Rachel and I hadn't seen each other since 2017 - an almost unforgivable sin - so we decided that the best way to ask forgiveness was for Jon to take a trip to St. Paul, Minnesota
...Category: Origin Stories
Ask Me Why I Don’t Eat Meat
My dad just sent a picture of a majestic buck standing in the yard of my childhood home, with my parents’ dormant vegetable garden in the background. Right now, with the blog and the book ever-present in my mind, I was reminded of my first ever attempt at writing an essay for Superman and God, one that arose from an advocatus diaboli argument Jon and I were having one Sunday morning at the IU library.
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...Identity Crises
We are what we do. The world, be it our closest friends and families or the general public, will remember us for the impact that we have on it. When people meet and ask each other "what do you do?", we tend to answer with our career, not a description of our hobbies and personal activities. But what if you're all meeting in the context of a new job, or a new academic program? For example, when I started working at UNC Chapel Hill in 2011, my new coworkers didn't ask me "what do you do". They asked...
...No More Feckless Pondering1
Near the end of her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, psychology professor Kristin Neff asks if you could go back in time and change something, would you do it even if it meant you would no longer be you? For a lot of years, perhaps decades even, my answer would have been an emphatic "yes!" But recently, a series of experiences and decisions conspired to bring me to this moment,
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