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  Source:  https://miguelsolorzano.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/nola-fleet-week-1.jpg

 -Jack Gilbert (from Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert , p. 7)

God, where do I start with this post? So many things make this thought come up: Filling out an About Me online, thinking of an interesting fact for introductions in a new class, thinking about what to do with any free time I get, thinking about who I am outside of what I do for others, thinking about living a life out of college and with a job and before having kids. My gut instinct is to go from college to having kids because what else is there to do? Living life is what there is to do, but what does that look like? I refuse to spend my life working, eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning, running errands, and scrolling on social media. I don’t know what I like to do. That’s kind of a lie. There are things I think I would like doing, but I really don’t know because I’m too scared to try them. What are they? Building Legos, writing, making YouTube videos. What am I scared of? Looking stupid and wasting my time. I think about using these things to generate main or side income, and I think

Be brave. Do it scared. Refer to the sections “Scary, Scary, Scary” (page 12), “Defending Your Weakness” (page 16), “Fear Is Boring” (page 19), “The Fear You Need and the Fear You Don’t Need” (page 22), and “The Road Trip” (page 24) in Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

The school I attended for fourth and fifth grade has recently been starting to be demolished after sitting there unused for at least six years now. It's sad and exciting all at the same time. Seeing the school I attended for fourth and fifth grade being demolished made me think about how part of my history is gone, and it had me reflecting on what I did those years at that school. I posted not too long ago about being an over-achiever and a people-pleaser—definitely not two traits you’d associate with a “bad” kid—and I put bad in quotes because most people who do bad things are just that—people who do bad things, not bad people, especially when we’re talking about nine- and ten-year-olds. I was always your typical good kid—did what I was told (At least at school—I misbehaved at home. Ask my mom.(-: ) and was most afraid of getting in trouble. I don’t know what happened in fifth grade, but I went from a perfect disciplinary record to something like five recess detentions and an aft

*Edited Original Image by Pete Linforth  from Pixabay I’ve been talking a lot about Kate Northrup and for good reason. Her latest book Do Less gives people permission to stop doing everything to prove their worth, and as an over-achiever and people-pleaser like the title of this post suggests, I needed this book and that permission. I started my dive into the work around this book back in March when Kate made freebies available for her course Make Time for Business. It revolved around those same principles, at least from what I could tell from the freebies. She talks about time being linear and circular, people either operating in twenty-four-hour cycles or roughly twenty-eight-day cycles (menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle), and how we should align our tasks with these cycles and our energy. She makes the excellent point that the moon affects tides and water, and humans are 80% water, so it’s not far-fetched to think that the moon affects humans—the first case for using cycles to

The dream team Source: https://is4-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Music122/v4/b2/37/b1/b237b16a-8b92-2159-4ce5-5fa647e996c2/source/1200x630bb.jpg Never would I ever have thought I’d be watching reality TV much less about rich socialite women, yet here I am four seasons into the Real Housewives of New York (RHONY) and one or two seasons into the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (RHOBH). Since I’ve watched much more RHONY than RHOBH, I’m going to rank the RHONY from the seasons I’ve finished, seasons eight through eleven. I’ve been thinking about doing this post but also hesitant because regardless of the way these women act on television, they are still complex people, and it’s simply not nice to judge people, especially when you only know televised snippets of their lives. But let this be in good fun. Instead of ranking the women per se, I’m more ranking their behavior I’ve observed, and I’m going to go from worst to best. Luann de Lesseps: *Cue vomit noise* Luann’s behavior on this show

Content warning: Talk of suicide, miscarriage, infant death, death, and cancer Photo by  P C  from  Pexels I thought I was done grieving and that I had such a good relationship with my dad that I adjusted very well to his death. I thought the second year of grief being worse only applied to parents and spouses, but I was wrong. It applies to everyone, and it feels like I’m regressing in grieving, but I know it’s normal. TL;DR: The years since my dad died have been some of the best years of my life, and I feel guilty for saying that. It’s not that him being gone makes me happy. It’s that there’s so much that came after he died— because he died —that helped make life better, easier, and I wish that he didn’t have to be gone for it to happen. In my dream one morning awhile back, it was January 1, 2021. I remember thinking that 2020 was the fastest year of my life (Yeah, because when I went to sleep, it was March 26, 2020.). I didn’t know who won the U.S. Presidential election or how t

Photo by  Porapak Apichodilok  from  Pexels This isn’t your typical “save yourself” sort of be-your-own-hero post. In fact, what might be more appropriate for this post is You are already your own hero . Right? I can’t be the only one who does this: Take anyone I even remotely admire and turn them into this untouchable hero-like, god-like figure—my mom, my dad, people I went to school with who I admired something about them, celebrities whether I like them or not, my favorite people on social media, anyone who appears more successful/got-their-sh*t-together more than me, and anyone who is related to or friends with any of these people, and on and on and on. I bought Own Your Everyday by Sparkles Lee Dooley—just kidding, Jordan Lee Dooley (that’s a reference to the book itself)—probably back in July of last year (?) (Oh my God), and yes, I’m just reading it now. I tend to get really excited for alllll sorts of books I hear about or see those people I like reading (Or writing—ugh, a dre

Yep. You’ve read that right. I don’t know if I want to be a nurse. But I have to do something. I don’t know if I want to work twelve plus hours two or three days in a row with only two or three days in between for only $3,000 a month after taxes, retirement, and benefits have been taken out. I don’t know if I want to be abused by patients, coworkers, and doctors. I don’t know if I want the laws of my work and the decision of whether I go to jail or can ever be a nurse again for a mistake to be made by someone who’s never worked as a nurse in a hospital for a day in their life. I don’t know if I want to miss significant amounts of time with my partner, children, family, or friends to make sure your partner, children, family, or friends stay alive, or as it relates to our current situation, I don’t know if I want to endanger my own, my partner, my children, my family, or my friends’ lives trying to save the life of you, your partner, your children, your family, or friends. I want to help