On July 16th, a new three-digit helpline, ‘988’, began a service for Americans to call if they were experiencing a mental health emergency. Those three numbers may prove to be the first small step for recovering a healthy mind during a period marked by back-to-back catastrophic traumas. While the pandemic caused layoffs, or gave employees […]
Thirty-two years it took for me to trust myself. A sliding glass door to an inherent truth–value in my existence. “Stepping into my first dance-music concert was the beginning of opening that door,” I thought to myself, as I walked the grounds of Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island. Standing amongst countless variations of flora and […]
Previously, I discussed how making time to “date” ourselves can pave the way for increasing our emotional intelligence. It is a key to understanding “you” as a human. Humans are driven by emotion. Heightening your emotional intelligence improves your ability to respond to different situations optimally. To know why you feel the way you do, […]
Nails on a chalkboard. A semi-truck skidding to a halt on the interstate as its back jack-knifes, sending sparks cascading across rows of cars like the Fourth of July. A never-ending vacuum on a Saturday morning outside of your apartment door. What do these three things have in common? They are all analogous to how […]
In this ongoing series, DJ and mental-health advocate Alex Wagner shares stories and inspiration to create awareness. I often received remarks on my seemingly perpetual state of happiness in elementary school – a smile that would never leave my face. One time, I happened to eat something most unagreeable with myself, resulting in me spending […]
Music is a powerful key to pieces of our minds and hearts that might succumb to cobwebs and rotting wood otherwise. Music threads thought and understanding into the fabric of emotional comprehension, allowing us to feel magnified to limitless degrees, potentially, everything. It is wondrous to allow abstraction to help us articulate emotion, perceive it, […]
It was mid-50s out in the crisp Pacific Northwest air. Discolored hands carrying bags of groceries in the cold, a washed, dull look splashed onto my face. Between point A and point B, I felt alone. It’s challenging to fit into much of anything when you walk on a tightrope wearing neon blue and sequin, […]
Hot Water Music are many things to many people. For some of us, they’re a scrappy group of bearded punks we saw play at a VFW Hall in the midwest in the ‘90s as kids (outside unironically played Foursquare and passed out Why Vegan pamphlets). Others discovered them on the Vans Warped Tour in the […]
Alanis Morissette and the notion of sensitivity hadn’t ever been paired together before for me. Years back, we used a website called the random Alanis Morissette song generator which would, after the input of a few choice words, spit back to you a song full of resentment and malice for your enjoyment. Her grunge-infused success […]
For Mother’s Day in 2017, I prepared a song called “Spirit” for my mother. She had been battling breast cancer along with other health complications, and her morale was declining. The fight was one of many years, multiple cancer outbreaks and several events weighed upon her consciousness. “Spirit” possessed the sound of the animal kingdom, […]