My internet stopped working last Tuesday. You would assume that it would have an equally simple solution, how naive I was. What should have been a simple fix turned into, what felt like an, odyssey through the unique misery that is contemporary customer service – strikingly similar to what I’m sure Dante endured in his The Divine Comedy. And trust me, I would not wish that experience on my worst enemy. I made the catastrophic…

I signed up for a gym membership last month, not due to self-improvement journeys or New Year’s resolutions, and certainly not due to any life-coach nonsense. Beyond optimistic, my doctor told me I needed to “start incorporating more movement” into my life. So here I am, ready to do the splits. My favorite “pessimist” doctor once told me, “The effort would be appreciated by your body,” to which I remember he had given me that…

Almost 20 minutes in of endlessly trying to find a specific historical detail—one of those things that took an annoying amount of effort to get to the library’s encyclopedias for, but nowadays takes only the bare minimum effort of typing it out—is when it all started. While living in ancient Mesopotamia and doing “research” on their farming methods mid-paragraph (don’t ask me why, some other time), my screen darkened all of a sudden and a…

Last Tuesday, around 3 PM, I was sitting at a bus stop on Madison Avenue. Water was still cascading off my hair, soaking both my shoes and the lower quarter of my slacks. It puts my body in such a “wet” state, where “good” isn’t the word to describe my feelings, especially after getting roasted by the Monday Sun. Turns out, that spectacular orb doesn’t face off either. This is my Sun on the 0%…

After browsing the menu of one more restaurant bursting with “exciting opportunities” for work, I found how unpayable unpaid work was becoming. I didn’t bother thinking of words trying to describe my state (physically and mentally) on a Thursday evening following one of the week’s most painful days of work. That irritating feeling of opening the fridge only to find an array of all things sad and bland shoved in wasn’t any better at all.…

Dear Whomever It May Concern (and as much as I may wish to hide this from you, I know who you are), This morning was not an anomaly for me. The coffee in my cup fully commited to ejecting itself and making a grungy mess on my kitchen counter. I mentally prepared myself in reserving a paper towel, imagining the quick and precise movement with which I would mop up the wet mess. I reached…