There are things about myself I wish I could change. Not in a dramatic, self-hatred kind of way: largely, I’m pretty happy. But there are habits and tendencies that I wish I could just shake off. I wish I was more disciplined, stuck at things when they’re hard. I wish I trusted my voice more. I wish I was more compassionate, went out of my way more to love people. I wish I went outside more and watched Netflix less.
Read MoreI am always fighting this conundrum: If I am too busy, I get stressed out, and if I’m not busy enough… I get stressed out. What used to be a three-month issue during the summer now occurs on a weekly basis. I try to find ways to be more productive in my free time while constantly battling my desire to nap away my free hours. On the rare occasion when I stay awake, I have found a few ways to keep my mind occupied and my time productive.
Read MoreBut March is only month 3 of 12, so I can’t let a lack of goal success over a two-month period dictate the rest of my year. I’d like to offer three things I’m learning about setting yourself up to meet your goals. (Plus I have a giveaway to announce!)
Read MoreI was two months into senior year, when I should have been living it up. Instead, I was panicking about what I was going to do with my life. I was wondering why I hadn’t been on a date in three years. I was worried that my depression and anxiety was going to be noticed by someone I didn’t tell myself. I needed something fast to push me forward, to say that the way I was feeling was okay, and that I could start over and be stronger for it. And maybe in a subconscious effort to regain that freshness I felt getting that jacket in high school (or just to have someone tell me my eyes looked nice) I bought the green bomber, zipped it snugly, and pushed through the mess for a few more months, feeling stronger than I had the day before.
Read MoreI don’t know when we decided that places of education are just holding pens, or that anything you’ve done prior to reaching one or more of the milestones that caused the “well wishers” around you to feel that they were finally crossing over into adulthood, was just pretend. I imagine this mentality stems from our dismissal of the experiences of children and youth as lesser than those of battle-hardened adults who know better, and as the period of adolescence has extended over time, so have the opportunities for everyone older than someone else to throw back a cocktail of disdain and nostalgia and vomit it back up disguised as appropriate greeting card messages.
Read MoreThen a week passes, then two, and then I realize I haven't cracked open to Bible study book, and I've double-booked my calendar more than once, and I'm wiped from waking up early but not adjusting my bedtime. Almost without my noticing, all of the balls in my court have dropped and rolled far, far away.
Suddenly—or not so suddenly—I just want to shirk it all and sleep.
Read MoreRecently on an errand for work I was walking down Fifth Avenue. I was having a nice walk around 5 pm as the day crawls toward its eventual end when a man walked past me carrying a coffee table over his shoulder.
I say this casually, but yes it was a big wooden coffee table, like, for magazines, beverages, resting feet on, you know, a coffee table.
Read MoreI'm currently working 10-hour days. Factor in travel and sleep time, and I have approximately five hours to myself during the week. All of which is spent getting ready for work, getting ready for bed… or watching Netflix (a girl has got to decompress, okay?). But the way I’ve been living leaves no room to focus on things in my own life.
Read MoreI’m a believer in constant growth. But so often I feel stagnant and stuck, and it’s only in the looking back that I can see how even the hard, lonely and boring seasons were working things out in me, niggling through me with their magic to reveal truths later, like bluebells nestled under the earth, waiting out winter. I’ve been thinking about what I’ve been learning in the last 12 months; things that hit me brand new, or simply realised with a new depth that hadn’t sunk in before. So here’s a list.
Read MoreWhen I told people I was moving to Belize to volunteer at a Catholic high school, the responses were unique. Some people panicked at the thought of me getting Zika. My parents were shocked, but supported me. Friends were excited for me but also sad, and most of my friends’ parents asked me if it was safe where I would be staying. A select few still don't know where Belize is, or they still think I said Brazil.
Read MoreI had never been to a protest before. I had been content, I had been comfortable, I had been quiet in my place of privilege. I had cared, but just enough. I had signed a petition here, donated a few dollars there. I had never acted with any urgency or fear or intention.
Read MoreAlthough I studied English, I don’t always have a way with words. The scariest question I get is the very first one I am asked on all interviews: Can you tell me about yourself? Although I have my elevator pitch down, I never feel fully satisfied with my answer. In the post-graduate world there is so much more to a person than high school grades and college majors. There is confusion, crying, laughing, drinking, and a lot of second-guessing.
Read MoreI turned 23 on a Monday. Twenty-three is that age right on the cusp of true adulthood and nothing says adulthood like having a birthday on a Monday. Twenty-two is forever associated with Taylor Swift and college. Twenty-four sounds like you have a real job with health insurance, or marriage, or at least owning a dog. But 23. It’s just right there in between. Like 11 and 19. What happens when you’re 23? Is it the Cinderella moment? Will my fairy godmother appear and bippity boppity boo! I’m an adult?!
Read More2016 was an election year that changed everything, for myself and for so many others around me. People became divided by their presidential candidates in a heated political climate everyone on every side could call agonizing. Friendships, relationships, and families fell apart. Opinions were turned into angry memes, and after the long-held tradition of keeping your views off social media, finally everybody seemed to know where everybody stood.
Read MoreI had always thought the “fear of missing out” was that juvenile feeling I got when I was 3 years old and forced to take a nap while my brother, four years my senior, got to play all afternoon. I thought of it as a silly bout of envy that I soon grew out of... until college. My sophomore year, I got my first smart phone. And with it, I excitedly downloaded Instagram.
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