ABOUT

Me

I have enjoyed the English language for longer than I can remember. I am comfortable in the gray areas. In my professional and personal life, I work to promote complexity balanced with creativity and engagement. I believe that much of what is most worthy of consideration is neither measurable nor solvable.

I enjoy spaces and conversations centered on exploration, making, and reflection.

I live in the Midwest where I am currently undertaking an accidental comparative study of toddlers and college students #mommyprofessor. I have two children and about eighty students, which is definitely more doable than the other way around, though sometimes only marginally so.

Explore. Make. Reflect.

One Good Thing, Intermittently. I’m not a blogger.

This project began as a response to a 100 post challenge from my brother Lucas McLaughlin at http://lucasmclaughlin.com/ . I didn’t post 100 posts. I don’t try to post every week or every month or even every year. Sometimes I post frequently, but usually I do not. My values do not align with those of SEO. I choose not to schedule posts, not to produce, not to be behind, but simply to post intermittently.

I began with three core priorities of my life—exploration, making, and reflection. These are the priorities that remain fundamental to who and how I am. I cannot avoid exploration. I research semi-random topics that catch my attention, often without regard for practicality, from making flour out of acorns (which I have no plans to do) to the complexities of the response of hair to humidity (which is hard to ignore given my hair’s responsiveness to humidity).

The making in my life includes baking bread and art projects designed by my kids; here, it is usually intellectual “work,” a blog post. Does it “count” as “making” if what you “make” is a written exploration of a book or idea? I say yes.

I’m a natural over-thinker, so the reflection is easy. The real me is not “clear” and “confident.” When Squarespace tells me “don’t overthink it,” the real me gets what they’re saying, but resists. Surely lack of thoughtfulness is a more significant problem, all things considered, than excess thoughtfulness.