How is February Over Already?

Celebrating top (and flop) posts of the month!

Saying goodbye to this rectangular February and saying hello to March! Somehow, it smells like spring already, despite frost and snow still covering most of my backyard. Just last week, I had to dig my way out of my basement apartment. Could spring truly be around the corner?

I sure hope so!

I wonder what March will bring? March 2021, a full year after the entire world shut down. What difference has one year made?

Will I stop having dreams where I leave the house and I’m not wearing a mask and I panic? Will I stop having dreams about reminding myself to get the vaccine even though it’s not even remotely close to being ready for someone like me?

Only time will tell.

Top Post of February 2021

Thank you so much to everyone who supported these pieces!

[1] This Poem is for Creators Like You

Somehow, this piece rocketed from being a piece that has relatively quieted down in reads to the top piece on my list this month! I wonder if it’s because someone who almost never uses their Medium subscription read one (1) single piece from me, and so I got an enormous cut of that?

Whoever it was, whether it was a group of you who suddenly happened upon this, thank you to everyone whose eyeballs have darted across this page.

to writers tackling life’s toughest topics or the funniest, inconvenient truths or of wonderful fictional worlds;

[2] 3 Quotes from Essentialism To Help You Feel Less Overloaded

I was so excited to see this piece get curated/ distributed! I’m having the time of my life catching up with my old teenage bookworm habits after almost a decade of reading hiatus.

Did anyone else go through this? They were huge bookworms until college and then college knocked all leisure out of reading out of them.

Well, I’m back, and stronger than before. And I’m ready to rave about all the books I’m reading.

Are there things you do by default because you don’t think about how much they take up your time? Do they hold value for you or someone else? Did they hold value for you at the beginning but change over time? Do they still hold value for you?

[3] 3 Tips to Make Your Email Inbox Less Stressful To Look At

Given the pandemic situation, I’m guessing a lot of us are getting our major tasks assigned to us via email. Even if you’re in the position of assigning tasks to others, that email interface will likely be your dashboard for the day.

The pandemic was oddly my time to truly hone the skill of organizing my inbox to the max and learning to set boundaries efficiently and effectively. And somehow, almost miraculously, I’m reaching inbox zero every day, without having to check it every single waking moment of my life.

These three guidelines help me maximize the efficiency of communicating with each other, thereby increasing the advantages of email, while minimizing the distraction that’s so often linked with this tool (minimizing the impact of negatives).

[4] Save Time and Money with the Magic of Fried Rice

This is another old piece but a great one, and I’m so glad that it’s still circulating! There are so many recipes out there about making the perfect fried rice, but this piece isn’t about that.

This piece is about exploring the components of fried rice from a novice point of view. Fried rice can be so versatile, allowing for such a myriad of potential options. At the same time, it’s so simple that it can definitely be the first step to more difficult meal prep recipes.

Having a basic recipe like fried rice saves money and time spent making repeat decisions, automating the boring parts of cooking.

It also holds space for creativity and serendipitous recipe discoveries that these combinations can engender, making time for the fun parts of cooking.

[5] Why I ended my Talkspace online therapy subscription

Truthfully, the only reason why I put together this piece is that I was frustrated and at the end of my rope in terms of navigating this complex system of finding the right therapist. I had this assumption that things should be easier to access.

It wasn’t.

Yet, I’m glad I shared this story because it sounds like it definitely resonated with a lot of folks out there struggling to make it through this long-winded process of being matched with the right people, particularly if they’re part of a minoritized group.

That, or it quelled a lot of worries and confusion for readers who haven’t thought about taking that first step yet.

Either way, I’m thankful for everyone who took the time to read this story, and hope that it can be helpful in supporting your own self-advocacy for the right support that you need.

I’m sharing my own story of my personal opinions and personal experiences to validate that navigating mental health care is a difficult journey. These are strictly my own opinions. My main hope is that in sharing this, you can feel less alone in this process of accessing healthcare.

The Flop Pieces

These deserve some more love!

A super tiny sciku (a science haiku) about the circadian rhythm, with a hilarious backstory… and a cover photo of… yeast? What could the poem possibly be about?

Hop on to find out :)

Lucy (The Eggcademic) [she/her] racked her brains to the biological rhythms course she took years ago but there are only two things that linger.

[2] The Millennial Meme

Another tiny haiku of the month, about the famous avocado toast. Have you heard about this meme? The myth that the reason why millennials can’t afford to own homes is because they buy too many avocado toasts?

Lucy (The Eggcademic) [she/her] hated the simplification of the financial struggles of the millennial generation into “too many lattes” or “too many avocado toasts” as a shift away from tackling the actual systemic factors that make it several times harder for young adults… or adults for that matter, to make the same financial decisions as the previous generations. I still dislike it, but rather than internalizing it as a flaw of my generation, I’m realizing that this phrase embodies the mistakes of those who insist that systemic factors are personal failings.

[3] Poetry for my least favorite fruit on the planet

Adulthood for me has been an endless battle with my childhood picky eating. I had strict parents, so I never really had the choice to not eat the things that I didn’t like, but as soon as I moved out, I had to be that strict parent for myself.

Needless to say, for the longest time, “just making myself” hasn’t worked.

It’s been a journey of creativity, flexibility, and experimentation to find the exact way of food preparation that will trick me into eating more nutritious food.

Do you have foods you partially hate and will only consume in certain forms?

[4] What is the hardest part of making friends for you?

Making friends can be super hard for a variety of reasons. For some, the pandemic is an obvious and salient barrier to being able to go out and engage with others. Some of us haven’t met anyone new in possibly an entire year and crave the novelty of being able to meet a friend’s friend at some social gathering.

Yet others have struggled with making and maintaining friendships for a variety of reasons. I took to Instagram to get a sense of what the biggest barriers were and found similar themes across the responses I got.

Do you relate to any of these? If you don’t, how could you support someone who might be struggling with one of these reasons?

[5] 4 Smart Considerations for when you apply to graduate school

I’ve heard that there was a rise in applications to both medical and graduate school this year and wanted to place this piece back on the radar!

This article puts together the pieces of advice I didn’t quite find on my journey of researching on the internet, that I find myself passing on in word-of-mouth manner to research assistants in the lab.

Marching Forward

It’s been interesting to review my stats and reflect on the pieces that were most popular and the ones that were more … flopular?*

In the past, I’ve definitely followed the numerous other writers who have published their earning or view stats along with this, but it felt freeing to not include that information, aside from the brief rankings.

By doing so, I could see the themes that really emerged from the writing, and which types of pieces best resonated with readers the most. I also realized that there were pieces that I would have written anyways, even if no one read them, simply because in creating I personally derived some other value from it.

I’ve found that my writing journey has been a healthy mixture of both. Sometimes, I was selfishly creating for myself because the act of writing was healing, or expressed something that I felt was unheard. Other times, I created because I wanted to connect and share something of value and was rewarded by the fact that readers (even if it was one single reader) resonated with that writing.

So thank you to everyone who has been a part of that journey at any point. If you’re new here, grab a warm drink and settle down for some reading! Also don’t be shy to share with me what your top and flop pieces are, so we can celebrate together.

*not a real word but maybe if I used it enough, like frindle, I could make it one?

Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) will continue to hone her writing craft, and is grateful for everyone who has chimed in with support and feedback so far!

Shouting out Jenine Bsharah Baines’s piece!