Julie explores life with curiosity, creativity, and connection. I share observations with humor, offering perspective on the world and how it shapes us—lightening life’s complexities along the way.
You don’t usually wake up one morning and think, Today I will wrestle with mulch, sweat, and a wheelbarrow that clearly resents me. And yet—here we are. Knees in the dirt. Debating edging. Hauling stones that seemed so much smaller at the garden center. Hiring help for the
I have a confession. I laughed out loud last Tuesday. Really laughed. The kind that sneaks up on you and arrives without permission and is frankly a little undignified. And for approximately four seconds afterward, I felt guilty about it. Because Tuesday was also the day I had read three
There is a certain kind of whisper in our culture right now that says we should all be exactly the same. Same access. Same outcomes. Same opinions. Same beige, agreeable, non-threatening middle. It’s very democratic. Very fair. Very… dull. And I’m beginning to suspect that in our noble
Yes, I took this from Facebook. Please enjoy! 😀 Atlantic Records made billions from his songs. He grew up in a house full of heroin addicts and was homeless by 15. A kid raised by junkies and beatniks in Greenwich Village became the most prolific hitmaker in modern music history. Nile
I went to an Easter egg hunt on Sunday. Now, I need to begin by saying that I do not attend Easter egg hunts lightly. I carry with me a long and distinguished history of Easter-related trauma. My memories include small children being trampled like bargain shoppers on Black Friday,
There was a time—not long ago—when parents told their children, “You can be anything you want to be.” Doctor. Lawyer. Teacher. Architect. Now, in our more technologically evolved and spiritually exhausted era, the guidance has become more streamlined: “You can be anything you want to be… as long
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from arguing with people who are not arguing in good faith. You know it. You’ve felt it. The circular conversations. The shifting goalposts. The shrugging dismissal of facts that would have shattered your worldview if the roles were reversed. You
There is something about this stretch of days that asks a little more of us. Good Friday does not rush. It does not distract. It does not offer easy answers or quick comfort. It sits with us in the quiet, in the weight of things, in the recognition that life—
Nobody is making a documentary about her. She doesn’t have a podcast. She’s not building a personal brand. She has approximately 340 followers on Instagram, most of whom are relatives and one very enthusiastic former coworker named Dave. But every single week, without announcement, without applause, without a
We made a pilgrimage last night. Not a casual outing. A pilgrimage. To Emens Auditorium in Muncie to see the one, the only, the myth, the marble bust of American songwriting himself—Bob Dylan. A legend. A king. A man whose lyrics have been studied, dissected, and probably used to
Can I ask you something? When was the last time you felt like enough? Not almost enough. Not enough-for-now-but-working-on-it. Not enough-compared-to-where-I-was-three-years-ago. Just… enough. Take your time. I’ll wait. If you’re struggling to answer that, you’re not alone. You’re also not broken. You are, however, living in
I need to tell you something. And I need you to actually hear it. Not scan it. Not nod politely and move on to the next thing. Not file it under “nice thought” and forget it by Thursday. Hear it. You have permission. That’s it. That’s the whole