I am not one of those people who goes around claiming the pandemic didn’t suck. It has been a year full of death, despair, isolation, chaos, and destruction. Even if there were points of light (I was in D.C. on November 7), most of 2020 was a disaster. I even co-founded a nonprofit to make things suck less.

But there’s one thing I realized as I scrolled through Buzzfeed’s personality quizzes and read yet another Medium article on love languages: COVID 19 was one hell of a personality test. They say when you’re put under stress, your true nature comes…

Lately (probably thanks to Valentine’s season), I’ve been reminiscing about my single life. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about all the men who hit on me, were friends with me, and who faded away when I didn’t return the feelings. The men who loved me, who didn’t love me, and who hated me. The men who manipulated me and made me think I was a terrible person for not giving more of myself to them.

And while thinking about my past, I realized something that has been floating in my subconscious for a long time but that I hadn’t put into…

This is a clickbait article, so thank you for clicking. Of course, it’s not an article that is clickbait. It’s an article about clickbait. But that doesn’t make the title false…just misleading.

And that is the essence of clickbait: cleverly phrased sentences that while technically true, claim something so crazy that the viewer feels compelled to hear the whole story. Much maligned over the long years of the internet, clickbait titles are like subtle makeup products. Everyone wants to use them but pretend they’re not.

Clickbait is “something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on…

Once upon a time, I nearly died. I was very young when it happened, hardly a teenager, with eyes watching the world and my heart hidden at home. I did not know then that there would be no end to the changes that came: the younger sister who became the older one, the parents who greyed before their years would ask it of them, the friends and family who would ebb and flow with turned shoulders and averted eyes. I did not know that, with the stone-cold diffidence of a cruel world, the vice grip of death would try again…

When I was growing up, one of my fondest memories was my mom talking on our landline phone, a pencil dangling from her hand. My sister and I were home-schooled, so when my mom was on a call, it meant we could sneak a few minutes of playing with a toy or fooling around.

My mom is also a wonderful artist. Her first bachelor’s was in textiles, she’s an avid painter and sketcher, and she loves doodling when she talks to people. …

Every so often I read yet another article about the most important thing successful leaders like Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffet do. They understand that their time is valuable, that life is short, and that they literally don’t have enough time for all their interests.

So they learn to say “no” to almost everything. After all, saying “yes” to something only means saying “no” to something else, whether it’s lost time with family, skipping exercise, or not completing a project on time.

But all these articles miss a very important point I don’t hear talked about as often as it…

Last weekend, a new volunteer at Dweebs Global commented about what he thought was a weird coincidence. “Janani and Nathan [Executive Directors] live in Arlington, too,” he said. “Are you friends in real life? How did you meet?”

For an international, fully virtual organization, it’s unusual for any of us to have met in person. I have full family-esque relationships with people I’ve never hugged or had dinner with. I’ve even “met” people who live five minutes away I’ve yet to see face-to-face.

But of course, Janani and Nathan are different. “That’s so funny,” I told our new team member…

Once upon a time, I was a tired third year law student who spent most of my time languishing in ivory towers. My worst class was with a racist, sexist, ableist professor who looked down her nose at everyone beneath her (which, she felt, was everyone). I complained a ton about her to my friends over board games and pizza.

One day, after a particularly grueling late night, I sent my most patient friend a text: “I wish I were superlatively special to someone.” It was a text borne of irritation that people with children and partners were allowed more…