There are a lot of traditional expectations of women to which I don’t match up with smoothly. For the most part, I don’t even care to bother meeting up to these expectations. Except for this one thing:

I wish I could be cleaner.

I don’t have a neat-freak bone anywhere in my body. I’m not convinced that I even want a neat-freak bone. But when I walk into some friends’ homes and everything is immaculately clean…it makes me wonder why I too can’t prioritize cleaning.

In order for me to clean, I really need to be expecting guests. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not DIRTY. I don’t leave food out, I do the dishes, take out the trash, blah blah. Oh, and I bathe. But I’m A-OK with leaving my shoes, jackets, purses, etc. all over the living room and I don’t mind if my roomies do, either. I don’t care if there’s makeup all over the counter and the bathroom floors aren’t spotless. Did I miss a memo somewhere?

It doesn’t even ‘run’ in my family. My family is actually very neat and they often argued with me over being somewhat of a slob growing up. I guess I just can’t see why cleaning is more important than sitting on the couch.

It’s not something I necessarily learned from my friends, either. In fact, my friends are kind of the people who make pay attention to the fact that I’m not like them. Take my good friend, Cara, for example. She mops her floors incessantly. When we get into her place from spending the evening out she literally - no f*cking joke - mops the floor. Am I crazy for thinking this is crazy? Read More »

I never have dealt well with “going” to work or “answering” to a boss. I know it sounds rather hopeless, but I have an entrepreneur-esque mind and I set out to never “go” to work or “answer” to anyone I didn’t want to answer to. And so far, I’ve achieved that goal.

I work 100% freelance. I make my own schedule. Some days I don’t work at all. I sleep in when I want to. I go out ’til 7 am if I want to. Hell, I take off to California if I want to. There are no rules, really, and many a friend have drooled their envy all over my face without taking a minute to really understand how NOT easy working for yourself can be. If you’re considering pursuing this lifestyle, but you’re not sure if it’s for you, maybe I can be of some help.

MOTIVATION

You’ve gotta be able to be self-motivated. You’ve got to make money and build your career REGARDLESS of the fact that there’s an X-Files marathon on channel 17. Read More »

Please note that it has been almost a month since I signed up for my race. I haven’t been to the gym since that initial trip, although I was rejected from said gym when a new front desk worker didn’t even know there was a corporate gym in the building and I had left my ID at home. Instead of delving right into running, I started walking home whenever it was warm enough and I wasn’t heading to class directly from the office.

I’m failing miserably and I haven’t done anything yet.

The walking surprisingly has given me more energy, but I’ve realized that it’s not quite the same as a nice jog or run. Feeling a bit pathetic, I decided I needed to change my diet again and pretend I actually cared about eating healthy food. I traded actually running for giving up chocolate and other sweet snacky foods. I subside largely on vegetables, natural peanut butter, and whole grains. I’m not exactly a vegetarian, but for the most part I don’t really eat meat or seafood more than once or twice a month, so I’ve been trying to find healthy, creative ways to get my protein.

Natural peanut butter is my addiction, with avocados at a close second. They’re not at all the same but they’ve been a good way to get healthy fat. Also have been working on getting protein from beans, lentils, chickpeas, and the like, so I don’t make myself anemic. Read More »

Do you fear slipping into that bikini? Do you know that those boxes of pizza and cans of beer that piled up in the corner of your apartment all year will no longer find shelter under a sweatshirt? And with the dawn of summer upon us that means … yes you guessed it, diet and exercise. The two most feared words in a college student’s dictionary. But do not fear; this summer will be different; just wait and read.

I try to stay in shape at college, but diet and exercise take a backseat at the end of the semester when I so meticulously balance my time between finals and end of year parties. So, we must enter summer looking our worst at the time we want to look our best. Thus we embark on a drastic last minute heave to get in shape.

Why should you listen to me? Because you remember that kid who was on a first name basis with Joe the Good Humor man and wore t-shirts in the swimming pool. Well, that kid was me and this emotional scarring early in life created a 20 year old overly obsessed with nutrition and exercise.

So now its time to dive into what you must do to impress that prospective summer fling:

Be reasonable: Do french fries, pizza, or hot wings in any way sound healthy? If you want to get that summer body find an alternative: grilled over fried, salsa/hot sauce/mustard over mayo, yogurt over ice cream, Splenda over sugar, diet over soda, wheat over white, fruit over candy. Read More »