ACCORDING TO ZAC

I didn't know when I first started my feature writing class how much I would come to enjoy learning from my professor, Bill Schmidt. He's a former New York Times bureau chief that retired to Tucson to teach and kick back a bit. He told good stories, managed to make a loosened tie look really classy, and used his expertise to make me a better thinker and writer. One of the lasting gifts he gave me, however, was turning me on to The Atlantic , a really interesting news magazine that I otherwise hadn't heard about. Since I took Bill's class back in 2014, The Atlantic  has been a place where I have learned a lot  about the world, the way people think, race and class issues, critique (mostly of TV and movies, but also of social norms and trends), and a host of other things. This year when they chose to go to a paywall model (subscribe to good journalism to keep it alive, folks!) I immediately purchased a subscription and have been thrilled to have unlimited access onlin...

0/10, would not recommend a broken ankle to anyone. The cycles of life are at the forefront of my mind tonight. Or rather, my blindness to the cycles of life are what I’m thinking about. The last couple of weeks I haven’t been very happy with where I’ve been spiritually, and it’s been getting pretty frustrating. I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that I ought to change and ways that I could be different, but I’m struggling to break out of my rut and actually do a thing— anything —that will move me away from where I am right now. And surprisingly, I hadn’t really talked to anyone at length about it (truly an unusual occurrence). But I finally felt a little tug, and I went and saw my best friend Eric. He didn’t have the answers, but he was kind and empathetic and it was unquestionably time well spent. He and I talked about the phases we go through, some of which are of our own doing; we make poor decisions, we avoid certain things or people, we run away from what’s ha...