Moth... of DOOM!

  OOH, I READ YA… AND YOU CAN TOO! I’m satisfied with the number of books I read and how I engage with literature. I could read more, but I could also read less, or worse, not at all. Reading is one of my strongest habits. I make sure to read every single day. This is something that a few people I know happen to struggle with. For some, it’s not that they don’t want to read but rather that it’s a difficult habit to maintain consistently. I agree with that statement, it can be a time-consuming activity, how can you squeeze it into your schedule? I’d like to provide a few pointers on how you can read more! My first pointer is to take this piece with a grain of salt. Your relationship to reading cannot be dictated (not that I’m going to dictate your reading journey), and it requires experimentation on your part. This is less of a roadmap to becoming a natural reader and more of a backpack full of equipment to help you on your reading journey. Apologies for this but the fir...

  TELEVISION AS A FORM OF BONDING I am about to make a confession which, now that I think about it, isn’t that bad: I spent (and still spend) a lot of my dinners in front of a TV screen and not around the dinner table. It gets worse because I prefer it that way. Looking back on those TV dinners, they were pleasant. It can’t be that bad since I always see posts online about how people can’t have dinner without watching YouTube.  My sister and I would usually watch whatever ongoing series happened to be airing at dinner time. These ranged from TV shows that held a special place in my heart to the worst slop that was somehow greenlit. But it’s not about the shows; it’s about the memories they hold.  We cut the cable a while ago and we made the switch to Netflix which made for more secluded dinners. We all watched our separate shows in separate corners of our separate worlds. I hadn’t even noticed how bad it was until just recently. I started watching Better Call ...

  GET YOURSELF A RIVAL TODAY! I think more people should have rivals, and I’m not kidding! Friends and family—now that’s all well and good, but if you only have friends, family, and potential romance, I hate to say it, but you’re missing out. A little friendly competition between two rivals can lead to them improving at whatever they’re competing in. Rivalry is a great way to motivate yourself to accomplish more than you set out to. Don’t twist my words though, not everything should be a competition but we all need a little competition and even if you aren’t convinced of rivalry by the end of this, I hope I can still urge you to explore different kinds of relationships. I’m not sure how apparent it is to the people I know but I do have a slight tendency to be competitive. It’s just how I was brought up and it used to be much worse. Every single aspect of my life was a competition and every new peer was an adversary. That is a VIP ticket to misery and poor self-esteem. O...

COFFEE, COFFEE, COFFEE People call soccer “the beautiful game” and I propose that we call coffee “the beautiful beverage”. I apologize, that was very cringe-worthy. I just love coffee, okay? It has this amazing taste and many different flavors all in one; acidic, bitter, sweet, rich, and delicious (which isn’t a flavor or anything, I just didn’t know how to end this sentence. It sounded off slightly). Would you believe me if I said I only started drinking coffee two years ago? My mother forbade me from drinking coffee (and rightfully so) or caffeinated beverages as a whole actually (again, rightfully so). The first time I had coffee, I was with some of my peers. We were working on a group project together at a cafe. I looked at the menu and ordered… the mocha.  You do not understand the thought that went into that decision. There were girls there who I didn’t know beyond their first names and there were also guys there who I knew very well actually. I needed to evade an...

  I haven’t written anything worth a damn in what has to be a year now and that has left me sad and gloomy. I watch the sun soar over my house, marking days filled with nothing. My ambition has become a hunger. I feel it burn in my gut. I can’t sleep at night because of it. In the cold silence, between the occasional dog barking, I hear my stomach speak to me in a low growl. It tells me to write…  It’s safe to say that I’m more than a little disappointed in my writing output this year. Last year, I had an amazing output. I was just getting started and would write every day of my life. Every week I made sure to finish something and release it to the masses (like 3 people) and not just essays such as this but poems, stories, reviews, you name it and I’ve had my finger in it! Afterward, I felt satisfied and I decided to take a short hiatus. I stepped back. The only problem is that I never stepped forward again.  Ever since the start of my hiatus, I’ve started calling myself ...