Author: Chrys Buckley

Chrys Buckley was born with albinism, which means she has no pigment and she’s legally blind. Chrys has bachelor’s degrees in Arts & Letters, Micro/Molecular Biology, and Biochemistry. She endured approximately ¾ of medical school before breaking free to focus on writing and disability advocacy. She’s currently in the Book Publishing graduate program at Portland State University, pursuing concentrations in Book Editing and Book Design. Chrys is the manager of the Digital and Audio departments at Ooligan Press. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Sun, Shark Reef, and Aerial. She was a finalist (twice) in MTV’s “I’m from Rolling Stone” writing contest. She has won the R.L. Gilette Scholarship and the Sophie Kerr Gift in English Literature. Her debut collection Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays is forthcoming from Wandering Aengus Press. Chrys lives, works, walks, and writes in Portland.
Music

folklore – First Listen Impressions

Chrys Buckley

taylor litho

Like so, so many people, I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night because of the release of TS8 – folklore. There is already so much I want to say after only one listen, and I want to put it down in writing before subsequent listens change things, as subsequent listens always do.

There are going to be a lot of posts on this site about this album. I’ve been wanting to post about Taylor for years, and that urge bubbled up strongly during the reputation era in 2017 (and I’m just going to put it out there, even though I know it’s Swiftie blasphemy and Taylor herself would disagree, I love reputation more than 1989, by a lot, and that’s not anything against 1989 just love for reputation).

I hadn’t thought about blogging in a long time but that album made me want to write blog posts about every song on the album, about my Taylor Swift origin story (that’s still on the docket to be posted eventually), about the infamous phone call drama (I think the only day since corona started that I forgot, for just a little bit, that we were in the middle of a global pandemic, was when the full phone call was released on Twitter), about some of her other albums and songs and lyrics, and so on.

But I never did.

Continue reading “folklore – First Listen Impressions” →

Metaphysics, Music

The Completely Unanticipated TS8 “folklore” Drops at Midnight

Chrys Buckley

folklore coverTS8 = Taylor Swift’s 8th album – translation for the non-Swifties

There was something I was going to post today. Now I can’t remember what it was. There were other things I was going to do today. Now it’s all out the window. I went on Twitter to do…something. I had a purpose opening the page. It wasn’t what I usually go on there for, which is to see if there are any updates from Clare’s season of The Bachelorette that’s filming right now, because I’d already done that earlier in the morning. I think it had something to do with this site, maybe seeing if it was properly linking with Twitter.

Continue reading “The Completely Unanticipated TS8 “folklore” Drops at Midnight” →

Blindness and Disability, Metaphysics, Music, Podcasts, Science, TV, Writing

Jumping Back into the Blogging Ring

Chrys Buckley

IMG_0349When I started posting again in April, I thought I’d come back quickly to regular blogging. Yeeeeeah, about that. Clearly that wasn’t the case.

I’m going through some major life upheavals, and though I won’t go into it now, I plan on posting about it on here at a later time. Right now, a lot of it is still under wraps, kept off of here and off of my social media, but as things move forward that will start to shift.

There’s just a lot to work out and through and I’m really in the shit right now.

Continue reading “Jumping Back into the Blogging Ring” →

Writing

Jumping Back in the Writing Ring

Chrys Buckley

colored pencils and water color beside picture frame

Today I did something I haven’t done in awhile. I submitted my writing for publication.

It’s another thing that I’ve put on hold for so long because of my writing name worries. I was in utter paralysis about my work because of it. I still submitted worked occasionally (like, once or twice a year), some under Emilia Jordan, some under my real name, and worried how it would complicate things if anything ever got accepted under either name.

But I’m ready to move forward again. Over the last couple of months, I did deep revisions on two of my personal essays, “Reasonable Doubt” and “Distant Light.” These are the two essays that felt the closest to publishable, and though I’d put off revising them for awhile, sometimes years, because it felt so daunting, I finally undertook revising both of them (thanks quarantine?) and got both to a place where I felt they were ready to be sent out.

Continue reading “Jumping Back in the Writing Ring” →

Writing

April Julia – Same Me, Different Name

Chrys Buckley

Screen Shot 2020-05-13 at 5.17.42 PMAfter years of wanting to change my author name, pen name, pseudonym, whatever you want to call it, I finally did it.

I wanted April as my first name like a day (if that) after I went forward with my old name Emilia Jordan back in 2012 and it only took me about eight years to admit I still wanted April Something as my writing name and to actually change it. I wanted both first and last names to be female names, so here you have it…

April Julia

Continue reading “April Julia – Same Me, Different Name” →

Writing

Name Quandaries – Reprise

Chrys Buckley

saymynameIn some ways, I feel like I’ve been struggling with my name since I started this blog, and probably beforehand. I posted about that in 2015, and almost five years later, I still feel completely stuck on the name thing.

What I’ve come to admit, pretty soon after writing that post, is that I just don’t like this pen name I’ve chosen. I liked Emilia Jordan as a whole but I never stopped to ask myself if I liked Emilia alone, if I could get used to being called that, and the answer ended up being no, I don’t and I couldn’t. It was a bit rash at the time – I so badly wanted to launch my site and get things off the ground that I didn’t let the name sit. If I had, I think even for a week, I would’ve gone with something else. I had almost immediate Pen Name Chooser’s Regret over not going with April as the first name.

So, it has left me stuck now, for years. Do I go with my real name? Do I forge ahead with Emilia Jordan even though I don’t really like it? Do I pick something new with April as the first name? I’m still mulling it over, and still feel like I can’t submit any writing until I decide, coalesce everything into one name.

Continue reading “Name Quandaries – Reprise” →

Blindness and Disability, Science, TV, Writing

Med School Application Journey Crisis Point

Chrys Buckley

NOTE: This is not a new post. This post is from April 2018. I was looking to link to it and found I’d taken it down, reverted it to a draft (I also found a bunch more drafts of posts I thought were published in there, oooops). I guess I took it down once I decided to go to medical school, bury the evidence of my ambivalence.

So, yeah, spoiler alert: I went.

Here’s the post from April 2018:

There’s an episode in Season 7 of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai has to write a character reference to Luke. When she tells Rory that she can’t write the letter, they have this exchange:

Rory: Sounds like you’re overthinking this. Maybe if you just put pen to paper.

Lorelai: I tried that, I thought, “I’ll just sit down and write whatever comes – no judgment, no inner critic.” Boy was that a bad idea.

Rory: Really? Why?

Lorelai: Because my brain is a wild jungle full of scary gibberish. “I’m writing a letter, I can’t write a letter, why can’t I write a letter? I’m wearing a green dress, I wish I was wearing my blue dress, my blue dress is at the cleaner’s. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue, ‘Casablanca’ is such a good movie. Casablanca, the White House, Bush. Why don’t I drive a hybrid car? I should really drive a hybrid car. I should really take my bicycle to work. Bicycle, unicycle, unitard. Hockey puck, rattlesnake, monkey, monkey, underpants!”

Rory: Hockey puck, rattlesnake, monkey, monkey, underpants?

Lately, like for the last month, my brain feels like hockey puck, rattlesnake, monkey monkey underpants.

Continue reading “Med School Application Journey Crisis Point” →

Blindness and Disability, Science

My Medical School Application Journey (So Far)

Chrys Buckley

pre-medimageI had my first medical school interview a few days ago, and I feel like cataloguing my experiences here, as a way to both share the experience I’m going through in applying to medical school as a non-traditional applicant with a disability, and also as a way to collect some of my impressions in one place.

To back up a little, I applied this summer. After my final final exam as an undergraduate (physical chemistry), later that afternoon I started filling out the application. No rest for the determined. I submitted my application in July, applying to 19 schools. This sounds like a lot (and it is) but I know people who’ve applied to double that many. In September 2016, I sat down with my finances to plan out how much I needed to have saved for each step of the process and had determined that if I met those goals, I could apply to ~18 schools. So pretty much on target.

Continue reading “My Medical School Application Journey (So Far)” →

Writing

It’s Been Awhile

Chrys Buckley

writingI just thought I’d give a quick update.

I originally started this blog to write about writing, and TV, and disability issues, and science, and music but I also struggle with blogging. Sometimes it feels more like a duty than something I enjoy doing. That’s especially true when I’m so busy with school and my job, and just trying to find time to write is a real challenge.

This year, I set a goal to write at least 4 days a week for at least an hour. That doesn’t add up to a lot, just 4 hours a week, and yet it’s still been difficult to find that time. Most weeks, I’ve met that goal, but there’ve been a few weeks I didn’t. There have been lots of weeks, like this last one, where I spent as much time writing as I would on a full-time job.

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Blindness and Disability, Science

MCAT Results

Chrys Buckley

I just realized I never updated my site with the results.

Scores for my test date came out on Oct 27th, a little bit after noon and very soon after I got off of work. I was still at my workplace (a tutoring center) and everyone was busy, so I was just walking around the office, pulling up the scores on my phone.

Here are the results:
IMG_1239Needless to say, I’m over the moon about my score. And hugely relieved that I don’t need to tackle this beast of a test ever again.

I’m also really, really grateful to all the people who helped with this, and all the events that fell into place, like winning a prep course I never could’ve afforded, my boss letting me basically take the month before the test completely off, the people who helped me get accommodations, all the people who helped me understand physics better, all the people who were understanding when I wasn’t all that available this summer and early fall, the people who knew exactly when a much-needed break was mandatory and invited me out to do things, all the encouragement and support that people around me offered (via text, long phone calls, emails, conversations), all the professors that gave me a solid background in the sciences, and whatever luck allowed me to get a verbal score that was better than my practice tests.

When I got my score, I was in shock. I won’t lie, I expected to get a good score, I knew I had solid understanding of the subjects (tutoring a lot of them was a major help), but there seemed to be so many factors in all of the sections that I really was preparing myself to get a lower score than predicted, and had told myself I would not retake anything over a 510. So  to get a score that high, I was kind of in shock. I still remember after I first checked it, trying to write my first text to tell someone and my hands shaking so much I couldn’t get the text out right away.

This past weekend, I celebrated with a karaoke party, which was a total blast!

Who knows what will be next?

~Chrys