Challenge
2025, In So Many Words
About a year ago, I posted my first piece here on Vocal in years. In Making it Hard to Fail, I talked about my goals for the new year in response to a challenge prompt. My goal was simple: to write for 15 minutes a day. No more was required, though as I suspected (and found in executing this plan) more did often follow.
By Raistlin Allenabout a month ago in Writers
Uneasy
The flickering lights seemed to bounce my legs up and down. I was feeling uneasy in this room full of old magazines and a wall that seemed to have seen generations of people. There was no smell that was distinct but the queazy feeling went up to my nose and for some reason queasiness smells like the icy cold air in the morning. Everyone around me was on their phones but my mind was too busy to be looking at mine. I wore a formal outfit and I thought this kind of outfit would make me feel more confident but instead, it made me feel less than. I tried to enlarge myself in my head but it felt like trying to stretch out a rock - it was impossible. I tried deep breathing but I felt like for every anxiety I breathed out, the more anxiety I breathed in. Then someone walked in and called my name. It was now time for my job interview.
By Marianne Leeabout a month ago in Writers
Preservation for Eternal Impact
It is easy to feel as though most of what is said disappears. Words are spoken, written, posted, argued over, and then quickly buried beneath the next wave of noise. Attention moves on. Platforms refresh. What once felt urgent becomes invisible. In that environment, a quiet but persistent question emerges. What actually lasts. And more uncomfortably, what is worth preserving when so much seems to vanish without consequence.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcastabout a month ago in Writers
I Kept Everyone Together Until No One Noticed Me Falling Apart
I was the one people called when things went wrong. When families argued, I became the bridge. When friends stopped talking, I translated silence into forgiveness. When someone needed a reminder that everything would be okay, I offered it without checking if I believed it myself.
By Salman Writesabout a month ago in Writers
About BTS Tickets
It has come to our understanding that alot of us have to wait for what is going on within the tickets for the BTS concert. Some us was fortunate while others was in the grip of scalpers and scammers taking money and also taking tickets and doubling the price. As what I'm expericing in Threads and other social media it's like this year they had doubled time in our chances to even see them wonderful seven men . I was doubting my feelings of it will be easy ,but wasn't really.
By Erica Williamsabout a month ago in Writers
Essence, Embodiment, and Relational Reality
The Failure of Reduction and the Need for Synthesis There is a persistent failure in many modern attempts to explain what a human being is. Some frameworks reduce the person entirely to matter, insisting that identity, consciousness, morality, and meaning are nothing more than emergent properties of physical processes. Other frameworks move in the opposite direction, detaching spirit from reason and grounding belief in intuition alone, often at the cost of coherence or accountability. Both approaches fail because both misunderstand essence. One denies that essence exists at all. The other treats it as something vague and undefinable.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcastabout a month ago in Writers
