Tag: change
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How Did the Pandemic Change Your Friendships?
This post is an excerpt from my latest story for HelloGiggles, “Is This Normal? I Talk Less to My Friends and I’m Happy” Dear Is This Normal?, It’s no secret that the pandemic has changed our lives. But now, with vaccines available and everything starting to open back up, I’ve spent a long time wondering…
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Shelter in Place
An overheard conference call: Wake up at the same time you always did on a normal work day, take a shower like normal, get dressed like normal, keep the same hours you normally did, invest in your space at home. This could be our new normal for a very long time. I can’t help but…
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And This Is 30
Birthdays turn her to mush (she’s a memory hoarder). Today, she reflects on her twenties, saying goodbye to the decade her old soul has spent too many late flipping-and-flopping nights wishing away. Did her circumference widen with each new ring of growth? Did she learn to number her days? Sometimes she remembers, other times she…
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You Don’t Know the Whole Story
Once, I thought I knew it all. I thought my story was sadder than anyone else’s story. I thought my family had endured more than anyone else’s, but that was just our little secret to carry around. Psh, if only you knew. And by “once” I mean a million times. This is an easy habit…
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Summers at the Lake: Why We Talk About Leaving
It seems we ask about plans for leaving mid-bend and swing on the summer’s first cannonball off the wooden dock. We’re handing over the SPF30, Can you get my back?, and it has yet to soak in before we ask, And when are you leaving?, condensation barely pooling on our defrosting cans in the North…
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There Are Things I Need to Tell You
My waiter, he asked how old I was in reference to the round of margaritas for the table of guac lovers, and so I replied, “27.” My friends, they turned to me quickly and corrected, “Ash, you are 28.”
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This is the year we will build a new smile.
I don’t like building. I learned this lesson when I helped build a new bathroom in my house. And by “helped” I mean I passed a few tools to my best friend’s dad who will one day reveal his hidden angel wings. He has held my old house together from day one. He loves…
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My view from under these covers.
Today, I woke up at 4 a.m. with a fever, that Heat Miser yet Snow Miser feeling of crawling out of your own skin where you trip over everything in the dark just to make it to the bottle of Motrin. I knew right away what was happening: this is my autoimmune body saying, Please, I am…
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Let me live that fantasy.
The floor of my shower felt cold when I first sat down, until the warm water and my warm body made it tolerable. Over these last couple years, I’ve learned how to take hot and long showers. Nothing about it is good for my precious planet, I get that. But, honestly, it’s my rookie attempt at…
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I don’t deserve to shop ORGANIC at Whole Foods.
“It’s kind of funny,” I said to my coworker. “When I first started grad school, I came home with bags busting of great stuff from Whole Foods, right off my high as a working woman. And then it wasn’t long before I learned how to put in a quarter to use a cart at Aldi’s.” I…
Ashley Fenker 