From drawing a bird to forgiving your ex
A few years ago, I was feeling lost. “Stuck in the weeds” was how I kept referring to my state of existence. A little voice in my head kept telling me, incessantly, “You can’t do anything.” It literally said those words!
One day, I woke up feeling tired of the voice. So I decided to slap back. “Surely I can do some things!” I said out loud. (A word of advice: It’s best to argue with the mean voices in your head in the privacy of your own home.)
Indeed, conflict is one of the best ways to help relationships grow and strengthen.
This story begins with me uniquely ready to start the day.
I sat on the big, red reading chair in my study, listening to some kind of woozy chime music that people play in meditation studios, blissfully journaling at 7 a.m. Friends, I’d already exercised. I had a god damned green smoothie in my left hand, for heaven’s sake. The Sophie of this day was knocking the whole “morning routine” thing out of the park.
And then I heard my husband’s loud, loud punk music blaring from the kitchen. The kitchen! Four rooms away!
He had no regard for my…
So you’re dating a bird. Now what?
This Valentine’s Day, I’ve got you covered. Choose one of these avian-specific printable cards, put it in their beak, and bask in the glow of really understanding your feathered loved one.
(In case some of these don’t make sense, I’ve written a corresponding true bird fact beneath each valentine. Now you can learn about birds while winning their hearts! You’re welcome.)
Crows are incredibly intelligent, and have been known to fashion tools out of leaves or bendable sticks or wires in order to grab or capture things from the bottom of wells that…
Here’s a familiar image in my life story: I am lying bed, cradling a bowl of microwave nachos, laptop perched on my knees, half-watching “Gilmore Girls” season two for the twelve-thousandth time, passively weeping.
Two weeks before this scene takes place, I’m all fired up with the many exciting things I have to do, and urgency is center stage. There are writing deadlines and drawing projects and there are lessons to plan for my teaching job and there is the actual teaching. (Urgent because money, because rent, because capitalism, because survival.) I’ve volunteered for some activism work, which never seems…
Asking for permission will make your relationships happier and healthier.
I know everything that happened for two weeks of my life when I was eleven.
OK, not everything. I know that I went to Girl Scout camp and ate a “walking salad”; that my uncles got married and I met a nice girl named Elisa at their wedding; I saw the movie “Hercules” in the theater; and “we started to go to a beautiful swimming pool, but they charged us $60 so we didn’t go.”
I know this because for my birthday in 1997, my grandmother gave me an elegant gold-plated, leather-bound page-a-day diary, with the pages pre-dated, and as…
Humans 101
Let’s talk about the ‘Never-Asker’
The “Never-Asker” is a category of person who struggles to ask a friend to watch the dog when they go out of town. For the Never-Asker, it’s hard to ask for a ride home from the airport or to ask for the take-out category they really, really want.
Within the Never-Asker category, there are subcategories and layers.
One subcategory is: “I don’t want to really want anything. I’m going to be cool and chill, and I’ll be able to hang no matter what you pick.” This looks like every couple ever going, “What do you want for dinner?” …
Why coronavirus has forced one Chicago teacher into vlogging
Shannon has been playing a lot of Stardew Valley, but she also just finished a historical novel — Rules of Civility — that she said transcends the genre. Sarah has been listening to the sci-fi podcast Wolf 359. Terrance is re-watching Gravity Falls, and recommends that his classmates read the comic book Bone. I know all of this not because I am their teacher (although I am), but because I have my own YouTube channel.
I also know about their specific anxieties. They want to know what’s going to become of prom. They’re worried about their family’s finances. They’re…
Sophie Lucido Johnson
A person who writes and draws and eats her feelings.
