The word optimization seems to be dominating my life lately. Optimize your omnichannel strategy to see the greatest ROI. Optimize your supplement and protein intake to repair muscles faster. Optimize your peanut butter to jelly ratio for the perfect sandwich. You get the idea. For a while, I used this buzzword frequently, thinking I sounded knowledgeable when I did so. Now, I find the whole concept dizzying. While optimization isn’t perfection, it is striving for it, in a sense — and that’s why it feels unattainable at times. read more

I’ve been accumulating a lot of thoughts over the past month, fluctuating between waves of feeling so compelled to write and feeling like writing is the last thing I want to do. I’ve always thought that writing was the way I was meant to express myself — that it would express my feelings better than anything else could. I still believe this, fundamentally, but I lately feel at a loss for expressing myself, period. It’s good and bad. Good, in the sense that I truly do feel like I’m living in the present. I’m taking one day at a time, not looking too far ahead, not dwelling on the past. At the same time, my head and my heart seem to be all out of whack. read more