I awoke one Monday morning after the first of the year with an excruciating pain in my right lower abdomen. The pain appearing on the first workday after the New Year, I thought I was just experiencing fatigue, jetlag, or the side effects of major dehydration after a magical, whirlwind tour of the southeastern part…

There’s a lot of new things going on in my life, lately. New apartment furniture. New job. New work clothes. A (relatively) new companion in life. A new watch on my wrist. A new purse to carry all of my new credit cards (now that credit scores seem to matter…). New favorite places to eat…

I’ve spent the last 12 months living in or within 3 miles of my childhood home. After rocketing back from a summer in southern Arizona, Singapore and San Francisco — and a full, final semester at OU — I was finally ready for a change of pace from the hectic, travel-filled sprint my life had…

I knew in the first few minutes of the class that it wasn’t going to be to my liking. I noticed right away, its absence all but unnerving my supposed-to-be calm senses. There was no music. Breathe in through your nose, the instructor nudged his pupils in the stony silence. I did as he instructed,…

I closed the cashier drawer for the last time yesterday evening. For the last 6 months, I’ve been working part-time (although sometimes it definitely felt like full-time) at a natural foods grocery store in my hometown. I took the job back in August, when the prospect of graduate school applications and a year “off” at…