Category / Everyday Life
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What I’ve learned from my first year of home ownership
I walked off the wobbly porch of my new home, after struggling to pop a bottle of champagne with friends and family, to greet my upstairs tenant for the first time. She was walking up the front stoop, and I stopped her to introduce myself as her new landlord. She looked me up and down,…
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Changing so much, I barely noticed
Change is constant. As people we are always changing, as is the world around us. Sometimes change comes crashing in like a bull. And other times change is almost imperceptible. Just over a year ago, change came crashing in, by my own doing. I threw myself into the world as a publicly queer person, and…
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My worth, my story and my identity
Everyone who’s ever had to come out knows that it’s never over. Yes, some coming outs will only happen once – telling your parents or your best friends, maybe – but some coming outs happen as often as every day: to coworkers, to new people you meet, to just about anyone. I had one of…
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Can we stop using the word “sketchy?”
I’m a writer and wholehearted believer in the First Amendment. I’m not one to suggest we dampen speech. But if I had to ban one word this week, it would be this one: “sketchy.” Let me explain why. I recently moved into a new house in a new neighborhood. I’m still in Troy, where I’ve…
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Living and learning in Troy, one year later
Last year, right before I moved away from Boston to take a new job in Albany, I tried write something that captured the sadness, but also the hope and opportunity, of starting anew. I got stuck a few paragraphs in, because I didn’t know what it meant to move on my own free will, to…
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Let’s Create The Lives We Do Not Deserve
The following is adapted from a speech I submitted to be considered to speak at the Boston University College of Communication commencement ceremony. This weekend, I graduate from Boston University. I am done with college. And as I look back on my four years here, I’ve come to a pretty simple realization: I have been mostly…
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Love Trumps Hate
“Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division; have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.” I heard these words crackle over AM radio as I drove home at 3 a.m. Wednesday from…
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On Making It Work When You Have “No Time”
“How do you have time for that?” I hear this question several times a week, from people in all aspects of my life. My friends at the newspaper (where I spend about 50 hours a week) ask how I possibly have time for band, and my friends at band (where I spend about 8 hours a week)…
