I miss Molly. She was the best dog ever in this whole wide world. I'm actually tearing up thinking about her. I think she was my first love. True, unconditional love for an animal.

It was about 11:00 in the morning. It was quiet. Only a few early birds out. It’s Spain, so 11:00 is early. The water was calm. Glassy. Sparkley. I walked the coastline to feel into and find the perfect place to cozy up for my Morning Pages.

I was with my mom, getting my things out of my storage unit at Mizzou. I'm not sure how long I had that unit or really why. I know it's because I moved out of my on-campus house because my roommate went psycho. I was always a good girl. Nice to all, but sometimes psychos — narcissists, rather — somehow latch on and try to take my nice away.

I was thinking about this graffiti I saw on the side of the building outside that read, NO IDEAS.There was nothing else around it (yet). No artwork, no stickers, no nothing. It’s as if all around it was a blank canvas for more ideas. I even had this immediate thought about how whoever wrote this had at least the one idea to write NO IDEAS, which is an idea in of itself, no?

Neither here nor there, is where? Home. Home is me. And there’s no place like it!I’ve been getting supes existential lately. Because life’s all about that existing, man!

It’s nourishing, wet and smelly in a good way. Smelly in that it smells quite fragrant and has different frequencies of notes on the nose depending where you’re smelling it. 

I was thinking about what prompt I “could'' do for today as I was walking Jane this morning. And my brain started to think about the word, “could.” It’s full of so much potential and possibility.

I want to radically say there’s no such thing. There are signals one can give — for instance, a blinker when you’re about to turn a direction. When you hit the other blinker to turn the other direction, that’s also a signal. Period. Not a mix.

I took a random pause to write on my wrists, “Aqui” on the left and “Ahora” on the right, as I looked out the window at the five story building across the street. Ornate. Very European-city looking. I thought about how I really do love the city — this city. I’ve lived in many places, and in other cities like St. Louis, Seattle, Santiago, Alicante. But what Berlin has more than those other places is this cultural eclectic belonging. 

“Where does fantasy end and love begin?” This question gives me butterflies. Because I fantasize about seeing him again. I even reminisce about these two dates we had. Isn’t reminiscing about a surreal experience — some chemical magical moments in time another term for fantasizing?

I know at high levels of enlightenment people forgive people. For really horrible things. To be honest, forgiving someone for almost taking my one precious life away just isn’t in my person. Even being the spiritual person that I am.

I was 25. A quarter of a century old. Nausea set in every time I logged into Facebook to see a picture of a spoken-for ring finger, a chubby happy baby, or a house captioned “Congrats to the new homeowners!” Mind you, this is back when the newsfeed had only rudimentary filtering capabilities.Was it jealousy? Was it FOMO? Or was I genuinely uninterested in these milestones at this point in my life?

If you’re thinking about moving to a foreign country with your significant other, this article is meant for you. Or maybe you already made the leap with your lover. In that case, good for you! But know that this article is yours to read, too.

A big perk of being a freelancer is in the name. So is its downfall. And I’m not talking about Shakespearean tragic flaws here. Nor am I alluding to the ‘lancer’ half of the compound, silly! Although sometimes it feels like I’m a soldier going to battle for more clients, and my lance is my sales prose, selling my expertise, services and self worth. And then there’s my horse. Let’s call him Petey F. Invoice. He’s what keeps me going.