I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)

New Year’s resolutions are a funny thing.

Does this sound like the opening line of a bad stand-up bit? Don’t worry, my resolution isn’t to try stand-up for the first time. I know I’m funny, but I suspect even my mother would be surprised to hear that I don’t really like speaking or performing in front of people. Unless it’s 11 pm in a dive bar that’s at least a safe 30+ miles from my home, and you hand me a microphone and tell me they have Elton John’s entire musical works available for karaoke.

Resolutions are funny because it’s a social practice in our culture to make them and then hilariously fail at them. The internet is full of a meme for every resolution occasion, most of them related to how we swore this was the year we were gonna eat better, get skinny or get fit, or quit our terrible jobs.

I don’t eat especially well and I’m not particularly skinny or fit (and I still love my jobs), so none of those have worked for me up to this point.

Last year, a friend who Shall Not be Named and I were enjoying a little time-honored millennial fun, which is to say that we were deep-dive stalking one of her boyfriend’s exes on the internet. This girl apparently had run, hiked, and biked a total of 1,000 miles in the year 2018. In true supportive friend fashion, I laughed and suggested that it wasn’t hard and I could probably do it. Then I did the math and realized I probably couldn’t, unless I counted every single bicycle ride to the grocery store or the bar, (which I’m not sure should qualify as exercise anyway, considering the crimes against my health that are regularly committed at both of those places). Instead, I decided it would be possible to track my running for an entire year, and that I was likely to be able to achieve 500 miles pretty easily in the next 365 days.

>Alexa, play the hit 1990’s tune by The Proclaimers<

It didn’t start out promising. In February I only managed 20.05 miles, not even one per day, largely because I had ended things with a guy I was seeing about halfway through the month, and while I managed to hold my shit together for the first part of the week (due to work), Wednesday through Saturday was pretty much a blur of drinking too much and staying up way, way too late to walk home in the snow, stumbling and singing Whitney Houston songs with my sweet neighbor (with whom spending time always makes my heart and my mind feel good, but not so much my head and my stomach the next morning).

I would make it all back in March and April when I started training with a couple of friends for a half marathon, to be run in May. I picked up the pace and ran 50+ miles in March, along with getting back together with the former guy, who started off the spring season by making a very good show of being more supportive of my interests and athletic pursuits. In April, my half-marathon partner and I ran every single one of our training-program prescribed 72+ miles, including ten that I found myself needing to run in Maine while visiting for a friend’s wedding. It was cold and a little icy, but my sister completed every step of it with me, despite not having run that many miles in at least a year.

May started off with the aforementioned 13.1.


                                    

As happens after training for a milestone, May fell off a bit. Due to no required training and the start of my seasonal landscaping job, I managed 30.5 for the rest of the month after the half marathon. What can I say, it’s hard to get up in the morning and run in the dark, just to go to work and carry a 10-15 pound weed eater around for most of the day. It was at about this point that I stopped thinking about the 500 miles and decided I would simply tally up all my miles, every week, for the rest of the year, and see how impressive the number might be. I even picked my pace up again in June, until the last week of the month, when I talked myself into finally joining a CrossFit gym.

Have you ever done CrossFit? Specifically, have you ever STARTED CrossFit from a non-diverse exercise regimen of pushing lawnmowers and moderately paced cardio? I was wrecked. Even the beginner classes had me in pain for days. At my second tutorial class, I was asked to do 4 burpees and 10 squats and my legs were sore for the week after. July and August: attended CrossFit nine times each month. Only ran 60-something miles between the two. My July weekends, on my wall calendar on which I had been keeping track, were glaring, blank holes. Who has the motivation to get up and go to CrossFit, or get up and go for a run, when the sun is out, your boyfriend is in bed with an (inevitable) hangover, and there is fishing to be done?

Due to many other circumstances (see past blog post) as well as all those “inevitable” hangovers, I found myself delightfully, happily single by Labor Day, after which I exercised for a 2019-record nine days in a row. Still sticking with the CrossFit, my runs were shorter and shorter because my legs still barely worked the day after overhead squats, burpees, wall balls and deadlifts. I averaged less than ten a week. I went on a great (and rather lengthy) happy hour first date mid-month that caused me to cancel my planned runs for two days after, and then immediately took an airplane to Chicago for a solo-trip I had booked basically the very moment I became single. I ran five beautiful miles there, three of them at my fastest speed of the year. The thought that I could maybe finish the year with 500+ began to creep back into my consciousness.

                             

Except I started dating someone new. The “let’s just spend time together and see what happens” kind of relationship. The no-expectations, feels-good-to-be-happy dating that I fully believe is the main reason people abandon their exercise regimens and healthy eating plans. That sweet, fun, hilarious period of time in which there is nothing to do except find out all the delightful aspects of the other’s personality - and laugh. I laughed a lot in October, partially due to the fact that he is hilarious, and the other part due to all the bottles of red wine and giggly puffs of weed we were consuming. October: 26.75 miles, my lowest number since February. Running miles were down, happy feelings were up. I’m pretty sure that all the exercise wisdom in the world says that running makes you happy. But have those people ever tried hanging out with a funny guy with a cute dog and raft-guide arm muscles?

Beginning November with the realization that I had less then 100 miles left to reach the goal was an alarming thought. Yes, it was possible. Was it significantly more miles than I had been running since April? Also yes. I ran 17 miles in one week. I ran while I was on a long weekend in Arizona. I committed and the countdown started. I kept a running mental tally as well as my wall calendar updated, and I marched into December knowing I needed to run 16 miles a week to finish. It’s fine, I’m fine, this is fine.

And I was cranking right along, too, running just shy of the required numbers (always a procrastinator), when I went back and added up all my months to this point, only to discover I had done the math wrong (if you knew me as a high school student, this shouldn’t shock any of you) and had significantly less miles left than I had thought. And a good thing, too, since I started coughing, sneezing, and running a fever five days before Christmas with nearly seven miles left to run.

This morning, New Year’s Eve, I woke up, texted my Glenwood Rec Center treadmill running partner, Lizz, and we headed to the gym to finish our miles. She was working towards 100 miles for the year, and I had 2.45 remaining. When I pulled into the parking lot, it was dark. Totally dark. Dark like a gym that is closed, because it was. It was also 1 whole degree outside, so running on the frozen sidewalks was completely out of the question. Undeterred, we paid the daily drop-in fee at a gym down the road and finished our miles before the sun came up.

In my last blog post, I wrote about some things that went wrong this year. I want to say that undertaking this much running changed me, that it gave me clarity, or was the cause of some brilliant, earth-shattering revelation. But honestly, the year as 500 miles of running just proved that it wasn’t all bad. Despite life taking me on an emotional and complicated rollercoaster in 2019, I managed to keep running consistently. I got out of bed and prioritized my health (most of the time), and used the arbitrary goal of proving that I am almost as athletic as my friend’s boyfriend’s ex (or just about any other average person) to keep myself grounded. I put one foot in front of the other for 365 days. I kept a resolution.

Take that, internet meme culture.

Good times, bad times, you know I've had my share

I want to say I've always been an optimist. It's probably not true, because I was 23 once, freshly graduated from an expensive four-year college with a degree that I had no idea how to put to use, and oh, yeah, it was 2008. If I felt then like things were not great, that I was never gonna be able to make enough money to support myself, and that I had no clue where I was going with my life, it was probably all true.

However, by age 30, I considered myself the happiest, most positive person. I successfully navigated a move that took me more than 2,000 miles from the side of the country where I had lived for my entire life, and I immediately found friends, employment, and a lifestyle I could not have even imagined for myself.

For nearly a decade, around the month of November, when folks on social media begin to post memes about how glad they are that the year is ending, and how it was a tough one, I have rolled my eyes. "2010, you took too much from us all", and "2012 wasn't my year", or "2016 was the worst year yet" (ok, maybe that one is actually true, from a national perspective). Just be positive, I would think. Don't spend your time thinking about negative things you can't change! It only leads to feeling down! Focus on the good!

I don't think I'm that person this year.

This may make some of you rejoice. "Thank goodness," you'll think. "Her positivity and zest for life has really been wearing on those of us who would rather just wallow." (For the record, I don't think any of you are true wallowers, but I do think the social media fallacy of the perfect, happy life is alive and well - and I'm totally guilty).

But it's been a tough one. While 2019 has contained a multitude of amazing, beautiful, exciting and joyful moments, it has also contained some of the toughest things I have dealt with in my adult life. I can't say I will look back on 2019 with fondness. In this year, I have found myself more frustrated, confused, and unsure of my own mind and my own decisions than I have been in over a decade.

I started it off with some poor choices. I ignored my instincts to back away from a relationship that did not serve me, and let that person back into my life. This one choice lead to months of putting myself and my needs and feelings second, while a person who sometimes claimed to love me also put me second (at best). I allowed myself to stick with this relationship, even while I was increasingly riddled with anxiety, stress, and feelings of worthlessness on an almost daily basis. I felt that, since both of us had fought to be in this relationship, I needed to just keep making it work. I spewed supportive cliches at my friends about how we all need to ask for what we deserve, while I continually refused to do this for myself.

This all came at what I now realize was great emotional expense. In the last several months of 2019, I have been more scared, sad, self-doubting and stressed (say that five times fast) than ever before. I filed a police report for the first time in my life. I went to court, another first, and had to face someone I thought I had loved while a lawyer told a judge that I felt I was in danger. I had my first panic attacks. I have questioned not only my confidence, but also my ability to make smart, healthy, self-serving decisions.

No one deserves to feel this way, but I acknowledge that my emotions are a product of the decisions I kept making. And we don't always make the best ones for ourselves.  It's probably another cliche that every choice we make leads us to where we are now, although it's actually true. I wish it wasn't. It would be nice to blame anyone but myself, but the truth is I was spouting a line of confidence and assurance while living a reality that was the opposite.

I suppose life is a series of ups and downs, but I've always wanted to only be up. There are several literary quotes out there about needing to have darkness to have light, but I have always pushed away any possibility of darkness and rushed towards the light - the happy, positive things in my daily life always outweigh the bad, or at least the amount of time and attention I spend on the good things vastly outweigh that for the negative.

While reflecting on this year, I can say that I believe this to still be true. When things fell apart, and I finally allowed my anxiety and stress around my situation to show, my friends rallied around me immediately. No one let me sleep at home alone when I was sad or scared. My friends skipped work to make sure I wasn't in court alone. Other friends continue to do daily check-ins about my self esteem, emotions, and self-care habits. For one bad relationship, I have dozens of wonderful ones.

I would like to end this with something like "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger", but that's another cliche I'm not sure I buy into. I think what doesn't kill you can make you feel weak, confused, and sad. But time, friendships, and putting yourself first can slowly start to change all that. So while this year wasn't perfect, or even particularly overwhelmingly good, I can't say it was a complete dumpster fire, either.

It has more than a month left, and if you know me, you know that the holiday season can only help. Cheers to the upcoming New Year, friends, and to being honest with yourself, making good choices, personal accountability, and growth.

$4 a day

I was listening to the radio last week (am I the only person who still listens to local radio? This might be a topic for another time) and heard an announcement from our local food bank/food assistance organization, Lift Up, that they were challenging everyone to take the “$4 a Day Challenge”. They described it as a fun and educational way to raise awareness about food insecurity in the United States. It turns out that the national allocation of funds for a recipient of the government’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is $4.15 per day. Those who depend on SNAP (formerly called food stamps) for all of their food and drink are only eating about $29 worth of food per 7-day week.

I can tell you right now, that while I don’t have the exact numbers for myself, I’m spending a LOT more than that. I probably eat dinner out 3-4 times per week (I can actually hear my ultra budget-conscious mother screaming from nine states away), my boss buys my lunch out every day of the work week, and I probably drink 3 cups of coffee per week that I don’t brew at home. I’m a millennial, with no children and no mortgage. If the avocado toast is there, I’m going to order it.

This is not the way I was raised.

My mother estimates that she spent $100-$150 a week on groceries when I was growing up. Which is probably just below what I spend now. But she was shopping for a family of six (I supposed if I’m being accurate, it was sometimes a family of as few as three, as my sisters and I did spend time with our other parents). Mom had a whole book of penny-pinching tricks (literally, it’s called the Tightwad Gazette, and was written by a woman in Maine named Amy Dacyczyn. If anyone has a copy, please let me know how her tips are holding up 27 years later) and was committed to things like making her own bread (delicious) and mixing gallons of milk 50/50 with powdered milk (not so delicious). Luckily for my mother, my siblings and I had pretty inexpensive taste - I loved plain bologna and wheat bread sandwiches, and Top Ramen, at a whopping $0.11 a pack, was a staple of do-it-yourself kid food. She also cooked dinner at home every single night, managing homemade sauces and salads comprised of vegetables from my stepfather’s large garden. I never felt deprived of anything or food insecure. That said, if not for my mom’s extreme frugality and budgeting, things could have felt a lot tighter in our house.

So, I decided to take on the challenge that Lift Up was proposing. I planned on five days, because I’m a complete food addict and a fan of lazy Saturday brunches, and I wasn’t sure my willpower would hold out over a weekend. On Sunday night, I went to the grocery store and carefully selected $15 worth of food (I figured that saving the extra $5 for incidentals could only make this easier and more realistic). I bought bologna and wheat bread, some apples, a couple of green peppers and carrots, condensed soup, oatmeal, pre-packaged pastas, and one $1 pint of store brand Rocky Road (I refused to live an entire five days without a small shred of edible joy).

It started off okay. I hadn’t had bologna in years, so it was sort of fun to pack my lunches with sandwiches and sliced carrots. I quickly found that I was hungry enough by lunch (I work as a landscaper and my job is quite physical, on top of belonging to a CrossFit gym and running 5-10 miles a week) that I was happy to eat just about anything. This would have been fine, except I also got to watch my coworkers and boss eat short order Mexican food, sandwiches, and pizza. By day two I was physically salivating while watching them eat things that had a much larger flavor palette than bologna on wheat.

For children who live in SNAP households, watching their peers eat a variety of lunch foods while they eat the same things everyday or dine on the lackluster, reduced-cost hot lunch at school is difficult. To make matters worse, lunch payment is a hot political issue all across the country. In June, the Pennsylvania state legislature voted to reinstate “lunch shaming”, which is the practice of either denying lunch, or providing an alternative, lower-cost meal option to children who’s parents have outstanding bills. 12% of families suffer from food insecurity, and households with children are twice as likely to experience a lack of food.

By the third day of my challenge, my eyes were opened to the fact that Americans who have to feed themselves on a SNAP budget don’t get to enjoy food the same way as those of us who have more to spend. While dining out, or even cooking a meal at home (something I do woefully infrequently) is an exciting chance to try new flavors and foods, those who have to eat for $4 a day need to plan to fuel their bodies as best they can. I was not enjoying eating by the middle of the week. I went to a party on Wednesday night and went straight for the fresh veggie tray, unaware until then of how much I was missing fresh tomatoes.

On day four, I started feeling really awful. I had a headache by 1 pm on both Thursday and Friday, which I believe I can attribute to the higher sodium level of my $4 a day diet. In the last few years, many studies have been published that prove the negative effects of processed meats, and I was eating salty bologna every day. Half of low-income American adults and children consume at least two servings of processed meats every week. Those who use SNAP benefits to feed their families eat 39% fewer whole grains and 46% more red meat. They consume more processed foods overall than those who do not receive food assistance. Part of the reasons for this is that processed, salty foods are inexpensive and often non-perishable. People utilizing their local food bank to supplement their SNAP funds are likely to find canned and packaged foods, many of which are high in sodium and carbohydrates and low in balanced nutritional value.

Also, I really missed coffee. I sort of forgot to budget for it, and although it is relatively inexpensive, it was something I thought I could easily forgo during the five days of this challenge. It’s a very hip, upper middle class cliche to talk about how much we love and depend on our caffeine, but it’s possible this was also a contributor to the headaches. Cocktails and desserts (except the ice cream, which, if I’m being honest, was gone by Tuesday night) also went out the window. There is no viable way that someone living on $4 a day can afford these small luxuries.

I talked to anyone who would listen about this challenge, including my 18-year-old coworker, who seemed properly horrified when I mentioned that I had purchased condensed soup. I’m not sure if this is a generational or income based response, because when I was a teenager, I was likely still eating Campbell’s chicken noodle (at about $0.50 a can) and loving it. Spoiler alert: it’s not as tasty as we all thought when we were kids. I think it’s basically flavored salt water and very, very soggy spaghetti.

This week has been eye opening. I have to say, I’m not sure if I personally know anyone who is eating on a budget like this, but I certainly hope not. With our current political climate, and the man in the White House threatening to cut benefits to large numbers of Americans who desperately need them to feed themselves and their families, this challenge is even more important. Poor nutrition, which is certainly what I experienced with the foods I ate this week, leads to a variety of potential health problems, which can lead to high or unpaid medical bills, which can force Americans deeper in the hole and keep them in poverty longer. It’s a cycle we need to break. I wish all of our local food assistance organizations, like Lift Up, had more regular access to fresh vegetables and healthy proteins.

I guess to conclude, I would say this challenge was not exactly “fun”. But it was certainly constructive and very interesting. If anyone else is interested, check out liftup.org for more details and to start your own $4 a day plan.

My Baseball Tale

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Everything looks shiny and bright. People are wishing eachother a good and happy season.

No, I’m not talking about Christmas. It’s Major League Baseball opening day, guys.

Today, it’s March 28th, making this Thursday afternoon (1 pm ET) the earliest opening day in American Major League history (technically the season started on the 20th in Japan this year, but today is the official opener for every team). I’m not sure what the reasoning is behind the early jump, other than to possibly give more days off to players and coaches, who will show up at a ballpark 162 times between now and the end of September (163 for players who make their league’s All Star team or compete in the Home Run Derby). This number is a sharp contrast to other sports, for instance football, where teams play one game a week for 17 weeks, with a week off each during the season, for a total of 16 appearances.

But this is not a blog about the difference between football and baseball. However, it should be noted that for baseball players, the season is a literal full-time job, with most teams playing 6 days a week and sometimes as many as 14 days in a row. It is also a full-time job to be a fan. If you miss a week of coverage, you might find that your team has slipped from first to third, and have no idea how that happened. People who play fantasy baseball are wholly consumed by trades and injuries and starting lineups. It takes work to be a true fan.

You could say I’ve been going to work my whole life.

My mother, an avid Red Sox fan for her entire life (a side effect of being raised by a widowed mother in New England who, to my knowledge, never forgot to switch on the radio at 7 pm every evening, all summer) went into labor with her second child on Boston’s opening day in 1985. She was able to finish watching the game in the hospital before delivering me that evening. I was happy, healthy, and addicted to baseball- apparently rearing to make it out in time for my first opening day.

(If we are following this course of reasoning, it makes sense that my sister has never cared much for America’s pasttime- in July of 1983, the Red Sox were halfway through their first losing season since 1966, which they finished at an uninspiring 78-84.)

Before I even started school, I owned and regularly sported a Boston Red Sox cap, could name the entire starting lineup, was collecting my first baseball cards, and had already attended spring training games in Florida. I played tee ball, then co-ed little league, then softball. I listened to games on my radio alarm clock when I was supposed to be asleep in bed. I begged my parents to pay for cable so we could watch the Red Sox at home, in our rural town in western Maine. Major League Baseball expanded in 1993, and Portland got the Sea Dogs, a AA minor league team for the National League’s new Florida Marlins. We somehow ended up with tickets to an autograph night, where we walked onto the infield grass and collected signatures from relative unknowns. To this day, that’s one of my most exciting baseball memories.

In fifth grade, my entire class raised funds to travel to Boston for two days of events and sightseeing that included, most importantly, a Red Sox game. Walking into the stands from Fenway Park’s dirty, green-painted concourse, I almost started crying. I was eleven years old and the entire experience felt like a dream. I learned about rally caps, comeback wins, and what it meant to stand and scream until I lost my voice with a stadium of people who were feeling just as crazy as I was as the Red Sox came from behind to beat the Seattle Mariners. I still have the ticket stub. If the seed had been planted before, the tree was officially growing.

My mother, meanwhile, got to enjoy watching all of this unfold. I’m not sure if she was thrilled or horrified (at the prospect of driving in the city of Boston) when I announced around age 13 that all I wanted for my birthday were Red Sox tickets so she could take me to a game. I asked for the same thing nearly every year for a decade after that.

Once I reached high school, I started reading books about baseball. W.P. Kinsella’s short, magic-realism stories about small phenomenons in fictional baseball leagues of the Midwest drew me in, as did memoirs about fathers and sons, road trips to Cooperstown, ballplayer biographies, and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s bestseller, Wait Till Next Year. I began to feel a more emotional, nostalgic reverence for the game. I read books and articles about the history of baseball. I purchased the paperback 500-page history of the New York Mets in an airport in New Jersey while on my way to watch Spring Training in 2003 and devoured the entire thing in a week.

When the Jimmy Fallon film “Fever Pitch” was released, it became the running joke amongst my friends, family, and pretty much anyone who had known me for more than an hour that I was going to end up with a man who didn’t love baseball and I would have to adjust. I have always contended that it’s much easier as a woman to meet a man who also loves baseball. As it has turned out, it’s harder than you’d think.

I met a guy in a bar a few years ago and the topic of loving baseball came up. I could only describe my feelings for the game by telling him that “baseball makes me cry.” He nodded thoughtfully and seemed to understand- he is a long-suffering Cubs fan, who also sees the beauty and emotion in the game. (In case you live in a hermit cave and missed it, Cubs fans are no longer suffering, a fact for which I am truly delighted and thankful). So, we can conclude that in my mid-30s, I’ve become a person who starts conversations with strangers in bars by telling them how a professional sport makes me sob. This is all very normal, I promise. (I should also note that we are still good friends, and discuss the finer points of the game on a pretty regular basis. See? No matter what your thing is, I swear your people are out there.)

At 33 years old, I have a Boston Red Sox tattoo on my shoulder (it’s been there for ten years), I drive to Arizona every March to watch the Chicago Cubs in Spring Training (Florida is a plane ride from Colorado. The Cubs are the next best thing, always have been) and I still treat opening day like Christmas. I don’t think I’m likely to ever love any person, or thing, as much as I love the Boston Red Sox, which is a fact that most people in my life have fully accepted by now.

So Happy Opening Day, everyone. May your fly balls be long, your pitches be swift, your feet be fast, and your loved ones be very, very understanding.

Galentine's Day

Happy Galentine's Day, everyone! If you are unaware of the celebration of Galentine's, allow me to enlighten you: on an episode of Parks and Recreation, Leslie Knope (played by the immeasurably talented Amy Poehler), invents Galentine's Day, celebrated on February 13, a day on which straight women leave their significant others at home and celebrate their female friendships. Confession: I haven't actually seen this episode, but I love the idea.

My local female friends and I will be celebrating tonight - we have simultaneous mani/pedi appointments and plans to drink wine. I have also made heart shaped sugar cookies that I plan to distribute to them. Last year, we also did the nail thing, followed by dinner and margaritas at a Mexican restaurant. Aside from the pampering appointments, it looked a lot like an average Friday (or, who are we kidding, Tuesday, or Wednesday) night.

I was inspired to write this post not about the blooming holiday that is Galentine's (although, trust me, pop culture has taken notice. You know something is trendy and here to stay when Target makes decorations and gifts specifically for an occasion. Find evidence of this here.), but actually about a topic that seems to creep back into conversation every few years. That topic is girl-on-girl crime.

Look at me with all these television and movie references! I'm so in tune with pop culture!

When I speak about girl on girl crime, I mean women believing that they need to put someone else's lifestyle, hairstyle, or interests down to make their lifestyle, hairstyle, or interests seem or sound better. We do this all the time. This very casual, everyday comparison: "wow, seriously. I would never dye my hair that color. What is she thinking?" or "I just cant understand why someone would ever pay that much for those shoes. Don't they have better things to spend their money on?" or "I cant believe some women take a vacation and just spend the entire time at the resort. Don't they know there is a whole world to explore out there?"

Or, for instance, this kind of viral social media meme:

The message here is that you're a better woman, or a cooler woman (I mean, just look at that great beanie, comfy flannel, and adorable dog!) if you're into being in the woods and kindling your own flames rather than owning nice shoes or jewelry.

In this meme, the better, or cooler, women apparently want a hammock as well as a campfire. But no diamonds here! Apparently, you can only be one type of woman or the other. Even the phrase "some women" is inherently judgmental because it implies an "other", as if one is saying "not ME, of course, in my comfy flannel and cute beanie, but SOME females, apparently, enjoy jewelry and shoes."

In case you were wondering, I like jewelry and shoes, and I also have a closet full of flannel shirts and hats. I love going to the mall and Las Vegas, getting dressed up for dinners with my girlfriends, and making campfires before I get filthy in the wilderness. No cute dog. Yet.

I want women to stop believing what popular culture tells us, which is that if you're different from me, we cant possibly get along or have anything in common. Apparently, modern society would rather that young women be a divided group than a united force. I would say that I wonder why this is, and it seems pretty subversive to suggest that perhaps it's systematic the way that young women are taught to dislike one another... oh wait.

Building another woman up for her talents, her interests, or her style, even if it is totally different from your own, can cause no harm. Literally, zero harm. So why don't we do it? Are we actually scared of things that are different than us? Are we threatened by other women? Or are we just used to believing that we cant welcome something we don't understand?

Spoiler alert: I don't have the answers.

I have learned, however, in my tender 33 (almost 34, how terrifying) years on this earth that your social life can be infinitely enriched if you appreciate your friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances for their differences. My friends and I are all incredibly different people, yet we come together over our shared interests and learn from each other in areas that we differ. Do we clash on occasion? No, we are absolutely perfect and flawless human beings.

I kid. Of course we do. But it always ends in one or more of us taking a step back and realizing that we all do things differently because we are dynamic, intelligent, and unique human beings.

Unique human beings who all really love a good pedicure. And wine. Cheers to Galentine's Day!