Conk’s Brain Podcast

<p>Fifteen is tempestuous, hurtling through time and space at break-neck speeds - desperately searching for anything you can cling on to. In the back of the library, Spring of 1997 to be precise, I crashed full stop...

<p>Lately, I have been singularly obsessed with Haikus. I’m not particularly adept at writing them and high school me would rather have showed up naked to class than embrace that level of constraint. Maybe it’s because...

<p>Chaos is truth, control is an illusion. We hold on tightly with both hands to all the things we believe we can control - fretting, worrying, twisting our insides in knots, waking up in pools of our own cold sweat...

<p>Lately I have been obsessed with death. Not so much the inevitability, but what comes after. I am afraid of not existing, of existing eternally some place terrible, or drifting endlessly through a deep black nothing...

<p>Does the thought of Thanksgiving fill you with warm fuzzies and joy or existential dread? I have a feeling that this holiday season is going to be an adjustment for a great many people (and by adjustment, I mean...

<p>I know, I’m not supposed to swear. Mom says it’s not “ladylike”, but who the hell wants to be ladylike anyway? I’d rather be the bear. Oh dear, Did I just go there too? Guess I’m over zipping my lips and holding my...

<p>Exhausted doesn’t even begin to cover it. My brain is so steeped in stress, I’m pretty sure it now constitutes as soup. I have ignored all of my own advice about setting limits on social media doom scrolling, going...

<p></p><p>I despise the word “too”. Too loud, Too talkative, Too boisterous, Too tenacious, Too much. I don’t fit in boxes, Defy hard lines and sharp edges. I swear liberally, love fiercely, dream so big I sometimes...

<p></p><p>I’m awkward, sorry, I’m awkward. All elbows and knees and oversized feet, crashing into immovable objects for lack of depth perception. I just want to make friends, connect - talk until my lips fall off about...

<p></p><p>I don’t want to write this article. I’d rather curl up in the fetal position in front of my electric fireplace and listen to my compilation records from Vinyl Moon while the world burns, but here we are. As an...

<p>I stumbled on a poem that I wrote in June of 2020. It’s every bit as relevant now as it was four years ago, maybe more so.</p><p>The weight of the world crashing down like a tidal wave, threatening to drown us out at...

<p> </p><p> I can’t even count the number of times in my life I’ve heard the adage “Never talk about religion or politics in polite company”. Like every family, we had a few who had strong opinions and stated them...

<p></p><p>Time gets away from me. It just wonders off to idle pursuits consumed by the horror and splendor and joy and pain of living. It’s like being on the highway in the city at night, blurs of color created by the...

<p> </p><p> I have struggled epically with my desire to connect with others through writing and social media and my outright fear of internet trolls. As a high school English teacher my classroom was often a minefield...

<p> One of my absolute favorite memes goes a little something like this, “Never in the history of telling someone to calm down has anyone ever calmed down by being told to calm down”. Think about it. Really picture a...