The brown tap water that flowed from my sink was deemed safe and drinkable. America’s water crisis is much worse than we think.

Before my family moved into a more expensive apartment where the water was filtered twice, we used bottled water to brush our teeth. The tap water was murky at best and brown at worst, leaving yellow stains in the sinks and tubs. In a city where everyone relied on bottled water, plastic bottles were everywhere. They littered my family’s apartment, the streets, the public spaces. Between drinking water and cooking water, my family easily went through six…

#4: Include Indigenous people in the climate change discussion

“Every day is Indigenous peoples’ day when you are living on stolen land”.

I came across this quote in an Instagram post this morning from the Indigenous Environmental Network. My feed was filled with charities to support, petitions to sign, and articles to read, all advocating for Indigenous rights, but this particular post struck a chord in me. It highlights something that is too easy for white people to forget: the fight for Indigenous peoples’ rights isn’t something we should be doing one day a year.

Here, I’ve touched on five…

Looking back on these past seven months, I think I can finally see why quarantine feels so paradoxical

Even in October, the sun still shines in Texas. It’s not the unrelenting sun of July and August. It’s a soft autumn sun — still warm but dimmer than its summer counterpart. Everything changes when the world shifts from summer to fall. The wind’s a little crisper, softening the lingering heat. The earth becomes quiet. I never noticed these details before. Of course, we all know the sun grows softer as winter approaches. We all know the air cools down and the…

To halt unprecedented, destructive changes to our ecosystems, we must halve our emissions by 2030.

“Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050.”

When I first read the statistic, released in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I did a double-take. And then I read it again. After reading it a third time aloud, my stomach dropped. So soon? I always knew that climate change was pressing. I consider myself to be a relatively eco-friendly person. I was…

Whether you’re living for the weekend, your next holiday break, or the ambiguous-future-that-must-be-better-than-now, the psychology is the same

I am as guilty as they come where living-for-the-future is concerned. There was a point in my life — most of my life actually — where my sole purpose was to be somewhere else. In high school, my sole purpose was to be admitted to a good college. Forget enjoying adolescence. I would enjoy my twenties. And then I was admitted into a good college and my sole purpose became acceptance to a good graduate school. Forget enjoying my early twenties, I’ll…

What I learned during my month-long hiatus from writing

I can’t imagine how much time I spent starring at my computer screen, typing out a few paragraphs here and there, only to grow frustrated and delete my progress, during the last few weeks of August. Suffering from a particularly rough bout of writer’s block and a general lack of motivation, I was lucky if I managed to complete one piece of writing a week.

All writers know the frustration and melodrama that accompanies writer’s block, but this time felt different. I wasn’t just out of ideas. For a few weeks…

If you’ve been struggling with your diet, you may need to take a critical look at your sleeping habits

After dozing for a few moments, you’re wide awake again and checking the clock, even though you know the blue light might interfere with any chance you had of falling asleep. What does it matter? It’s not like you were sleeping well anyway. It’s 3 AM, and you’re tossing and turning, desperately trying to find sleep, but your mind won’t shut down.

Most of us recognize the frustration of being denied sleep. We’ve all been there, a time or two at…

Growing up, I had a Gilmore Girl style relationship with my mother. We were closer than most friends, certainly closer than most parent-child relationships. Because of our closeness, I had few close friends as a teenager, looking to my mom for friendship, guidance, and parenting at the same time.

We were two sides to the same coin. People called us twins, even clones. And while I always have and always will value the bond my mother and I share, it wasn’t until I went off the college, not knowing who I was without her by my side, that I recognized…