Here comes a heavy one.

Some things are inevitable. This story isn't about taxes.

This is about the things we can’t outrun.

I bought a house!

The Asheville market was red hot, other hopeful buyers shared horror stories of bidding wars. They said it couldn’t happen, but for me, it did. It was almost painless; a high-water mark in a life that lately is flooded with goodness. I worked with a masterful realtor, and we found an adorable spot almost immediately. The sellers accepted my offer. The inspections went well. All that was left was to close. Then, just three days before closing, my mom died.

Two boulder-sized milestones stacked on top of one another heaped on top of me. These are the life moments that can exhaust your emotional faculties so completely that you need a few weeks of alternating deep tissue massages and tear-soaked therapy sessions just to get back to baseline. And I got a twofer over one long weekend as Mom’s passing punctuated my pinnacle with an unthinkable depth of sadness and stress.

Her death was sudden, and it wasn’t.

Wise words

We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.

Chuck Palahniuk

ICYMI

Celebrities and self-loathing are encountered during a spa day in Big Sur.

Here’s an excerpt:

I didn’t want to keep staring and give them the satisfaction of being yet another rubbernecking normal. I didn’t need them to know that their presence made my heart pound, or that their very existence put an inner spotlight on every way that I failed to live up to the beauty and lifestyle standards that they set for our society. I wanted to play it cool, be unmoved. I wanted to believe that they – and the best-selling content they produced and top-rated products they endorsed – were not important or in any way relevant to my life. I could not face that, compared to them, I was just a consumer. So I stared at their bags.