On Being an Adult and Avoiding Quicksand

I know someone who is my own age, and who knows how to do taxes. This, to me, is nothing short of arcane magic. Something forbidden and locked away. A knowledge so base and powerful that even a vague understanding threatens to undo a carefully calculated peace in the universe. If you are a millennial and you know how to do taxes, what’s next? Alchemy? Necromancy? Horcruxes and 401K’s?

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Returning

My life has been a lot of circles lately.

This–as in this act of typing up a post–is the most recent circle. The most recent return.

Today Jackson and I are hiding from the rain and writing. At least that’s what our headline for the day was. “JACKSON AND RYAN RETURN TO WRITING.” A more accurate headline would be: “JACKSON AND RYAN GET MANICURES AND THEN WATCH TWO EPISODES OF ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK AND THEN LISTEN TO LANA DEL REY AND BRAINSTORM WHERE THEY WILL ORDER FOOD FROM.”

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Community Service

The walls of the school enclose a large, overgrown courtyard choked with ivies and brambles. A glossy emerald carpet of pachysandra washes over the stone tiles on one end, like a receding tide, and a few students are pulling at it with rakes and sheers.

“We’re not supposed to go past this,” says one student to me as I walk over to supervise the community service. ‘Supervise’ is my assignment, but really I am just curious, and I’d sooner like to find myself sitting in the sun with my book open in my lap. The student goes on, “Because there’s poison ivy.”

“I’m immune to poison ivy,” I tell them.

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