Maddy

Category: Random

  • Dahlias: a collection of my notes & photos

    Dahlias: a collection of my notes & photos

    From my journal, August 2023: The Dahlia Dell in full bloom (2023): From my journal, July 2023: Pictures from the Dahlia Dell in full bloom (2022), and one of the volunteer gardeners tending to it: From my journal, July 2023: Pictures of the gardener in his dahlia garden in Half Moon Bay (July 2020): Today:…

  • Kneeling to kiss the ground

    Kneeling to kiss the ground

    My creative energy shifts with the seasons. The past few months I’ve been frustrated that I can’t slow down enough or find the patience to finish anything, whether it be writing, painting, or other random projects. In my darker moments I feel as though I’ve lost my creative energy entirely. But the spring season has…

  • Swimming Upstream

    Swimming Upstream

    “Recovering from an eating disorder is like swimming upstream.” That sentiment, expressed by so many people in recovery, is one of my favorites because 1) it’s incredibly true and 2) it applies beyond eating disorder recovery. In a society that maintains narrowly-defined standards of beauty and praises weight loss, fitness, diets, etc., eating disorder recovery…

  • The Joy Lab

    The Joy Lab

    Inspiration from my Target sweatpants.

  • Small Kindnesses

    Small Kindnesses

    I’m reading through old posts I started drafting but never finished. Some of them contain only titles and subtitles; thoughts I wanted to come back to but never did. (I’m briefly disturbed by one post I apparently started writing on the eve of my 28th birthday, as I’m now 30 and time is a scary…

  • Ask A Flower

    Ask A Flower

    Inspired by a bumper sticker I saw the other day that said, “Ask A Flower.”

  • Reflections on Love After Five Years and Four Months of Marriage

    Reflections on Love After Five Years and Four Months of Marriage

  • Leaving room for wonder

    Leaving room for wonder

    After weeks of waking up to dense San Francisco fog, this morning’s sunshine is … hitting different. I go for a short walk before my 8am meeting to bask in the delicious morning light (and stop to take the above photos). I am in such a good mood that I spend $4.12 at the cute…

  • Burnt toast

    Burnt toast

    This morning, in my stubborn refusal to do anything work-related before 7am, I’m reading through old journal entries. I come across one I wrote at our place in Berkeley in June of last year: I’m sitting on the couch reading and the delicious smell of something cooking wafts through the open window next to me.…

  • thoughts & pictures from my morning commute

    thoughts & pictures from my morning commute

  • Working Forwards

    Working Forwards

    Yesterday I received an email reminder from my company that it was “time for Quarterly Check-Ins with your manager.” I let out an audible groan, despite being the only person in my house. Time to get asked, yet again, what my career goals are! (Spoiler alert for my manager: I don’t freaking know!!!!! I don’t…

  • insignificant moments / dipping into the ~archives~

    insignificant moments / dipping into the ~archives~

    “Life is a collection of moments.”– Someone’s Instagram caption, probably, paired with a picture of the back of their head as they look out onto a teal blue sea. Or, a message embroidered on a pillow in a suburban mom’s house that is being meme’d by their teenage daughter on TikTok à la this video.…