April 8, 2024

I received some anonymous feedback today that really threw me for a loop – which is strange because my general stance on feedback is that it should be like breathing – it should be a normal thing that you are giving and receiving every day so it’s not a traumatic event for anyone. But this one upset me more than any other “constructive” feedback I’ve ever received.

I won’t write the feedback verbatim here but essentially this person wrote that the events I plan for women at work are disingenuous and inauthentic because don’t talk to junior practitioners during the events.

First off, this is clearly a blanket statement that is not true – I do talk to junior practitioners at events. I’m assuming the author means “I am a junior practitioner and Rebecca did not talk to me at a particular event.”

The only event I organized in this quarter was a GALentine’s event that I hold for women at my company every year. It started small with about 5 ladies the first year, and grew to be 50+ invitees this year. I’m assuming this person was upset that I didn’t speak to her (much?) at that particular party. I think this is fair criticism – Miss Manners would dictate that you should greet every person at an event and spend time talking to each person. This is why you go to weddings and usually get to spend a grand total of 3 minutes celebrating with the bride and groom – they have to make sure they greet every person at the wedding. One could note that this was not a wedding. It was not a celebration of me- it was an event that I hosted for people to network with each other – which took place in a glorified break room. It was my bad for getting sucked into a few conversations and also not feeling super chatty that evening. I’ll own that I did not do a good job socially engaging. Here are a few things that the feedback giver may not know about that party though.

1. It was something that I volunteered my time toward – not a required event. It was something I wanted to do for the ladies in my network. No one asked me to do it and also, no one was required to attend.
2. I spent about $200 dollars of my own money on goodie bags for every person who attended the event. I didn’t use my corporate American Express – I paid for a hand curated collection of earrings, scrunchies, GALentine’s Day cards that I personally designed (I’ll say more about these in a few minutes), pencils, stress balls, notepads, and fun glasses for everyone to wear in a group picture. My money. Mine. Not to mention the time that I spent assembling all 50 bags by myself (in my own personal time the night before the event, not company time).
3. I spent two full weekends using my Cricut to make vinyl stickers for the event. Every person who attended got two vinyl stickers for their water bottle/notebook/whatever, and I also bought knock-off Stanley cups from Walmart and put an “Empowered Women Empower Women” sticker on three of them to raffle off at the event. This was labor intensive (again, my personal time, not company time) – and I paid for the materials (once again) with my own money. Because this was something I wanted to do for the women I work with.
4. I ordered 10 pizzas for the event. Now – I did let the company pay for the food, which is customary, but I placed the order in advance and made sure the food would arrive on time for the event. I booked the room myself – I did not delegate any of these activities to other people – because I wanted this to be my special treat for the women I work with.
5. I decorated the event space in hearts, hearts and more hearts. A couple ladies volunteered to help me- but I paid for those decorations, you guessed it, out of my own pocket.
6. The day of the event, I was feeling anxious about the fact that I hadn’t provided drinks for the event. So I drove to Target in between meetings to buy drinks and then hauled all of the goodie bags and beverages up to the meeting room.
7. By the time the event actually happened – I was tired. I’m an introvert by nature and I could feel my battery draining early on in the event, probably because of a day of anxiety over everything falling into place plus a full regular work day. I was happy that the ladies were all networking with each other. Many ladies brought desserts to exchange, and everyone seemed to have a really lovely time. I got to see people I don’t see often at all and it was lovely.

I don’t list all that out because I want some kind of reward for going over the top. I’m just trying to show you all the evidence of the true intent that I had behind that event and how much it meant to me on a personal level. Yet, there I was today, ugly crying in front of my boss over what this person wrote. Honestly, this whole afternoon was an emotional ride. My thought process looked like this:

• I ugly cried, and got a little pep talk from my boss. I don’t remember much that I said to him besides *sniff* “Disingenuous”; *sniff* “I work so hard.”; *sniff* “It’s never enough.”
• “It’s never enough.” That was the thing I couldn’t get out of my head. I pulled myself together and went home to work on some stuff. The whole time I was working, the only thing I could think about was “What’s the point? I give up my nights and weekends and nothing matters. People still say things like that about me when I bent over backwards to throw a nice event.” Why bother?
• Then I started thinking about all the things I give up for my job besides nights and weekends (a lot of nights and a lot of weekends). I just got back from a fantastic visit to Kentucky to see my family and I cried when I had to leave my niece Cali Jo to come back here. Then I came back to fire after fire at work, very little sleep all week and a never-ending line of men I’m trying to date in this area who don’t care about my feelings. Cali Jo cares about my feelings. My family cares about my feelings. Yet I’m here in the DC area, a region that is challenging socially, working hard for people who would write things like that about me. Anonymously. Without speaking to me directly. Posting those blanket claims about my character for the people who decide my future – my bonus, my salary, my career progression – to read. How many sunny days with Cali Jo have I sacrificed for this job? How many weekend FaceTime calls with my family or adventures with my friends did I miss out on for this one party alone? For a slap on the wrist from an anonymous stranger for not doing it perfectly. Why bother?
• If I’m not good at my job, am I good at anything? My whole life, every time my love life has been shit (always) or I’ve been in a fight with a friend or when the softball coach was yelling at me for my stupid-looking throw in high school…I’ve always been able to be like, well, at least I’m smart. At least I get A’s in school. At least I’m good at my job. At least I’m a person who tries to lead people with kindness. Is it all an act? Am I disingenuous? I’ve always tried to look at myself square on, warts and all, and I’ve found so few things about myself that I actually like – but two things I’ve always felt to be true are that I’m funny and I’m genuine. When I’m not being funny, I’m being real. Is all of that bullshit?

Of course not. One random person’s opinion doesn’t change who I am or the value of what I do or the value of my time. Of course my event came from a genuine place. Why would someone spend weeks quietly working in the background to make an event so special without a genuine desire to do something nice for women?

I absolutely accept the feedback that I didn’t spend enough time meeting new people that night – which may have translated into not taking interest in junior practitioners. To be fair…almost everyone there was a junior practitioner compared to me. Anyone who knows me knows that I think about junior staff everyday and expend boundless energy to help them grow and learn. I’ve devoted my life to this effort. Am I perfect? No. Do I get tired? Yes. Do I get busy with client work and have to decline calendar invites sometimes? Yep. Am I bad at managing my calendar? Emphatic yes. These are all things that some good constructive feedback could address. But to use words like “disingenuous” or “inauthentic” is assigning intent to my actions that just wasn’t there. And I know that to be true. That’s why I’ll sleep well tonight.

The irony of the GALentine’s Day card that I designed is that it was a “Feedback” themed card. I went to Office Depot and printed these adorable cards that I designed in Powerpoint and then with Canva (and printed them using my own money). They are very pink, but they also show a process for giving feedback called SBI. Basically the process goes:

S – Situation: Describe the exact situation, giving as many details as possible. “On Tuesday during our Galentine’s Day party on the 24th floor at 5:30…”

B – Behavior: Describe the behavior. A behavior is something that you can observe on a video camera. It is not a feeling or an intent or something someone always does. It is specific to the situation. “…you spent most of the party talking to people you already knew and didn’t spend much time talking to me at all...”

I – Impact: Describe the impact that the behavior had on you, other people or the project. “…and that made ME feel really left out.”

Then you pause and allow the person space to describe their intent before you work together to make a plan for going forward. If someone were giving me that SBI feedback above, I could say “Oh, ________ I’m so sorry. You’re right, I didn’t do a very good job networking that night. I was so tired from making sure the event was a success that I wasn’t very social, and I regretted that after the party was over. I did not mean to make you feel left out. Can we have lunch next week so we can connect properly?”

You see how that’s much more constructive than personality-based feedback where you make blanket statements about someone’s character or pre-assign intent to their actions (Rebecca is disingenuous, Rebecca is inauthentic)? The approaches are night and day different and one leads to thoughtful actions taken to ensure that the behavior is addressed, and the other created an afternoon of spiraling on my part and had me questioning my own character because of one person’s opinion. One approach made me think “why bother?” and almost had me certain that I won’t do anything like my event again in the future. The other approach would have put me in the mindset of “Oh, I’ll do it differently next time.” You see? For the sake of the feedback author, I hope they have a leader who takes care to use SBI feedback instead of tearing them down with strong words that make them want to quit trying. Maybe, in time, they might have more empathy for me.

Anyway. F**k that. I’m genuine and kind and I work very hard for the people around me. And I’m not going to stop being me.

March 24, 2024

I just finished reading an excellent book written by one of my favorite authors about horrible breakups throughout history. Jennifer Wright’s “It Ended Badly” takes you on a tour of history by examining some of the world’s most well-known toxic couples. The overall theme she has woven into each chapter seems to be about making the heartbroken and downtrodden masses of today feel just a little bit better about the messy responses we sometimes have to breakups and having our hearts broken. You know how you might watch some trashy reality tv so you feel a little better about how your own life is going? If you read about historical relationship drama that was sometimes met with slander, murder, weird sex dolls, pedophilia, castration, and other atrocities, then you might feel a bit better about the number of times you texted your ex after he left you for a blonde named Chrissy. Ten voicemails on his phone is excessive and embarrassing in retrospect, but also legal, ya know? The book takes on one couple’s tragic downfall in each chapter. I don’t want to spoil too much of it for you because you should read this and some of Jennifer’s other great work, but here are a few things that stuck out to me:

1. Oscar Wilde, a literary genius had an ex-partner who called him “feeble-minded” in an autobiography called “Oscar Wilde and Myself”. First, can you imagine being such a boring person that the only way to sell your autobiography was to put the name of someone else who was actually famous in the title? I obviously didn’t know Wilde’s partner, Lord Alfred Douglas, but all accounts suggest that he was a cocky little shit who slandered Wilde’s name after Wilde served a prison sentence for participating in homosexual acts in their relationship. Let that be a lesson to you – your ex may say some awful stuff about you after the breakup, but your work/actions speak for themselves and your friends/family know your true character. We all know Oscar Wilde was anything but feeble-minded. Oscar put it best when he said, “I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.”
2. I complain about ghosting all the time, this is not news to you. Nothing hurts more than when someone just disappears after you’ve had some form of relationship with them. I recently got ghosted by that guy with cancer that I told you about in a previous post. He blocked me on instagram and blocked my number. I honestly couldn’t tell you why. I drove over 3 hours to meet him for dinner one night and brought him some flowers for his table. We had a really nice date and he kissed me goodnight. When I tell my friends about the ghost of New Kent County, their response is to say, “Well, you have to cut that guy some slack because of the cancer, right?” I don’t know. He runs this non-profit where he collects cash and other things for cancer patients, and it’s really lovely. I guess I would have to have cancer to receive a little kindness from him myself? Gah, thinking about it makes me feel yucky and the whole thing really hurt me. BUT I will say, one story in Wright’s book had a new form of ghosting I had never considered. Timothy Dexter, a businessman who lived in Massachusetts in the late 1700’s had a wife named Elizabeth. At one point, he told all of his friends that Elizabeth had died. When they inevitably came to call on him at his house and saw Elizabeth (very much alive) in the house, he told them not to worry, it was just her ghost. Here I am upset that an internet stranger is treating me like he’s dead, but imagine having your own husband treating you like a ghost in your own house. I feel better.
3. The story that stuck with me the most (there are like ten others in the book that contain all of the atrocities I mentioned above) was the story of Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb. I had of course heard of Lord Byron before, but mostly knew of him through an episode of Drunk History where they implied that a weekend orgy with Lord Byron and other well-known writers of his time including Mary and Percy Shelley resulted in the bet that spawned Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”. When Caroline, one of Byron’s biggest fans, met the poet for the first time, she described him as “Mad, bad and dangerous to know.” This would turn out to be true, but she was also more than a bit mad, bad and dangerous also. The story Wright describes in her book is a long one but the gist of it is that Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron had a short affair (Caroline was married to some guy who enjoyed rough sex or something like that) and ultimately Lord Byron broke it off and broke Caroline’s heart in doing so. She proceeded to lose her ever-loving mind. She sent him scathing letters (along with a lock of her pubic hair), broke into his house and wrote in one of his books, made scenes in public when she saw him, spread rumors that he was sleeping with his sister and had a very publicized and self-indulgent bonfire with all of her friends where she burned all of the gifts he ever gave her. Byron wrote her some nasty letters in return, and the two began publishing novels and poetry with not-so-subtle digs at their former lovers in a tit-for-tat rap battle of sorts. Their feud didn’t really end until Byron died in war and Caroline said she wished she’d never spoken ill of him.

The Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb breakup really struck me because I think it’s one of the more relatable stories in the book. Most of us have never murdered our wives and then grieved by castrating and marrying a teenage boy who looked like her (horrendous abuse committed by one of the Emperor’s of Rome, Nero). Most of us have never married a beautiful young woman and then refused to consummate the marriage by publicly (and falsely) implying that there was something malformed about her genitalia (although Matt Riffe seems to think this kind of slander is funny to talk about on podcasts), like John Ruskin. But many of us have done things we aren’t proud of while in the tight grasp of heartache and grief – including stepping across boundaries, not being empathetic to the pain of the other party, and saying awful things to and about the person we used to love.

I feel so much for Caroline here. Her post-breakup feud with Byron isn’t all that distinct from the things you see on Facebook or Instagram posts when couples go their separate ways. Vague comments or inspirational quotes, generalized statements about someone’s character or even mental health (how often do we diagnose former partners as codependent or narcissistic?), motivational videos about moving on and deserving better, etc. We’ve all seen this stuff and maybe even posted it ourselves. Caroline’s behavior was a master class in how to overstep boundaries and not let go and move on. But I’d be lying if I didn’t behave the same way after my last break up. I couldn’t let go of it. I texted that man awful things (by my standards, anyway) and repeatedly begged him to stay. Months after the fact, I still wouldn’t stop reaching out. He had said he wanted to be friends and that he would never abandon me, but I pushed him to the edge where he had to cut me off completely. Sure, I wasn’t mailing him pubic hair or showing up at his house uninvited, but I was still overstepping the boundaries he set. And it wasn’t like I was waking up in the morning thinking, “Hey, I’ll go torture my ex today and make him feel absolutely horrible and crushed with guilt and stress”, but I couldn’t clearly see what I was doing through my own grief. I look back on those moments and cringe, and feel so guilty. I wish I had been able to understand the difficult position he was in and the pain he felt too – but my own pain was so intense, I couldn’t see anything else at all. I’m not making excuses for Caroline or myself, but I understand what she was going through.

Honestly, I even reached out to my ex as recently as October of last year. Six months ago. I had been dumped by guy I’d dated for a few weeks, and took it hard. It was the first time I had even dared to hope for a future with someone new, and when it all came tumbling down, I typed in that number that I know by heart no matter how hard I try to forget it and fired off a “Hey, how have you been?” text. He mercifully did not respond. I ran into him a few weeks later at a bar and I saw him whispering to a girl next to him while she stared at me with her mouth agape, and I got up and walked out of the bar. Shame is the only thing I felt – as if I knew he was whispering to her about what a crazy person I am. I even worried he would think I was stalking him and showed up there on purpose. It was one of the worst nights of my life. I realized that I would give anything to go back and handle myself differently in the wake of our split. I’m not crazy, but the pain made me act crazy and it’s hard to look back without feeling that shame. I don’t know much about Caroline’s character, but I would imagine she lost some sleep looking back on her behavior after Byron’s death. For Byron’s part – I think he was just a standard “fuck boy”, and it seems like he didn’t take much care to be sympathetic toward Caroline’s hurt – something I certainly can’t say is true of my ex.

I write in this blog and tell you about my wild dating stories, and yes, sometimes men act atrociously toward me. Sometimes I’m the atrocious one though. In my last post, I told you about the guy who said he was sick when cancelling a date and then showed up at the bar. I mentioned that I gave him an earful too. I don’t feel proud of that. I told him he hurt my feelings and acted very inconsiderately (true) but I was also a couple drinks deep and started to tell him “It’s always like this! All men treat me this way and I’m so tired of it! It’s always going to be like this!” He looked at me with his big, brown dairy cow eyes and looked horrified and so upset. He just kept saying “I’m sorry, it’s not always going to be like this. I’m sorry. Not all men are like me.” Y’all, it was like I took two years of trauma and disappointment and dumped it on this poor man with a vodka tonic in one hand and a shovel to bury him with in the other. He looked like he wanted to crawl under the bar. It was atrocious and not fair. I’m sure if he has a blog about his dating stories in DC, I’m in there now, depicted as the crazy woman who read him the riot act for calling in sick for our date. Seriously though, I do feel like dating me is some kind of stressful job where people call in sick to get out of it. What’s up with that?

I guess what I’m saying is that the theme of this book really resonated with me. We all do things that we aren’t proud of because we are human and life is just messy – and this is never more true than when you’re going through something terrible and hard. Being in love is the best feeling I’ve ever had and I’ve only experienced it once. The day that feeling was taken away from me was one of the most painful things I’ve been through so far. I acted like a little shit and I fell apart, and I wish I had been stronger and kinder (to him and to myself). It can sometimes be comforting to look back on ourselves at our absolute worst and realize “well, I didn’t do anything illegal and I didn’t physically harm anyone, and I apologized for it later.” Maybe that’s enough. Sometimes we are all mad, bad and dangerous to know but we can learn and grow and change if we are bold enough to look at ourselves square on. And hopefully the moments we are less than proud of don’t end up in a snarky history book and instead die in a snarky blog that no one reads.

March 21, 2024

I got a request at work to write a blog for a newsletter. The requester asked me for a “few” paragraphs, but as I suffer from “Main Character Energy”, I provided about 8 instead. I thought I’d share what I submitted here.

Hello, friends! 

Wow. I’m so excited for this opportunity to write about myself in this forum. I am writing this with two goals in mind. 1) I hope folks who haven’t met me yet will read this and feel inclined to reach out to make my acquaintance; and 2) I hope folks who have met me will learn some things they didn’t know before. 

I’ll start with my elevator pitch. I’m Rebecca Crouch, a Specialist Leader out of the Arlington, VA office. In 2016, I completed a PhD in Statistics at the University of Kentucky (born and raised Kentucky gal) and ten days after walking across the stage in the most expensive gown I’ll probably ever own (unless I get married someday) I packed up my life and moved to the DC area to start my career with Deloitte. I work in the National Intelligence space in DS&J and lead some of the most tremendous, high-performing teams at Deloitte (actually, the best teams IN THE WORLD) who work tirelessly to apply advanced AI to White House level mission problems and do R&D that could change the future of National Security. I LOVE my job. 

I wake up every day with a​ simple goal – I want to be the AI leader that a more junior version of myself (“Consultant Rebecca”) would have wanted to follow. To be that leader, I focus on three components of AI leadership:​

1) Methods expertise and mastery – both technical and interacting with technical clients​.

2) Translating those methods into business/growth/opportunities to solve client problems and make mission impacts. 

3) Developing analytics practitioners and leaders to create a great technical talent experience and to make it possible to deliver excellent work to clients.

I’m writing to you from sunny Charleston, SC where I am enjoying a “spring break” trip with friends.  In typical Rebecca fashion, I procrastinated writing this blog before my PTO hit (as a result of the daily triage of activities we all have to do), and now I’m enjoying putting pen to paper with a beautiful morning view from our Airbnb on Folly Beach. I snapped this picture “for the ‘gram” and to send to my mom to rub her nose in my relaxing vacation (daughter of the year). When I looked at it, I realized there’s a lot you can learn about me from this photo alone. 

First, I have my water cup that says, “Empowered Women Empower Women”. I made the white sticker with my Cricut machine. I am an amateur Cricut user but have had great success making vinyl stickers for cups (as shown above), sweatshirts with custom logos (see the pic below of my niece, Cali Jo and I before our annual Turkey Trot up and down my sister’s driveway in rural Kentucky) and most recently, magnets for my client’s internal impact expo. 

I made the cup pictured as part of my annual GALentine’s Day event I host at Deloitte. This event is just an excuse to wear pink (my favorite color!) and spend an evening hanging out with the fantastic, inspiring, talented women in my network. This year, we ate pizza and had a cookie exchange in the Rosslyn office. I have expanded this community to include an active Teams chat with ~100 participants called “GALentine’s Day is Every Day” where we have curated a GALentine’s Playlist, a list of book/podcast recommendations, and create learning and networking opportunities that are focused on empowering women at Deloitte – a passion of mine. If you are interested in being added to the “GALentine’s Day is Every Day” community, please reach out!

You may also notice one of my books on “Winning with Accountability”. I’m reading this book to hopefully create some course/workshop content on building an environment that fosters accountability on teams. One of my other passions is Learning & Development, and I have been on a journey over the past few years to help practitioners in GPS learn how to thrive in all stages of the sales and delivery lifecycle. This year, Steve Hardy and I worked with a team to implement ClubMED (Manager Excellence Delivery), a comprehensive training for newly promoted managers in AI&D. We had a day of hybrid training in August of last year, where Steve and I had a blast working with managers on managing individuals, leading teams, solving problems, ensuring quality on AI projects, shaping deals and more. We leaned in hard to the ClubMED theme and wore leis all day, while I subjected participants to more Ryan Gosling memes than they bargained for. We’ve provided virtual training to supplement that long day of learning with content on proposal writing (how to make it less painful), engagement economics, and most recently a session on building your Deloitte brand in honor of International Women’s Day. We are planning to continue and expand ClubMED this year, so please reach out in you would like to learn more or get involved as part of my team!

The last thing you may notice from my Folly Beach picture is the other book “The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the name of Science”. When I’m not working on AI with my top-notch team, or doing all of the other Deloitte things, I have a myriad of hobbies and interests. I love to read, and most recently, I’ve been fixated on books about historical science (mainly medical science and diseases). If you want to get me talking, ask me about Ebola. Did you know there is a strain of Ebola named after Reston, VA? I would love to tell you that story over some coffee or a beer. When I’m not devouring books about the plague and science experiments gone wrong, I love to write. I keep a fun blog about the hilarity that ensues while trying to date in your 30’s in the DC area. You can read it at beecrouch.blog. 

I also love to run when my knees aren’t bothering me, and coach Girls on the Run in Northern VA where I get to do little lessons with Middle School girls about topics such as friendship and setting goals while we train for a 5K together. I’ve run three half marathons and enjoy taking little run-cations where I can combine a fun race with a road trip. I like to visit new cities and small towns, and almost always go on a ghost tour when a town offers one. A ghost tour in Williamsburg, VA caused my great pirate obsession of 2021, where I spent an entire summer reading about Blackbeard. The main takeaway from that rabbit hole was that Blackbeard had only been a pirate for about three years when he died – meaning years of experience aren’t always the most important part of a resume. Something worth remembering. 

Hopefully this gives you a snapshot of my work at Deloitte and all the things that make me excited to get out of bed in the morning. Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself. I know every person reading this has an interesting story and could fill a similar blog template with all of the things that make you tick. Please reach out and tell me all about it. I can’t wait to hear your story. Thank you for everything you do – I appreciate you. 

March 11, 2024

I’ve been listening to this book called “The Hot Zone”, which is about how Reston, Virginia nearly became the site of an ebola outbreak in the late 80’s. Basically, a lab received some monkeys from Africa, and they all started dropping dead. Then researchers examined the agent that caused their sudden illness, and discovered that it was something that looked like ebola. Turns out that it was ebola, but it was a strain that doesn’t affect humans. The whole country breathed a sigh of relief that an ebola outbreak was not about to cause havoc is a highly populated area right outside of Washington DC. My Kentucky friends probably don’t know Reston, but it is the town where my favorite meat market bar is located (a bar that has been featured in some of my greatest dating/mingling stories). I got kissed there once without my consent after buying a shot of Jameson for a gay man and being rejected so publicly that the bartender bought me a drink and comped the shot for me. Yet I keep coming back for more. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I’m very familiar with Reston and this story of the ebola monkeys is living rent free in my head. I am now reading the sequel to “The Hot Zone” called the “Crisis in the Red Zone” which is about the very devastating ebola outbreaks in Africa in 2014. It reads like a horror novel about doctors and nurses who were frantically trying to help people who were dying horrific and painful deaths, knowing all the while that they were very likely to contract the disease themselves. Think COVID19 front line workers (heroes for sure!) but battling a disease with a much higher death rate than coronavirus.

Naturally, I’ve been really worried about ebola ever since I started going down this rabbit hole. You know how men have that “Roman Empire” thing where they allegedly think about the Roman Empire at least once a day? I think my “Roman Empire” shifts regularly based on what it is I’ve decided to worry about at any point in time. Two weeks ago, I went on a date with a man who has stage 4 colon cancer. For that whole week, I was googling what can cause colon cancer, what the treatments are like, stories of healing and loss. My date told me he can’t eat ice cream because the chemo makes him so sensitive to the cold that even drinking ice water is “like swallowing knives”. As someone who always has Drumstick Ice Cream cones in the freezer, I cannot imagine this lukewarm-water-no-ice-cream-allowed life. And meeting this man obviously gave me some perspective – perspective on how frustrated I am with dating, how much time I waste not doing things I like, the amount of time I spend at work instead of soaking up the time I have with people I love. I felt a lot of admiration for him and am really glad I met him. But I also spent a lot of time worrying about it – worrying about whether I’m eating the wrong things that could cause me to get sick like that, worrying about how years of an eating disorder might have destroyed my organs already and I don’t even know it, worrying that someone I love will get sick and I’ll have to see them suffer (and live a life without ice cream!). Pretty selfish way of thinking, I know. But this, my friends, is what we call anxiety.

About once a week, I seem to find something else to be very worried about. For about a week this summer, I was absolutely certain that my boss hated me and I was going to be fired. This week it’s ebola. Last month, I found a bump on Maudie’s arm and I was already planning her little doggy funeral. A marine cheated on me in 2019 and I spent three days absolutely convinced that I had HIV from his infidelity. Anxiety.

I’ve written quite a bit about my depression here but maybe never in clinical terms. For the latter half of 2023, I was crying myself to sleep just about every night. I was taking Benadryl and other sleep aids to fall asleep right after work. I was struggling with friendships – friendships that meant the world to me, but I couldn’t figure out how to function in them. I wasn’t drinking “a lot” by society’s standards, but I noticed that I was starting to drink to numb pain – which wasn’t like me. It was a similar pattern to what I experienced during the dark times of COVID lockdown. The difference back then was that life was slow. I had time to focus on hobbies like working out twice a day and playing video games. I had less pressure on me at work because work was slow and we were all working remotely. I was a mess, but no one had to witness it, and I had outlets that I could use to work through feelings. But 2023 wasn’t like that. I had to be at work every day – in a role where people depend on me. I didn’t have time to workout for three hours a day and count every calorie – which meant I had no abs to snap pics of and post on social media to get some kind of external validation. I was really struggling with depression and felt like I didn’t even know where to begin to tackle it. I was seeing a therapist, but felt like I couldn’t do “the work” required in therapy because I couldn’t function or focus on anything but how unhappy I was.

My experience with depression and anxiety is that anxiety kind of feeds my depression. Anxiety is to depression as Cheetos are to Maudie. Nothing can make a bad mood or a downward spiral worse than some anxiety about things that may or may not happen. Sure, you’re already in the fetal position thinking about how Kyle, the dad from Texas who said he wanted to be exclusive with someone else, but have you thought about the fact that he might have given you an STI? Have you considered the fact that you may actually die alone? Don’t you think your friends will laugh about how pathetic you are behind your back? Maybe he dumped you because you’re fat. You might have a reason, maybe (but rarely) a really good reason for feeling depressed, but the anxiety bumps it up to level 10.

So at the end of 2023, I decided that I’d had enough of this depression and anxiety making me act like a shitty friend, shitty sister, shitty employee, shitty dog mom – all of these things that I know I am NOT, but sometimes play the part. I reached out to my doctor and said “plz help”. She put me on Lexapro. Here are some things I have noticed about the medicated version of me:

1. I don’t cry (much). I’ve cried maybe twice this year, and I think I was crying over things that were genuinely upsetting (like when I fell down that staircase in Maryland).
2. I am crushing it at work. It’s insane – when you’re not constantly thinking about how sad you are or how worried you are, you can actually think about your job. You can also think about other people around you and be a better boss. You listen better. You respond without being as reactive.
3. My skin is *chef’s kiss*. I actually don’t know if that has anything to do with the meds.
4. Weight gain? Like, who cares? One of the reasons my doctor was hesitant to put me on any type of depression meds back in 2020 when I first asked about them was my eating issues. But what I’ve learned is that I don’t know if I’m gaining weight on these meds – but I do know that I do not care (much).
5. I’m a better friend. I’m less likely to cancel plans to have more wallowing time. I’m less likely to show up stressed or frustrated from traffic. I’m less likely to be an asshole.
6. I’m a better family member. See number 5. I’m more patient with the kids and can focus on them when I’m with them.
7. I’ve been tired. I’ve been going to bed early and waking up later than I would like. I do feel tired a lot. I’m hoping this side effect will eventually wear off.
8. I’m starting to find the distinction between fascination and fixation. Ebola aside, I have been better about avoiding macabre and depressing rabbit holes. I’ve lightened my true crime podcast and documentary load. I’ve been trying to spend my time absorbing content that makes me happy – not stuff that makes me scared or angry.
9. I’m still an open-book and emotional human, but I can have conversations without falling apart. Most notably, I’ve been really good about receiving candid feedback at work and taking action on it.
10. I say yes to more things. I’ve made this deal with myself about food. If someone offers me food that I’ve never tried before, I’m going to take a big bite of it. This sounds trivial to all of the foodies reading this, but not for me. I’ve been the world’s pickiest eater for as long as I can remember, and I think a lot of that came from anxiety! Fear of eating something in front of someone and not liking it or not knowing how to eat it the right way (think like, using chopsticks) has stopped me, and also fear of trying something that cultured and refined people like and not liking it. So far this year, I’ve eaten kumquats, pho, and hummus for the first time. Snaps for me. Food aside, I said yes to a trip to Charleston with friends, and I said yes to a trip to Paris (where I assume I’ll really get to flex my say-yes-to-food muscles). Unrelated: Remind me to tell you about the guy I met on Bumble who was morally opposed to all vegetables. All of them. That was the moment I realized I couldn’t live a life without cooking with onions.

I don’t know if this information is useful to anyone. I would never prescribe my approach to life to anyone else because Lord knows I’m not doing a lot of things right. But if you are feeling like things are hard and unmanageable, I would encourage you think about talking to a medical professional about it. I spent a lot of years trying to avoid taking meds because of my job security level and other factors. I’ve had partners who disparaged people who “need” medication to function, and that has deterred me. All I can tell you is that I’ve gotten some relief for the first time in…well, ever.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read some more about ebola before bed.

March 10, 2024

Another International Women’s Day has come and gone. I spent the day teaching a class on building a personal brand, and then briefing some math stuff to some potential future clients. I was wearing a homemade sweatshirt that said “Empowered Women Empower Women”. In a sick twist of fate, when I was up late on Thursday night making these sweatshirts and some cute pencil pouches and other swag for my lady friends at work, my smoke alarm started chirping. I took my step ladder down to the bedroom to try to replace the battery and I couldn’t reach the alarm to do so. Around 1 am, I gave up sleeping through the chirping sound and jumped up to rip the damn thing off the ceiling and finally got some relief. How ridiculous. A homeowner who claims to be self sufficient found herself in a position where she was nearly driven to madness by a chirping smoke detector. I didn’t feel that empowered after all.

I don’t feel empowered today either. I met a man at a bar on Friday and he seemed pretty excited to take me on a date today, but of course he has since ghosted me. I know this is the 900th time I’ve told you guys about something like this and there’s nothing you or I can do to change this stupid dating culture. But all I know is that it really hurts. These things happen enough that I start to think there really is something wrong with me. Maybe I am a walking red flag (see previous post) and there is no man out there who will want to spend time with me. Such a red flag that I don’t warrant a text that says “Hey Rebecca, I’d rather not go to lunch today. You should make other plans.” Anyway, I’ve been sitting in my house listening to the wind howl all day, napping as much as my body will allow. Empowered, my ass.

I try to be a role model for the women around me, especially at work. I try to lift them up and encourage them and make them feel important. One girl sent me a note on Friday saying “Thank you for making every day feel like Women’s Day!” and it was one of the greatest notes of appreciation I’ve ever received. These ladies are so smart and funny and kind and tough – I want them to feel special every day. So when I get like this – all down on myself and upset about men or loneliness, I feel like I’m failing at my mission. An empowered woman probably wouldn’t take Benadryl to sleep through a Sunday because she’s so hurt over a man she spent about 90 minutes with at a bar. An empowered woman wouldn’t cry in the car over a Bumble message from a man who decided that the two of you were incompatible without ever speaking to you. An empowered woman wouldn’t be like this. An empowered woman would make herself feel special and validated rather than crying about all the men who don’t want to do that for her. An empowered woman would spend Women’s History month celebrating the capable, strong women around her instead of lamenting the men she tries to date and some of the predictable things they do.

So I guess I’ll take a second and empower myself to think about women and what they mean to me.

My best friend is a woman. She is a teacher, a great wife, a beacon of strength, a calm force to counter my chaotic nature.

My mom is a woman. She is tough and spunky and makes the best baked beans and fried potatoes. She gives me tough love when I need it and unconditional love every other second.

My sister is a woman. She is so creative and the nicest person I know. We have the same hair color and crippling anxiety. She’s a great friend. She’s an awesome mom.

My niece will be a woman soon enough. She is funny and athletic and crafty. Her love language is giving gifts and every time she sees me, she has some sort of jewelry she has made just for me.

My friend Jessi is a woman. I love to talk about books with her and she always makes me feel special and heard. She is an advocate and an ally for people around her.

Some of my coworkers are women. Brenna is wise and brilliant and always on my team. Lacey is tenacious and creative and dependable. Arthi makes me smile and feel loved. Brooke keeps me in stitches and is a great mentor.

A dear friend that I miss terribly is a woman. She is hilarious and emotionally intelligent and caring. I hope she knows how much I miss her and want her to thrive. I messed everything up. I’m sorry.

These are just a few of the women I woke up thinking about on Friday morning. I see you all working hard, taking care of your kids and/or the people around you, making sacrifices. I see you doing your best to grow and learn every day. I see you trying to make the best of this messy, imperfect, fucked up ride called life. I see you and I appreciate you and I thank you for everything you’ve done for me and will continue to do in the future.

I hope you take a second (or much more than a second) to pat yourself on the back and appreciate all the good you bring to the world. The world would be so much duller without you in it. And I’ll do the same for myself and recognize that I may not feel like an empowered badass every second of every day. I’m not always as strong as I want to be or as classy or as slow to anger. But I can always empower myself to shift my thinking, change my mind, and make better choices next time. And when in doubt, I can model my behavior after some of the amazing women I am blessed to know.

March 2, 2024

Hellllllllllo blog people in the year 2024! It’s great to be here again. I took a little break and made my site private for a bit, but now I’m ready to get back in the over-sharing, self-depreciating, under-whelming-the-masses-with-my-prose, connecting-words-with-dashes, swing of things. Thanks for stopping by!

I had a lesson in red flags this week. If you follow me on my Facebook page, I posted a true little story about dating in the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia for you Kentucky rubes). To jog your memory:

“I was on a date where I had to drive about an hour to meet the guy. We met at his house and he drove us to dinner. Then when we got back, I asked if I could use his bathroom before I hit the road. He showed me inside and upstairs to his bathroom, and then said “Goodnight, get home safe.” He and his dog went in his bedroom and shut the door. I shrugged, peed and and headed down the stairs. I was internally debating if I should offer to buy something like I would after using the bathroom at a Shell station or if I should just steal something to thicken the plot. I was wearing socks and the stairs were carpet, so in the middle of my scheming, I slipped and fell halfway down the flight of stairs. I stood up, took a deep breath, and took another step- then slipped again and fell the rest of the way down. I know that man heard me fall down his staircase, but he never emerged from his bedroom. So I stood up, dusted the dog hair and dust off of my ass and limped out to my car – too embarrassed to steal a Knick knack or leave a 20 on the coffee table. My knee is still very sore but I don’t think I’m out for the season. Should be back in the game in time for March Madness.“

You guys really thought it was a funny little story, so I posted it in a Facebook group for my favorite podcast called “Shit talk Sister Wives”. Shit Talk is hosted by a couple who got a little fame from podcasting about the show on TLC called Sister Wives, but they have since acquired a cult-like following on their Patreon and they recap shows like Dateline, Love is Blind and Toddlers in Tiaras. It is the best group I’ve ever seen on social media. People post about really crazy stuff on there and people are always nice. I posted my story there and got so many positive comments about my story telling, I was feeling feisty and confident. So I went to a local Facebook group for people who like to drink in northern Virginia, correctly named “Drink NOVA” and posted the story there.

My post in the NOVA group took off. I blinked and I had 500 reactions on there, with most people saying that it was hilarious and also saying that my male co-star in the story was rude to me. But another wild thing happened. I experienced my first taste of hate on social media since the election of 2016. I stopped posting about politics in 2016 when my high school pre-calculus teacher made a comment on my page saying that I am bad at my job in a chain reaction that followed from me running my mouth about Gary Johnson’s infamous “What is Aleppo?” interview. Remember that guy? He was the Libertarian candidate for president back when Trump and Hilary were duking it out. Anyway, I was making fun of this poor guy and made my former teacher mad. I’m glad midterm grades are permanent once submitted because if not, I might have retroactively lost my 4.0. The horror. I deserved it. You find yourself acting as a keyboard warrior trying to defend your intellect against a high school math teacher from middle-of-nowhere Kentucky, and you take a step back and evaluate your life choices, is all I’m saying. So I took a break from posting controversial opinions about worldwide current events and started just trying to post about funny things that happen in my life (and selfies!) – like any real narcissist would do. Roe v. Wade got overturned and I broke my rule that day, posted a little something, made an appointment to get an IUD, and returned to my politics-free posting.

My new and exciting 2024 internet hate had a few themes: You make bad decisions, you’re desperate, you’re a slut, you have red flags, you’re a sloppy drunk, you’re not funny.

Ok – I kind of understand how some criticism could come from my little story at face value. One read-through might suggest that I drove to this man’s house on a first date – but it was actually a third date. I left that detail out. We had a couple of really fantastic dates before – both at Mexican restaurants where we compared and contrasted the margarita and fajita situation at the two spots. I brought him a slice of key lime pie on the first date because he said he liked key lime pie. We ate pie and drank margs. It was awesome. So when the folks in the Drink NOVA group wanted to know why I would go to a stranger’s house on a first date – I told them it was a third date, not a first. We had spent many hours together prior to this date. Most people understood that, but one woman doubled down that going to a man’s house on a third date is also stupid. I ask you, dear blog readers, WHEN THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO SEE A MAN’S HOUSE? On the wedding night? This whole thing about “OMG it’s so not safe to go into a man’s house, he might kill you.” is so funny to me. Do you know how many instances of domestic violence happen between couples who have known each other for YEARS? When exactly is it safe to be in a house alone with a man? The answer is never.

Date three went just as well as the first two, so the ending really confused me and made me belly laugh on the way home. Well, first I cried for just a few minutes. But then I belly laughed. It was a long drive, so I had plenty of time to process my emotions. Another key detail of the story is that I was not drunk when I fell down the stairs. I had 1.5 drinks over the course of a 6 hour date and actually sipped on a coke for the last hour or so because I knew I had to drive home.

Another burning question that the great Drink NOVA folks had was: why on earth would you drive an hour to meet a man?? He’s supposed to drive to you, dummy. He’s the man. I’m sorry, I don’t buy into that whole idea that women shouldn’t have to lift a finger in dating. If I might make a connection with someone, I’ll drive an hour. I have a nice car and a long podcast list. But apparently driving to him means that I’m desperate or also potentially a stalker. I thought it was a nice thing to do because he said he had to be at work at 3 am the next day. But no, Rebecca, it’s not nice, you’re pathetic. Way to put yourself in a stupid situation, idiot. Look at all those RED FLAGS!!!! Wow, that guy dodged a bullet! One woman said she was glad that the guy didn’t come out of his room to check on me because I would have accused him of something. Then the Red Pill guys arrived in the thread and I was like “LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE, LEYA!!!!” She also thought I was serious about thinking about stealing something. I thought that was an obvious joke – you know, it’s funny because the man left me alone, unsupervised in his home and I could have walked out with anything. I would obviously never do such a thing.

See what I did for the last three paragraphs? I just wrote a 3 point essay trying to convince some people who don’t know me from Adam on a Facebook group that I’m not a dumb slut who deserves to fall down stairs and cry half the way home. And this is what I was trying to do in my responses on the post when I gave up and deleted it altogether. My intention all along was to share a funny story on a Thursday that I thought really highlighted how humans are imperfect and messy and clumsy and find themselves in awkward interactions, yet we survive them and laugh about it later. I wasn’t even mad at the guy…I haven’t heard from him since and I think that’s for the best. We had big mismatches in our values, and while it would have been nice for the guy to walk me to my car and hug me goodbye, I’m not upset with him. Actually I remember telling my friend that I was almost relieved that I sobbed for a minute on the drive home. My new medication (Lexapro baybeeeee) has helped me so much, I hadn’t really felt a strong emotion in 2024, so being able to sob and feel really sad for a legitimate reason felt so good.

But then I found myself trying to defend my character against people who don’t know me and never will. I hate how susceptible I am to that. Someone says some blanket statement about me as if people are black and white, perfectly good or perfectly bad, and I start to believe them. I even went to work the next day and asked my friend earnestly “Do you think going to a guy’s house on the third date is slutty? Dangerous? Would you judge a friend for that?” And she said “I wouldn’t judge my friend if she went there on a first date. I wouldn’t have judged her if she was drunk when she fell. I wouldn’t have judged her if she drove two hours. I would have asked her if she was okay and told her that she deserves to be with someone who will walk her to the car at the end of the night.” That about sums it up, right?

How cute was my outfit though?

Stay tuned for this all new season of “The Days of Rebecca’s Life”. We are guaranteed to have a lot of emotional spirals, lessons learned from this journey called life, and belly laughs to help us cope. Join me if you dare.

September 12, 2023

The Crystal City Sports Pub (CCSP) is an American institution. Okay, it’s actually a family-owned (and family friendly!) sports bar in a neighborhood in Arlington, VA that is two metro stops away from the Pentagon. It’s on a hip little street (23rd) surrounded by other restaurants and bars, a consignment shop, a tailor, and one ambiguous place called “The Flirt Lounge” which I believe is a hookah bar but is absolutely not a place I personally would go to “flirt”. CCSP is also right down the street from a well-known strip club called “The Crystal City Restaurant”. People often get the two establishments confused. When I lived in Arlington (Pentagon City), I would tell gentlemen on Bumble that I loved the CCSP, and they would be a little bit confused but also altogether too excited that I was a strip club aficionado. Unfortunately for them, I am actually a mediocre-bar-food aficionado and gravitate more toward the well-lit sports pub.

I’ve had some really amazing memories at CCSP. I went there by myself on Halloween one year, all dressed up in my Rockford Peach costume. The owner’s wife was my waitress that night and she was very upset when I said I was trying to emulate Dotty Henson. “Clearly you’re Kit”, she said. People at the bar kept shouting “There’s no crying in baseball!” as I enjoyed my buffalo chicken tenders, a baked potato and a Mountain Dew. My ex and I used to go there a lot, especially on evenings when a local band called “Junk Food” was playing on the 2nd floor. The lead singer of that band would sometimes have solo sets there, and he had a whole gaggle of groupies that showed up for every show. They would all get sloshed and dance around the tables. I think most of them were related to him in one way or another, and like clockwork, there would always be a moment toward the end of the evening where he would invite his blonde sister-in-law up to the microphone to do her incredibly mediocre rendition of Miranda Lambert’s “Tin Man”. That song is depressing when Miranda sings it, but when someone with far less talent sings it, it’s damn near unbearable – especially the 40th time you’ve heard it. Josh and I would be crying laughing every time we got to witness this one-trick-pony.

When I started at Deloitte (gulp…seven years ago), my first project was on a three-man team. One of those teammates was my good buddy, Matt. Matt is one of the sharpest data scientists I’ve ever met, and we really got along from jump because we both come from small town America. He’s from South Dakota and like me, found himself living in a large metropolitan area for a fancy job. I can’t really recall how our friendship unfolded. I think I met his girlfriend Jessi at a Christmas party once, and it seems like the rest is history. They have become two of my absolute favorite people. I love how unequivacally authentic they both are. I love that when I hang out with them, I never feel like a third wheel. I love how good they are to each other and how much hope they give me that I, too, may find my “person” some day. I love that they are always down for tacos at Eastern Market on a Saturday and a stroll through a bookstore.

Matt and I also connected pretty early on in our relationship over a mutual love for the Crystal City Sports Pub. There’s a really terrible app called Fishbowl that a lot of professionals in the consulting industry use. If you remember the really toxic app called Yik Yak from college, it’s similar. People on the app are anonymous and your handle on the app just describes what company you work for (the usual suspects: Deloitte, PWC, BCG, BAH) and your level in the company. To absolutely no one’s surprise, the anonymity makes people behave like monsters on there. I was on that app for about 24 hours in 2017 and then deleted it forever because I saw a post where people were comparing how much wealth they had in liquid assets in the public forum and it left a bad taste in my mouth (and made me feel poor). While I was serving my 24-hour Fishbowl sentence, I saw an innocuous post on there where someone was asking about dining options in Arlington. I saw a reply on that thread: “I’ll die on this hill, Crystal City Sports Pub is the best Arlington has to offer.” I came into the office the next day and said “Matt…was that you on Fishbowl last night?” It was! I’m telling you, this friendship was handcrafted by the universe.

We are all super busy, but Matt and Jessi and I usually find time to meet up every couple of weeks. They live in DC and I love that they encourage me to come to the city for tequila festivals, lego exhibits at the building museum, fancy Mexican restaurants in Takoma Park, and the aforementioned Eastern Market burrito stand. But sometimes Jessi and I will text during the week and realize that we are tired (and hungry) and we need an evening at the CCSP. We met up there on Labor Day last week and I was telling them about my most recent romantic disaster. I was telling them about a man I met at a bar who complimented my red high heels by asking me “If you click those three times, do you think you’ll go home?” We went on a few dates and then he kind of disappeared. I was lamenting it to them saying “I dunno, it was nice to meet someone in the wild instead of on an app and I thought things were going well. And he has a job and a 401(k)…or at least a thrift savings plan. But he is basically homeless. He’s couch surfing on friends’ couches because he sold his house a while back and hasn’t decided whether to rent or buy next.” Matt interrupted me to say “People have 401(k)s, Rebecca! We have to raise the bar here! We aren’t in small town America anymore, people have 401(k)s!” See, these are the truths I need friends to shout at me over chicken fingers and beer.

I went out this weekend and smiled at a man wearing a green shirt. He smiled back. All I talked about with my friend for the next hour was how I was confused as to why that man smiled at me and then walked out of the bar without talking to me. The absolute audacity! I swear men are 70% water and 30% audacity. Then he reappeared, like Mr. Darcy walking through that foggy field to find Lizzie Bennet at the end of Pride of Prejudice (the movie, that shit didn’t happen in the book). Except imagine that Mr. Darcy was realllllllllly drunk. Anyway, he walked through the proverbial fog, up to the bar to order another beer and then turned to me and said “Hi.” We started chatting with him and his friend and quickly learned that he is a Principal at BCG. This job title may not mean much to the masses, but to people in consulting, it means something, and to me it means this: He is a successful man who likely makes more money than I do. Weeeeeeee! The rain started pelting my parade float when he told me he actually lives in Las Vegas and was just in town for his friend’s birthday. DAMMIT. A nice man with pretty green eyes and a GREAT job thought I was pretty (at least he did when he was 7 beers deep) and he lives all the way out in Sin City. Thanks, universe. Anyway, this tidbit of information apparently didn’t stop me from making out with him in a parking lot at 2 am. The whole next day I was feeling pretty proud of myself for finally kissing a man who is more successful and important than I am, even though he walked out of my life forever shortly after. I texted Matt and Jessi to tell them about the exciting event.

See, Rebecca, people have 401(k)s.

I don’t know if this blog was an ode to Matt and Jessi, CCSP or green-eyed men with 401(k)s – but maybe I just want the world to know that I appreciate all of them.

September 27, 2023

Ok folks, our first installment of Rebecca’s Love Equation is going to be a recap of a day in the DC for Oktoberfest. Two weekends ago, a friend and I took to the big city to see if we could find eligible bachelors in the Nation’s Capital. Here’s a quick run down:

10:45 Brunch at Republica Cantina. Brunch is a strong word because we wanted street tacos from Eastern market and didn’t want to “spoil our lunch”, so we ended up eating chips and queso with a couple of stellar spicy margaritas. We were tipsy by the time we left. 10/10 highly recommend, very cute place in the NoMa neighborhood. My waiter was wearing a Bass Pro hat, but was very confused when I asked him if he likes to fish. No eligible bachelors in sight.

12:00 Wunder Garten. Hands down my least favorite commute of the day. It was just a ten minute walk between the restaurant and the Biergarten, but on the way, a man shouted at us “Y’all don’t own the sidewalk, MOVE OVER.” Being the well-bred, and easily intimidated women we are, we moved over a bit (mind you, this was a huge ass side walk and we were not in this man’s way at all) and said nothing. Then as he passed us he looked over his shoulder and shouted “Yeah I said it, go and call your boyfriend and tell him.” You see sir, that’s the thing. I don’t have a boyfriend or any man in this metropolitan area who gives one damn about my safety, yet here you are, screaming at all 5’0″, 125 lbs of me on the street like an absolute lunatic. He was carrying what looked like the entire inventory of the local TJ Maxx, so I guess his arms were tired. Another stranger on the street made up for it when he passed us (slowly) on his bike and said “Man I don’t understand. Y’all are out here looking fine as hell and these white men won’t talk to you.” We both instinctively yelled back “RIGHT?! THANK YOU!” Anyway, Wunder Garden was my favorite stop of the day. This place is so beautiful. It is covered in plants and has all kinds of festive seating areas. They had Barbie boxes set up where people could pose like a doll. I opted to have my picture taken in a giant flower. I drank two orange crush vodka drinks because they didn’t have any sours on the menu. 10/10. No eligible bachelors.

1:30 Eastern Market. We took the bus to Eastern Market so we could stop by my favorite taco stand for some tacos. No eligible bachelors except for a man who I think was trying to hit on my friend and offer her some flowers he bought in the market but we rudely ignored him because we thought he was trying to sell them to us. Oops. 10/10 for the tacos. No eligible bachelors that didn’t look like flower salesmen.

3:00 Blue Jacket. Our next stop was the Blue Jacket brewery in Navy Yard. Look. There was exactly one good looking man in that place who didn’t appear to be there with his wife and small children, and he was on a date with some woman. After a day of not see any straight men with potential (and many many drinks), this was apparently enough to throw me into a blind rage, asking hard hitting questions to my friend like: “How the hell did she get a date with the last single man in DC?”, “What’s she got that I don’t?!” and “Why are there so many f**king children here? That man just paraded that child around this brewery like he was a f**king prodigy and then handed him back to his wife – heaven forbid she get to enjoy her beer and sandwich even though she’s been watching that f**king kid all day.” You get it. Completely rational and sober thoughts coming from me. After some potato skins and a giant glass of water, I felt better and we were off to the next stop. 8/10 for the food and atmosphere. No eligible bachelors.

5:00 Dacha Beer Garden. Our final planned stop of the day was the Dacha Beer Garden in Navy Yard. We walked in and saw a lot of people in the tent, a few even dressed up in their Oktoberfest attire. I ordered a sour that tasted like a granola bar, and we were pretty quickly approached by a man named Frank. He was wearing these sunglasses that he had pulled down onto the bridge of his nose so he could look over them to talk to us. He was nice? I guess? I told him about my plan to go to football bars on Sundays to meet men, and he seemed pretty sure it wouldn’t work because those were not “men of substance”. Frank was pretty caught up on people of “substance”. He’s one of these guys who talks a lot about how his job used to be “Call of Duty in real life”. Now, I don’t know everything and maybe Frank has killed a thousand men with his bare hands or something, but I know a few men who used to do “Call of Duty in real life” and one thing they never talk about in bars with strangers is how they used to do that. When I mentioned to Frank that I live in Northern Virginia, I might as well have said “Siberia” because he had the same reaction. He’s just a…what’s the word…dingus?

His friends showed up after he kindly bought us both drinks. Two of the friends seemed so drunk that weren’t really sure what was going on. The other friend was a man who was roughly a million feet tall. I can’t remember his name. He was trying to talk to me about his job in IT, but I was yelling up to him like Prince Charming yelling up at Rapunzel in that tower, and I don’t think he heard a lot of what I said, and I sure as shit didn’t hear him. Frank told me that tall-man is a math genius and makes a lot of money – a real man of substance. At one point, Frank wandered over to talk to some cute blondes who were dressed up in matching Dirndls. They looked adorable and pretty, I loved their costumes. When Frank returned to our table, he invited us to follow him and his friends to their next spot of the night – an outdoor bar called The Cove. I asked him genuinely if he’d rather invite the cute dirndl girls, because I knew that neither me nor my friend were really attracted to any of these men. He said “No, those are just a couple of bimbos.”

Bimbos! Because they are pretty with blonde hair with their boobs out? Because they are dressed up and having fun on a Saturday? My shirt was way more revealing than the dirndls these girls were wearing. Why were they bimbos but we weren’t? Because we each have brown hair? Because we were the flavor of the moment and every girl he’s not talking to in the moment is a bimbo? I know I spent the whole day trying to find eligible bachelors, and Frank was as eligible as they come – not bad looking, seemed to have a good job. But I can’t abide by this attitude that all pretty girls are bimbos and that men who watch sports aren’t “of substance”.

I think this way of negging all of the people around you, or shit talking others to make yourself seem more attractive is pretty rampant in dating, especially in the bar scene. I’ve met people like Frank who have strong opinions on what does or doesn’t indicate that someone is smart or worth speaking to, and what does or doesn’t make a woman a bimbo. I’ve met people like the man who told me that a beautiful woman was “like talking to a brick wall,” to try to get my attention by putting her down. I’ve had men chastise me for not traveling enough or eating the right foods – “Girl, when are you going to start LIVING?” I even had one man criticize my posture on Saturday night. He brought it up in front of a crowd like he was talking about the weather, and then seemed baffled that I didn’t like that. It is an absolutely BANANAS way to interact with the world, in my opinion. You go through all this effort to look nice to go out, put on your cologne, then go out in the world to try to present the most confident, put-together version of yourself – only to find that confidence by tearing down other people. Out loud. For everyone to hear. And not based on their character or actions (like the way I’m judging Frank right now), but based on their harmless hobbies like watching football or wearing costumes to Oktoberfest, or not living in a sky rise apartment in DC or not sitting up straight. Go find some people of substance to talk to and leave bimbos like us alone, Frank. 10/10 for Dacha beer and atmosphere. No eligible bachelors upon further inspection.

Justice for the bimbos. For all of us.

7:30 Home. We both had tummy aches by the time we left The Cove (a nice spot on the river front in Navy Yard, lots of young single people, probably absolute hell when it rains). I was in bed by 8:30 and had to keep my bottle of Tums on my bedside table all night.

It was a perfect day. 10/10. No eligible bachelors.

I am still collecting challenges and reccomendations for Rebecca’s Love Equation. Please email us at rebeccasloveequation@gmail.com or drop some recommendations at this link.