life and living

  • Security and Adventure: Why It’s Not an Either/Or Question

    I’ve found that there are two types of people who take risks. The first is the person who has nothing left to lose. They have no money and no way to earn it. They have no real support and nowhere and nothing to call their own. They aren’t seeking fulfillment or experiences, but survival. But,

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  • Living Long and Dying Well

    Living Long and Dying Well

    My great-great Grandmother lived to be 103. She was a remarkable and resilient woman who taught school in a one-room school house until she went blind at the age of 40. She raised her children mostly on her own, and she lived independently into her 90s when she put herself in a care home. The

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  • The Little House of Our Dreams

    My partner and I have been thinking about buying a house. There’s a little house in the center of town that’s been left empty for nearly 30 years. The house was built in 1905, then bought by a famous beauty school in 1965. As far as the county records show the building has been empty

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  • Life Experience and Quiet Lessons: do trials really make you stronger?

    I always hated when people told me that adversity would make me stronger. I tried to believe it at first- that all the bad things that happened to me in my childhood and early adult years would make me a better person but it didn’t. A childhood full of poverty, abuse, and constant uprooting didn’t

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  • Cozycore or Corporate World? Choosing the Life I Want to Live

    I read a lot of cozy mysteries on vacation last week. Don’t ask me how murder mysteries can be so charming and relaxing, but they are. Cozy series tend to follow a set formula: a single woman in her mid-20s to 30’s, owns a successful small business in a small town. Despite the small size

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  • Sometimes Life Sucks; it’s okay to say so.

    Sometimes life sucks, and it’s okay to say so. Those insipid, “inspirational” quotes that tell you that “Life is what you make it”, and “There’s no such thing as bad luck, just a bad attitude” are both insulting and untrue. Of course we shouldn’t always look for the downside of a situation, and we shouldn’t

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  • I am the writer who doesn’t write. In college I told myself I didn’t have the time, and the excuse seemed valid at the time. Between full time employment, full-time classes, homework, and commutes- I barely had time to breathe. My writing suffered, but I scribbled when I could and dreamed of graduation. I told

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