Therapy is a wild thing. At some point, you just want to stop being healthy and just work on being yourself, unhealthy parts and all. I can only take so many deep breaths.

It's hard not to be bitter. I have an advanced degree, and I was hired in 2005 for 30k. I do a job that requires a high level of mental fortitude and knowledge of law and medicine. I have 20 years experience. And yet, new hires in DOGE are getting six figure salaries, something I will never see.

Same table. Two perspectives. One for people far from me and one for people close.

I was raised in a great church. Truly, my memories of church are some of my happiest memories from childhood. We went on retreats together and focused on building community and love.

Then I read the Bible, and I had questions.

What is the most spook-tacular nebula in the galaxy?

One contender is LDN 43, which bears an astonishing resemblance to a vast cosmic bat flying amongst the stars on a dark Halloween night.

Credit & Copyright: Mark Hanson and Mike Selby

At winter camp, we kind of went around and talked about the election and who we voted for (or would have in the kids case) and why. This was done incredibly carefully by another leader and I, who voted opposite each other and we knew that.

Yesterday I went to see the Alvin Ailey ballet. They performed three different dances, which I think were very deliberately put in order to convey a message, and I hope I received it. This is the message: Build your community, manage your own anxieties, and know your oppressors will face judgement.

Fight the algorithm.

Sometimes I pretend to be different people when I look at commercials, just to mess with the algorithm.

Anyway, I don't really want the algorithm to "know" me because I hardly know myself. I want to see and learn everything.

My extended family and I don't agree about politics, and it makes talking to them uncomfortable right now. I try to remember that they're are bad actors out there actively trying to poison all of our minds to fight each other, and that we are all affected by the algorithms.

At some point, I hope I will fall back into humor as a coping mechanism.

Frankie Ryan died today. He was well loved by everyone who knew him, and I get it. He gave his full attention to whatever he was into. His eyes twinkled when you spoke, like everything you said was honey.

I've been told all my life that the things I want, like nomadic communism, are frivolous and unobtainable. What I really need, they say, is to settle down and accept capitalism and the patriarchy.

For so long, I have made walking the fence and staying open-minded my whole identity. I refused to put my lot in with any side and tried to see the value of every argument. But honestly? That is just bullshit people-pleasing behavior.

I have struggled with mental health issues most of my adult life. I have been in hospitals, given medications, and spent way too much money on psychologists. It's getting worse now that I am entering perimenopause. No one warned me that might happen. All I ever heard about was hot flashes.

I am trying to be more authentic and it is truly terrifying. I hold so many details of myself from others and just provide them with what they would like to see. I've been doing it so long and so hard that I don't know how to start to change it.

I started therapy this year. It's so easy for me to pretend that I am something I am not to make other people happy. It's so easy for me to believe that people wouldn't like the real me if they saw it.

I haven't felt like I could be honest on Facebook for the past 10 years. I have quieted my voice to not cause concern with my family or my acquaintances. I don't feel great about that.