foul mood. I’ll admit that. Until now I’ve been unwilling to admit why. I act like it’s because I am an unwitting victim of a brain tumor and that the universe is out to get me. I don’t really believe that, and that’s not really why, and I really figured that […]
I am not sure how often people of any age are forced to confront their mortality head on. Perhaps many people go through their entire lives never having to face the fact that until they die, they might die at any given moment. Many people have a vague awareness of it, but barring some catastrophic […]
I think people often take stock of how I spend my days and see something lazy or wasteful there. I generally (on a low pain or manageable pain day) wake up, work out, putz around getting ready, go to campus and work as hard as I can, come home and then alternate between periods of […]
I haven’t written anything here in so long. I haven’t felt the need or desire to explain myself, make myself available to scrutiny, to expose myself so that others may weigh in, tell me what to do or how to be. It’s not that I don’t like or appreciate the advice, help and support, it’s […]
I had a follow-up MRI on July 2nd. It seemed like the right time to do it since of all the immense and daunting challenges I feel up against right now, Herbert (aka my brain tumor) seems like the least daunting of them all. Plus one doc said every year for a follow up and […]
I’m working on a small project, my dissertation (NBD) and it focuses on how we make meaning online. How we negotiate things that aren’t generated online and don’t live exclusively online using the tools and affordances of this particular medium. I’m interested in this because it is the affordances of this technology among others that […]
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