Lately I’ve been contemplating my relationship with work and play, especially as they relate to my art practice. As modern humans in a modern world, we think of work and play as fundamentally different activities. In fact, the two words are considered opposites. Society’s definition of work brings to mind commutes, chores, cubicles, to-do lists, meetings, never-ending piles of dishes, and a general feeling of fatigue. It’s homework, desks, and memorization. Counting the minutes, trying to...

On January 1st, I started an experiment. I wanted to see if I could go an entire year without a smartphone. As I shared my plan with the people in my life, I heard one of two responses: “Oh, that’s amazing. I want to do that myself!” The other: “I could never do that. I use my phone for everything .” Before 2026, I thought the same. These days you can do everything from banking to paying for groceries to signing contracts entirely on your phone . Taking inventory, I realized that almost...

Lately I’ve been thinking about what makes a good story. Storytelling– from a non-English major’s perspective– seems like such a nebulous skill, and though I’ve been the beneficiary of some truly amazing books, I’ve never deliberately set out to improve my own storytelling abilities. That is, until I discovered Brandon Sanderson’s creative writing lectures on Youtube . As one of the most successful fantasy writers in the world, regularly releasing thousand-page books with complicated,...