The Avocado and Me

Smallness is an idea I've been toying with for quite awhile. It's a phenomenon I feel we've all fallen prey to, at some point or another, subconsciously making ourselves palatable. Digestible. Diluting who we are into the person we believe we ought to be. It's all about conformity, really, and self-doubt. This is a post I've been trying to write for a long time, but it's hard. Insecurities and smallness are vulnerable things to talk about. Every time I drafted this, I was just scratching the surface of what I wanted to talk about. I was writing my truth, but that truth had a whole heck of a lot of armor on. It was never authentic enough, or raw. But these are raw topics and I wanted to write them that way. So here we are. I'm giving it another shot. A few nights ago, I pulled last-year's bullet journal out of my bottom drawer and started to read, just for the hell of it. It can be interesting to rediscover who you were a year ago. Parts of the jou

Hey everyone. It's been awhile, hasn't it? I say that literally every blog post, but it's true - life's been crazy, the sheer quantity of math projects I'm receiving is not okay, and rehearsal for my school's production of 1776 is well underway. Though my stress levels are a little above average, some wonderful things have happened, too. Pumpkin spice lattes are back, but I still order the cappuccino. Monday is the first day of fall. And tomorrow, I'm going to see the Downton Abbey movie! But best of all are the people. It seems that, after about a month and a half at a new school, you really begin to make friends. People finally start talking to you, and you are finally brave enough to talk to them. One of the lovely friends I've made is named Austyn. He's in my choir class, has great taste in books, and always lets you borrow his phone to text your mom that she can't pick you up for another hour because the school is under a tornado w

" The science is clear,'  Joyce Msuya,  acting executive director of U.N. Environment, said in a briefing. 'The health and prosperity of humanity is directly tied with the state of our environment.'  She added the planet stands at a crossroads: the Earth’s ailments are treatable, but not for a lot longer if people don’t make fundamental changes in what they consume, how they create energy, dispose of waste, and generally decrease the human footprint that is degrading air, water, and land" ( National Geographic ).  So... that's, well... cheerful. Here's the thing - a 5'2" teenage girl smack in the middle of suburban Colorado isn't going to make a huge impact on global warming or the environment. Even if I don't use plastic straws, turtles will still die. Even if I thrift all of my clothes and only buy sustainable products, fast fashion will still be a serious issue. BUT THIS IS NOT THE POINT. If you want to change (or save, as the ca

Hello, friends! I'm terribly sorry for the lack of posts this past month - it's been a busy one, to say the least. School is back (yippee!), homework is back (boo), and life's just been a little chaotic. New chapters of our lives do tend to be that way. This month, I'm hoping we can all take a deep breath and work on finding some balance in the bedlam that is high school. It's only been three-ish weeks, and I'm already winded. Recently, I finished the novel A Little Life  by Hanya Yangihara. It was one of the most heart-wrenching, unfair, disturbing, and beautiful books I've ever read. Am I recommending it? No, because it's an emotional freaking roller coaster. It's almost unbearable. But am I recommending  it? Sorta. In the book, there is a character named Willem, who I felt had a very interesting way of defining his life: “As he gets older, he is given, increasingly, to thinking of his life as a series of retrospectives, assessing each sea