The s’mores sourdough is still sitting on the counter. I haven’t sliced it yet. It looks a little like it survived something—marshmallows caramelized into dark craters, chocolate bleeding out the sides like melted intention—but I’m saving the first bite for a friend who requested it.

Our sweet-toothed kiddo is probably gonna circle it like a hawk later…I’m learning that he and his mom have a talent for seeing magic where I see mess.

That’s kind of been the theme lately.

I didn’t go to Pride this year. First time in decades. Not because I’m scared—though the world is heavy and uncertain—but because my heart wanted something else. We took the kiddo to Lake Arrowhead instead. Traded crowds and rainbow crosswalks for trees, stillness, and the comfort of not needing to perform anything. It felt like a quiet reset.

I’ve been a little internalized lately. Not in a spiraling way. Just inward. Laying low. Tending. Resting. Prepping for the school year. Reading Brave New World with a pen in hand, underlining phrases that make me sit up straighter. The more I read, the more uneasy I feel—in a good way, the way a book should make you feel when it’s holding a mirror up to the world and you’re not quite ready for the reflection.

In Huxley’s engineered utopia, everything is instant, frictionless, numbed. Emotion is a threat. Art is neutered. Even death is managed for maximum convenience. In that world, bread doesn’t rise—it’s manufactured, optimized, shrink-wrapped for distribution. No waiting. No feeding. No flour on your hands.

But I’m still baking. Still kneading. Still feeding a living thing in my kitchen. I’ve been slow and tactile on purpose, leaning into things that make me feel real. Into apocalyptic loaves of goo. Into old books with new warnings. Into lesson plans that ask students to think deeply in a culture that rewards scrolling.

I didn’t go to Pride, but I still feel proud. Sometimes, choosing quiet over visibility is its own kind of resistance. Sometimes the most radical act is refusing to be extracted from, refusing to always perform, refusing to ignore the inner voice that whispers, rest now.

I’ll be back in the classroom soon, asking students to read things that don’t offer easy answers. To sit with discomfort. To question. To care. I want to show them how to stay awake in a world that keeps trying to sing them to sleep.

That’s what I’ve been doing, too. Quietly. Imperfectly.

Still rising.