Tiny Earthquakes.

This week on the Equals Record: anticipating traumatic experiences before they happen - and going for it anyway. (Case in point: my trip to Cambodia. That's me pictured below, on a visit to Kampot with my roommate.)

As always, an excerpt from the post: "There were earthquakes in Tokyo the night before I left for Cambodia. It was the summer after I’d graduated college and I planned to spend a month overseas, teaching English to a small group of children at an orphanage in Phnom Penh. My family accompanied me half of the way there, vacationing at my grandparents’ house in Tokyo for a few days before my departure. We shopped, ate at our favorite noodle shops, strolled the city streets. At night, I slept in my uncle’s childhood bedroom, on a soft mat laden with blankets. I slept soundly there, in a house I knew well from many visits to Japan. It was quiet—very still, even in the middle of the city. But on that night, after everyone else had gone to bed, I lay awake, palms pressed to the ground. It was shaking. Always a bit superstitious, I spent the better part of that night, eyes closed but unable to sleep, counting tiny, nearly imperceptible earthquakes. I was afraid. The next morning, I boarded the plane."

See the post in full, here. You can find the archive for my weekly column, Looking Forward (about the ups and downs of "growing up" in my twenties), here. Thank you so much for reading!

Bottom image via Cubicle Refugee. (If you know the original source, please share!)