life Tag

Every holiday season brings something new, and this year brought for me some observations. This being my first holiday season an appetizer contributing adult, I noticed things I had never considered in my many years as nothing more than a young gift receiver.   1. Each day closer to Christmas and New Years everyone’s driving gets worse. Everyone is desperate to finish shopping and beginning to lose their minds from all of the contact with distant relatives.   2. After December 20th, don’t even try surviving the mall. If DecemberRead More

I am obsessed with order, symmetry, perfection. I hate gray areas, in-betweens, grounds of ambiguity. Last year, I strove for an all-or-nothing “balance” that I thought would regulate and organize my life. However, what I’ve realized is that balance is not about “extremes” leveling each other out. It is not always about saying a hard yes or a hard no. It isn’t about making a definite decision. Rather, a true balance is about finding the middle ground that I have hated so much. Last year, in an effort to maintain aRead More

When I started college last year, I averaged about five hours of sleep a night. As the year tolled on, my alarm clock chirped an hour earlier. Four hours of sleep definitely wasn’t something I enjoyed, but it was a routine necessity just like everything else on my to-do list. I enlisted it as another adjustment to becoming an “maturing.” Adulthood meant being career-driven and hungry for success—so naturally, sleep deprived, right? Unfortunately, even only a few months, in the human body realizes that it simply cannot operate with soRead More

I am the biggest sucker for sunsets, and Los Angeles particularly seemed to know that. My first time there was enough to have me stumbling over, in love. The term “takes my breath away” has always been a cheesy one. Walking into the sunset is clichéd. But that was exactly what LA was – sheer beauty – and no other way to describe it. LA punched me, slapped me – enamoured, enthralled me. I gazed with glassy eyes over sunsets brighter, bloodier than any I had ever seen. I stumbledRead More

I’ve made it back home after a three week solo roadtrip on the west coast – and I am in one piece. My limbs are all still attached, my physical state is intact except for a bike scrape on my ankle. I’ve returned with all my possessions present, minus one lost hair elastic and one tube of lipstick. I would consider my sanity partially stable, and my mental health only mildly shaken. My bank account will need a whole year to recuperate, but I feel exponentially richer than before IRead More

We can’t stop, and we won’t stop—Well, you should stop. New Year resolutions are great—if you’re the type of person who is so self-disciplined that you can actually follow through with your promises for longer than one week—aka, you’re probably not human. So, as imperfect humans, we are typically more prone to listen when we are told no, don’t, STOP. The negative is always more powerful, and I’m going to put that to the test.   15 Stop-It’s for 2014 Stop spending more on material goods than on experiences. It’s greatRead More

It’s time to stop kidding ourselves.   Resolution #1: Lose weight Actual outcome: Go to the gym a couple times a week but still eat like shit and drink like a frat boy on the weekends, resulting in maybe a pound lost and regained over the course of a month. Rinse, repeat.   Resolution #2: Cook for myself and stop eating pasta and salad every night like a scrub Actual outcome: Maybe cook quinoa or lentils every once in a while. Continue to buy the Publix pre-made roasted chicken.   Resolution #3: Keep a budgetRead More

Every New Year’s Eve, I carve out the time to review the goals that I set out for myself that year. I highlight the ones that I achieved, and sadly shake my head at the ones I didn’t—especially the ones that I really wanted to accomplish. Every year, my goals include books that I want to read, novels that I want to write, things I want to do (like taking a cake decorating class), travelling somewhere, and of course, getting my grades to a certain level. I’ve been creating theseRead More

When you start dating someone truly fantastic, a weird thing happens.
Your heart swells and you become acutely aware of how happy and excited and nervous you are all the time. You have this fullness that you never really knew you were lacking, but you like it. When you go through a break up with someone in a truly gut-wrenching fashion, a weird thing happens. 
That swollen heart can shatter into a hundred thousand different pieces and those shards of your broken heart travel through your body and begin poking atRead More

As the year ends, it’s time that we take stock of everything that has happened in the last 365 days and make sense of it all. Like any other year, 2014 was a time of highs and lows, ups and downs, the good and the bad. But ain’t nobody got time to focus on the bad stuff, so let’s take a look back on the BEST things we’ll remember from 2014. Here are my picks for the best of 2014.   Best Movie of 2014: Gone Girl I most certainly didRead More

There’s something about engaging in a (slightly) revolting activity in the presence of an attractive individual that is not preferable. By presence, I specifically mean sitting one inch away from a nice-looking Canadian man on an airplane, and by revolting I mean unwrapping a half-devoured, room-temperature burrito in your lap from a mock “Chipotle” in the Dallas airport and spilling black beans on your shared armrest. Excuse me, sir, care for a luke-warm lentil?  I had four more hours of traveling next to my burrito and this Canadian man andRead More

Dear Mommy,   I’m sorry I don’t write more often, but it’s difficult to put a pen to paper or tap the keys on my laptop at times when I think of you. It’s almost Christmas and that was always your favorite holiday. You decorated the house the day after Halloween before disregarding Thanksgiving went mainstream. You were always ahead of the trends. This will be the third Christmas without you, but the first one that I’ll say out loud, “Mommy’s not coming back.”   I thought about you today.Read More

You know how sometimes you get text messages from friends that just kind of irritate you? Maybe it’s a hostile “K” or a passive aggressive “:)” or maybe it’s just a “hahah.” And you think, “Hahaha?” That’s not a response. Those aren’t words. Those are sounds. You sent me sounds. How am I supposed to respond to that? Right, so texting has become this enigma of conversation where we laugh, but aren’t actually laughing and send smiles when no smiles are actually occurring and that’s all fine and well becauseRead More

The holiday season is here, and, for many of us, that means going home to the places and the people that have been watching us grow up. Returning home means running into everyone I never wanted to see again at one of the five bars in my hometown and having to relearn how to drive a car after months of walking and taking the subway. It means getting to eat my mom’s bombass breakfasts and snuggle with my cat whenever he lets me. It means spending every second with myRead More

Remember when you placed second in that declamation contest back in sixth grade? That supporting role you played during a school event? Or that masterpiece you worked hard day and night for but wasn’t published? You know you won’t let yourself forget all those so-called mediocrities, so you just sulk in your nook and cringe your way through the day trying to convince yourself you’ll never be good enough for anything, for anyone. You get so shell-shocked with all that has been going inside your brain, thinking about every possibleRead More