All Flavor, No Meat: A Vegetarian Journey Through India, Vietnam & Japan Hello and welcome! I recently took a six-week trip across Asia that took me from the foothills of the Himalayas to the streets of Shibuya. I experienced beautiful cultural traditions, took in incredible views, and had a lot of great (vegetarian) food. Eating […]
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Let me introduce myself— my name is Madison and I’m a former US government employee who left my job in April of 2025 and ended up moving to Australia.
Life in Australia on a Working Holiday Visa Read More »
Getting lost: a reluctant journey to self-discovery This past year, I have been lost… literally and metaphorically. It all started last spring when I was faced with the decision to leave my government job. I had finally started to imagine my career path and feel confident about what I was doing, when it suddenly became
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Whimsy as a trend Social media algorithms are fascinating; at once, both a black box and golden goose. A great algorithm not only shows you content it already knows you like, but it can seem nearly omniscient with how precisely it predicts what you’ll enjoy or interact with. Sometimes, it feels like algorithms know us
Creating space to create: How to stop doomscrolling and fuel your creativity Why is it that all day I just want to go home and read, draw, cook, create… but instead I spend all night doomscrolling and watching reruns? I think a lot of us feel this way. We feel tied to our phones and
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Practicing Gratitude Even When Everything is Terrible Over the past few months, I’ve been struggling, feeling stuck and unable to see a clear path forward. I left my stable job, lived at my parents’ house for a while, and then moved to Australia with absolutely no plan, no job, and no stable housing. I struggled
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What is a personal curriculum? The concept of a “personal curriculum” has taken the internet by storm on platforms like TikTok and Instagram (check out @xparmesanprincessx on TikTok, who is widely credited with starting the trend), but what does it mean? It’s essentially a way to structure your time so that you can intentionally make
My Personal Curriculum for the Rest of 2025 Read More »
I left my 9-5 civil service office job around six months ago. Since then, I packed up my entire life, said goodbye to loved ones, and set out for a new adventure in Australia. Have you ever felt that your life was set on a trajectory, and all the steps were laid out in front
Don’t Cry, Shopgirl: The Joys and Struggles of Returning to Retail Read More »
How do the five stages of grief work when it’s the death of democracy that you’re mourning? Denial comes first. I was living in Washington, DC, working for the federal government when this story takes place. At once, the future I had felt hopeful for was gone in an instant. Election results came in overnight,
Why I Left Public Service: Reflections From an American Ex-Bureaucrat Read More »
