As Movember draws to a close, here’s Ross Murray’s unexpectedly hilarious post recounting his recent prostate-cancer diagnosis. (While you’re there, do check out Ross’s post-surgery update.)

“Like most ambitious English majors, I hoped I would find work in either teaching or writing after graduation. Long story short, I ended up graduating magna cum laude, won my department’s award, and learned that no one really wants to talk about E.M. Forster while playing beer pong. Go figure.”

Deep in Panama’s rainforests, wildlife blogger David (aka the Incidental Naturalist), fulfills a childhood dream: to see the strawberry poison-dart frog in its natural habitat.

“Being a food writer is the most punk rock thing a person can do, and Jonathan Gold was the most punk rock of us all.” Javier Cabral pays homage to the legendary Los Angeles food writer, who was both his mentor and his role model.

If you love soccer, you probably enjoy a good underdog story. Here’s Uruguay’s: a small country with a rich World Cup legacy, which Candace Rose Rardon lovingly retells in her illustrated essay on Longreads.

The creator of The Wire and Treme remembers his years of friendship and collaboration with the late Anthony Bourdain.

At Longreads, Paris-based pastry chef Frances Leech reflects on taste, memory, and literature’s most famous confection: the humble madeleine, immortalized in Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time.

“I still look towards the horizon. I remain restless. I continue to feel that there is something underneath me that defines me more than what I have done.” The author at Flowers for a Lab Mouse reflects on big writing projects as milestones, but not necessarily things that are life-defining.

“At that moment, I realized that I had lived my life in a room that was so loud, all I could do every day was deal with how loud it was. But with the help of my wife, my doctor, and medical science, I found a doorway out of that room.”

Author Jayne Martin on physical rehab after a fall: “It’s been almost three weeks and you are standing in between the parallel bars when Sandy says, ‘Okay, now let go and walk forward over to the wall.’ A cold chill snakes its way down your spine. ‘You can do this,’ she says.”

“Books and articles have been written about reverse culture shock. The identity crisis. . . . I find this state of consciousness intriguing rather than distressing. The thrill of disorientation and shattered perceptions. Besides, I never fit in to begin with.” J.D. Riso returns home after 19 years of a nomadic life.

Team USA Paralympian Andrew Kurka writes on his hopes for PyeongChang: “There are so many responsibilities, so many thoughts, and so much good I want to do. When looking at it all, the journey, the sacrifice, the glory.”

“I remember going for a walk in the woods behind my house instead, finding this tree and carving my initials into it, pressing the sadness and rejection into its innocent bark.” At Kindred, Kerstin Pless Grant recalls being 14 and rediscovers a tree she had hoped to return to someday.