September 24, 2022

Earlier this week, I served as a reviewer for a proposal that some people in my analytics group are writing. A proposal is basically a document you write to a company or agency that is trying contract out some work. It’s a sales document where you have to be persuasive and tell the sponsor of the work what your approach to doing the work will be and why it’s the best approach and the most bang for their buck. As a reviewer, I had the nice cushy job of reading what other people wrote, making comments in the margins, and then jumping on a call with the writers to explain my feedback. And I will do this for every draft of the proposal that the team brings forward.

We had one of these calls on Thursday, and some of the other reviewers were really quiet on the line, so I was like “Well, I have thoughts.” I gave the team feedback on the fact that they were telling me what they were going to do in their approach without much of the how. “We’ll make sure the sponsor’s needs are taken into account before we begin working on any problem.” Great! But how will you do that? Will it be a series of meetings? How will you facilitate said meetings? Will there be some sort of report, roadmap or other deliverable? Why is this better than what the competition will do? I went on and on about how we were using up space in the document to talk about the sponsor’s problems they need us to solve without hammering home the pain they feel as a result of those problems and the benefit they will experience when we solve them (that is, why should they spend their money on this?) Thirty minutes of this was quite a treat for the team, I’m sure. I’ve been on the other end of these calls as a writer, feeling like I’m getting my ass handed to me by the reviewers, and it’s anything but a warm and fuzzy experience. But it’s also criticial feedback that you need if you want to write a successful proposal. So you gather it all up, don’t take it personally, and get started on the next draft. Side note: persuasive writing is really hard, especially for analytic thinkers, and it’s much easier to critique it than it is to do it. So no shade to the team, they are awesome.

After the call, I felt pretty down about having to deliver that kind of feedback. Any feedback that isn’t air horn noises and “Wow, great job” can be hard to deliver. Not just because it’s not fun to tell someone that they aren’t quite there yet, but also because negative feedback can require a lot more thought and tact when it comes to delivery than “Wow, Eric, you crushed it!” Although I think I was really careful not to deflate the writers, I still questioned myself and wonder if I came across as a “know-it-all-dick”. But like I said in a previous post, onto the next intimidating item of the day! Later in the day, I got an email from one of the other reviewers who was quiet on the call and the subject was “Feedback on my feedback?” He wanted to set up time to get some tips from me about how to offer actionable feedback when reviewing proposals. That’s how important this feedback loop is – I have someone asking for feedback on how they give their feedback! What a great job this person is doing taking responsibility for his own growth as a coach and leader! It was awesome to see and I imagine I’ll get some feedback from him about my own feedback and delivery when we talk next week and it will be good for both of us.

I just got back from a leadership training in California that was focused almost exclusively on giving and receiving feedback. They taught me a pretty simple technique for giving feedback called SBI – Situation, Behavior, Impact. It goes like this:

Situation: Give the important details and be as specific as possible – where and when did the incident happen? “While we were walking down the hallway on the 4th floor on our way to the 10 am meeting on Wednesday…”

Behavior: Explain the behavior you observed and be specific here too. “You used a straw to shoot a spit wad at Terry, the Partner on the project. The spit wad hit him in the back of the neck. You giggled.”

Impact: Explain the impact that the behavior had on the way you or others feel. “I think Terry was very upset about this and got spit all over his very expensive suit. He may be less willing to work with us in the future because of it and now we have to pay for his dry cleaning. You owe me 20 dollars.”

Then you pause to allow the other person to elaborate on their intent behind the behavior, and then you can start making plans for how to address it in the future. That pause is the important part that a lot of people forget – it’s the person’s opportunity to explain why the behavior occurred so you can see if there are larger problems at hand that you need to consider. It’s like when a little kid is acting up in school, one of the first things a teacher might want to know is “is there something going on at home?”, for example. This all sounds easy peasy when someone puts SBI on a poster board and you practice it in a classroom, but in real life, it’s not that easy. One of the first pieces of advice I’m going to give my reviewer buddy at work next week is going to be “put it in writing first” because that’s a great way to prepare yourself for the conversation. That’s how I prepped for Thursday’s call – I wrote it all down in a Word document using the exact phrasing I planned to use out loud with the team and then basically read my document to them on the call. My script even included my pauses for intent.

I wrote a post on here the other day about some men in the DC area who had let me down. One of those men actually read the post and recognized himself in some of the things I said, and sent me a long apology. I was really impressed by this because that’s a really brave and vulnerable thing to do, but also because he was introspective enough to see his own behavior in what I wrote. I didn’t mention any identifying details about this person in my post (other than he’s a man in DC who is not into me…boy oh boy the overlap in that Venn diagram is huge), but he still targeted his own behavior in my vague description.

That’s really impressive to me, and he took my indirect feedback and directed it to himself. In his note to me he mentioned that he let himself down by not being a man of his word and that no one deserves that. He recognized his own behavior and the impact that it has, then made a plan to change course in the future. Then he told me in not so many words “You and me? Never gonna happen.”

I don’t bring all of this up to poke him in the eye – on the contrary, I think it was a really classy, grown-man thing to do on his part. I brought it up to point out my own deficiency in giving feedback. I know for a fact that I had attempted to deliver the same feedback that he got from my blog post to him in person/over video chat well before I wrote any of it down. I tried to express to him how I felt like I was the lowest priority on his list, and that no other plans in the world could be cancelled by him unless they were plans with me. I tried to make him see the impact of that, and when nothing changed, I assumed that meant he didn’t care. But I think he did care, or he would have if he really understood me – he showed that to me with his thoughtful apology. If I know me, I would wager that my delivery of that feedback was inadequate. I can’t recall the exact details of the way I delivered it originally, but if I know me, I probably laughed after I said it as if it were a joke or not as serious to me as it actually was. I probably didn’t make eye contact, I probably rushed through it to get it over with. I probably changed the subject quickly afterward to avoid the actual confrontation. How is anyone supposed to understand the impact of their behavior if I can’t look them in the eye and articulate to them what that impact is and then pause and give them time to tell me about their intent?

If you’ve never read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, I would recommend that you immediately stop reading this crap and head to your local bookstore or library to pick up a copy. Definitely stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers. In that book, Mr. Darcy (the handsome male lead who makes 10,000 pounds A YEAR!) approaches the heroine of the book, Elizabeth Bennet to profess his love for her. The two of them have endured an interesting acquaintanceship thus far in the novel (I’m using interesting in true mid-west form to mean bad). One time at this rager party her neighbors were throwing, she overheard Mr. Darcy telling his buddy that she was “not handsome enough to tempt” him and making fun of her family. He told her that only a handful of women in the world are truly accomplished, which was true based on his personal definition of that word (accomplished = really rich). She also learns about some drama between him and a charming, dumb-jock soldier named Mr. Wickam who she happens to have a crush on (allegedly, Darcy ruined his life for funzies), and has decided that he’s a prideful, unkind person. Who could blame her? This behavior is all very bad indeed.

Anyway, he walks up to her and says “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” DAWWW, pretty good start, Darcy! That last sentence in particular…really nice. But of course, Elizabeth only hears that first part of his declaration where he was basically like “Listen, I really don’t want to love you, but it’s my cross to carry – you know, because your family is embarrassing and you’re not that pretty or accomplished.” She takes offense to that (women, am I right?) and says something like “Wow, since it’s such a burden for you to like me, you’ll probably get over this flat out rejection I’m about to throw at you very quickly. And by the way, if you weren’t so odious, I would thank you for this compliment, but nope I won’t even do that.” So he is obviously a little taken aback by this, and asks her why she hates him so much. She then goes on to offer him some very pointed feedback on his behavior since they met. Here’s what she says:

1. Behavior: Your best friend was in love with my sister and you told him to ghost her! Impact: That hurts me because I love my sister and it causes me pain to see her in pain.
2. Behavior: Mr. Wickam told me that you reduced him to his current state of poverty by denying him the money that your own father promised to leave him on his death bed. Impact: I wanted to marry Mr. Wickam because he’s a cutie patootie with a booty, but I can’t because we’ll be too poor to survive. And it’s all your fault!

Quick pause here. She’s delivering this feedback to him and he starts to get defensive and angry, and as a result, adds a third complaint to her list for her: Behavior: I never hid the fact that your inferiority of connections bothers me (that is, I don’t like that you’re poor and that your mother and sisters are dumb and embarrassing in public). Impact: I hurt your pride and now you’re yelling at me about your sister and Mr. Wickam. You’re making excuses for why you don’t want to marry me, when in reality, it’s because of your own pride. She challenges him on this and insists that his general attitude toward her family didn’t sway her decision about the marriage proposal, but rather made her worry less about hurting his feelings in her delivery of the “HARD PASS”. Ouch.

Okay, so that whole exchange didn’t go the way Mr. Darcy had planned and he ran home. Elizabeth did a pretty good job of delivering her feedback to him – she was specific, articulate, and expressive. He definitely understood the impact his actions had (the final impact being an embarrassing and angry rejection), but one thing she didn’t do was pause to allow time for him to talk about his intent. Tempers flared on both sides, and he didn’t get a chance to explain himself. She would ask him if he denied doing the things she was accusing him of, and when he didn’t, she’d be like “See! You’re an asshole. Oh and another thing…” She just burned through one bad behavior after another without stopping to hear his side of the story. Instead of a discussion, they had an argument.

He must have taken some time to digest all of Elizabeth’s feedback, and sat down to write a really nice letter describing his intent behind all of the grievances Elizabeth expressed. It wasn’t intended to be a persuasive letter, he opens by saying “Look, I know the answer is no and there’s no changing your mind, but here’s my side of the story.”

1. Intent: I told my friend not to marry your sister because I love him the way you love your own sister. I was trying to look out for him the way you would look out her, and I believed that marrying into your family is a mistake. It’s a mistake because your family is poor and also because they don’t seem to understand propriety. I still believe it’s a mistake to marry Bennet girls, but was willing to make that mistake myself because I love you, girl. Honestly, I also believed that your sister was not as into my friend as he was into her – she wasn’t showing him much affection and I feared that her intentions were to marry him for his money (You know, because you’re all poor. Did I mention that you’re all very poor? I make 10000 pounds a year and my sister is very accomplished.)
2. Intent: Mr. Wickam is an old family friend and my father did like him a lot. As a result, I gave him a bunch of money to study law or something and washed my hands of him because he would never spend my father’s money the way we asked him to (we wanted him to be in the clergy). But then he started hanging around my sister and made a plan with her to sneak away and get married without running it by me. I discovered their plan in time and ran him off before they eloped, and he ghosted my sister. He was definitely after her for her money (30,000 pounds, did I mention that I’m very rich?) and to get revenge on me for not supporting him his whole life. I love my sister the way you love your sister, Elizabeth and I don’t care how poor Mr. Wickam is now. He sucks.

He closes his note with “You may wonder why all this was not told to you last night; but I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to be revealed.” That’s the thing. It is so hard to be master of yourself when you’re having important conversations. When emotions are involved, or you’re staring down at the barrel of truth that you’ve hurt someone you love, or they’ve hurt you – it’s so hard to have the right words to say. And if you’re Elizabeth, and you’re really good at expressing yourself, you might be so focused on pouring out your own observations and feelings that you forget that you might only have part of the story or may simply misunderstand the other person’s intent. Elizabeth assumed Darcy was just a hateful person who didn’t care about anyone but himself, but most of his behavior was driven by love that he had for his friend and his sister.

I identify so much with Mr. Darcy because I’m really rich because I am a much better at expressing myself in writing than I am with my mouth-words. I think some of the times in life I’ve been most effective at getting someone to “hear” me have been through writing letters. I’m an excellent pen-pal (although if you ask my friend Taylor, he’ll tell you about the time he was deployed overseas and I wrote him a four-page joke about a moth that I stole from Norm MacDonald on The Tonight Show). I’ve had people reach out to me years after the fact saying things like “I re-read your letter, and you were right about this…” I can organize my thoughts and use the right words to make you really hear me. And one perk of this medium is that if you don’t hear me the first time, you can re-read it until you do hear me. It also gives people the opportunity to step away from the conversation…if what I’ve written is overwhelming you or making you feel things, you can put it away and try again later. This is really useful for when it’s critical for people to understand me, whether I’m telling the proposal team that they aren’t making me feel the pain their potential client is feeling, or I’m having to tell my friend about the pain I’m feeling as a result of their behavior, or I’m having to explain the intent behind my own crappy behavior.

It’s okay to try to stick to your strengths when you can, especially when you’re doing something really hard like giving someone feedback. Mr. Darcy might not have been understood in the moment when Elizabeth was in his face running him down his resume of transgressions, but he went back to the drawing board, used his strengths in writing that clear, thoughtful letter and in the end she really heard him. Not to spoil the book even further, but he does eventually get the girl in the end (although I am a Mr. Darcy-stan and am convinced it was she who got him in the end). The other moral of this story is that I’m an excellent (albeit obnoxious) pen pal, so let me know if you need one.

September 22, 2022

I love special occasions. I love getting dressed up and going out, especially to shows. It doesn’t matter if it’s a musical or a play or an opera.  If I can put on a dress and some heels and drink cocktails for a night out (preferably with a good friend or a handsome man at my side), I feel like such an uptown girl. I really look forward to these things. When I’m looking forward to things, I typically over-plan and overprepare, and imagine the way said things will go in my head. Last week, I had a visitor from out of town.  He was here for one night, and I was so excited and determined to make the evening memorable. I plotted with a girl at work about what we should do and followed her solid advice – a reservation at a nice restaurant (but not too nice because he’ll almost certainly insist on paying), and tickets to Hamilton at the Kennedy Center (which I managed to keep a secret until 30 minutes before the show!). I did the mental gymnastics to see what time we needed to leave dinner to get to the Kennedy Center on time and made the dinner reservation accordingly.

On the day of the event, I kept looking at the weather and stepping outside to see how hot it was so I could make the call about whether we should do dinner and drinks outside on the patio or not. Around noon, I made the decision that it was way too hot to sit outside so I called the restaurant and asked them to move our spot to inside. Then of course when I arrived at the restaurant, the temperature outside felt so lovely, I had to be ‘that person’ who sweet talks the host into changing the plan at the last minute. I got my nails done the weekend before and went to this magical place called a DryBar on the day-of during my lunchbreak at work where this wonderful lady named Nadia washed and dried my hair and made it shiny and fluffy and beautiful. I tried on three dresses the night before and asked some friends which one they liked best. In true girl scout fashion, I packed a bag the night before with cash, extra panty hose (which I ended up needing!), a pair of flat shoes (also needed those!), lipstick, the printed Hamilton tickets, masks, Tylenol, deodorant, and a phone charger. As one does. All in all, all of my over-planning went off without a hitch other than some minor logistics things I didn’t consider. It was everything I wanted it to be. It was a wonderful evening and I felt like a beautiful, uptown girl treating someone to a really nice evening out. He even showed up with roses! A fun time was had by all, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Then I woke up the next morning and thought “Now, what?”

I always feel this way when the thing I’ve been looking forward to and fretting over is…well…over.  I usually mourn the end of Christmas well into January, not because I want it to be Christmas all the time, but because all that build up toward something wonderful can sometimes feel more exciting than the memory of something wonderful. Isn’t that strange? Most of the fun experiences we have in life are centered around one concept – making memories. I ran in a 5k race at Six Flags in July, and after the race I rode roller coasters with my friend Amanda all day. We rode the same Superman themed coaster about six times that day. The trip down the big hill at the beginning of that ride is worth the full price of admission – that’s the fun part. In front of that fun you have the slow climb to the top of the big hill, and on the backend you have the memory of the fun you had going down the hill. While the memory of the fun may be great, it’s not as intense as that anticipation you feel on the way up the hill. Once that anticipation is gone, you feel a moment of relief and exhilaration as you fly down the hill, followed by inevitable sadness that the ride is over.

What can I say? I’m a planner. Planning is that climb up the hill on the rollercoaster. Planning something out meticulously (especially when it’s something fun or meaningful) is this special combination of anxiety and excitement that I love. You try to put all the pieces in place, leaving no detail unconsidered, while imagining how it’s all going to play out in real life. Will the ride down the hill make me scream with joy? Scream with fear? Swallow a bug? Throw up in Amanda’s lap? Throw my hands in the air? That’s up to the universe, and that’s the part of planning that can drive you mad – you don’t have as much power over things as you like to pretend you do when you’re making plans. You might have some power, but for the most part you are at the mercy of all of the outside forces of the universe (weather, traffic, other people). After the plans have been made and executed to the best of your ability within the constraints of this thing called life, all you can really do is sit back and enjoy (or not) the ride. And boom! Good or bad, a memory is made.

I mentioned in my last post that I can be a little insufferable intense. I can give off an intense “I’ll love you so well, no one can love you as well as me” vibe. It can be a lot. I’m like that at work too. “I won’t just do a good job, I’ll do the BEST job.” I come in to the office first thing every morning and make my to-do list in my notebook. I can only imagine how much my teammates start to shudder when they hear the scratching of my mechanical pencil against the paper in my moleskine notebook because as soon as my list is finished, I’ll start adding things to their lists. Some of the strongest criticism I’ve gotten from my boss over the years is “Rebecca is excellent at burning through a list of action items each week and driving her team to success, but sometimes fails to see the bigger picture.” Boy oh boy, if that isn’t the truth. That big picture is what gets me. It drove me crazy that my plan to review that proposal draft from 10:30-12:30 on Monday was thwarted by my client who wanted me to remake all of the maps in our PowerPoint deck with a different background map layer. Sometimes the small picture kills me. How am I supposed to think about the BIG PICTURE where derailed plans go from “possible” to “all but certain” and the stakes are high?

When has big picture planning ever worked out for me? When I was a teen, my big picture plan was to be married by 25 with 2 kids by 30. HAHAHA. Small detached home, big yard for the dogs (yes, plural). Last year, my big picture thinking caused me to buy a house to be closer to a man who was so NOT INTO ME that even the blind dog that lives next door could see it. The day he dumped me, I had been angry with him because he wouldn’t go with me to see Little Shop of Horrors at the Alamo Drafthouse. I had been telling him for weeks that I wanted to go, and he would say “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get off work in time.” Then the day of the show, he made last minute plans with a friend instead. I acted like a brat about it, and when he broke up with me later that evening he said something like “I don’t like to make plans more than three days in advance!” and then the floodgates of all of his grievances opened – grievances about me and how I made him so unhappy. At the time, I blamed it all on my stupid, intense, plan-making nature – YOU PLANNED YOURSELF RIGHT OUT OF A RELATIONSHIP! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, REBECCA? TAKE YOUR DATEBOOK AND SHOVE IT RIGHT UP YOUR… Of course, that wasn’t it. This incident was just a symptom of a hard truth. I was making big picture plans in my head about marrying him, and he couldn’t commit to Rick Moranis on a Tuesday night. That wasn’t his fault or my fault. We just had different plans.

Big picture stuff is so scary. I had the nerve to think about the future with my ex and I landed right on my tail with another door slammed in my face. And it’s not just the romantic stuff that’s scary. I want to get promoted next year and become a partner at my firm by the time I’m 38. I want to save enough money to buy that little detached house with a yard for Maudie. I want to run a marathon before I’m 35. I want to find a partner who will take me to see Little Shop of Horrors and buy me some popcorn. I’m taking steps toward all of these things- well except for the Little Shop of Horrors partner thing, because I refuse to go on another date with a stranger in 2022- but eventually I’ll start working on that again too. Because not only will failure to do big picture planning cause you to get negative feedback from your boss, but it will also keep you from looking forward to the future. You know how last Tuesday I was looking forward to my Hamilton date and made thoughtful plans for it? Even if that whole evening had been a disaster – if I had showed up with lipstick all over my teeth and dropped the tickets to the show in a puddle and had an allergic reaction to my shrimp dinner like that guy in the movie Hitch and spent the evening with my face swelled up like a balloon – that wouldn’t change the joy and excitement I had from looking forward to it and planning for it. I should be looking forward to all this big picture crap in the same way. It might not work out the way I want it to, but I can still look forward to these things, and try to plan for them as best I can and feel that anticipation of going up the big scary hill.

September 20, 2022

“Don’t be afraid to use the P-word when you talk to him, ok?“

“Huh?“

“Oh. Sorry, the other P-word women hate to say – promotion. Tell him you want to go up this year and ask him for feedback.“

“Oh Rebecca, I’m so intimidated by that conversation.“

One of the hats I wear at work is that of “coach”. I have six people who all let me try to offer them career advice about once a month, and the conversation above was one I had today with one of the rock-star data scientists I have in my coaching group. She’s trying to make some decisions about when she should throw her hat in the ring for a promotion, and I’ve been coaching her through some conversations with her management to see how supportive they are. I’ve worked with this lady long enough that I wasn’t surprised by her reaction here – in fact, I’ve started to believe that ‘intimidated’ is one of her favorite words. The only thing I can think to say to her when she tosses that word out is something like “Girl, I’m intimidated every day. Literally. If I let intimidation stop me from doing things, I’d never get anything done.”

I try my best to support her through her intimidation- we’ve had role playing conversations where I pretend to be her boss, we’ve worked on public speaking together – anything and everything I can think of to give her some practice and build some confidence. But I know better than anyone, sometimes you’re intimidated by things and the only thing you can do is close your eyes and face them. And I certainly can’t blame her for feeling intimidated by these vulnerable conversations she needs to have at work because I feel really daunted by those conversations as well. Every time you need to get feedback from you boss or your teammates you are opening yourself up to criticism and possible pain, and that can be really scary. But unfortunately, there’s no other way to learn and grow.

The truth is that I am intimidated all the time. My stomach was in knots all morning today because I had a one-on-one conversation scheduled with a client. He’s just a man – an extremely nice man – but the thought of walking into his office with an invoice and a long list of uncomfortable questions to ask him about funding and such was so scary. The reason it was scary was that it was my first time ever doing it. I’ve talked to him a million times about math and project timelines and python code, but this was the first time my boss ever asked me to go and talk to him about dollars before. It was so intimidating, but of course it went fine. Then I had to jump on my phone to talk to my coachee about the P-word, and started giving her useless advice (see my blog about mansplaining) like “awe don’t be intimidated.” This! From a woman who fussed and fretted and remade the same powerpoint slide 4 times this morning: “DoN’t FeEl InTiMiDaTeD.” No matter what I say or how much I try to help her, she’s going to feel intimidated by these things until she does them about 100 times, and then she’ll find something else to intimidate her. And then she’ll retire. It’s the American dream and we are living it, baybee.

Here are some things that intimidate me:

1. Home improvement projects. I cried on FaceTime with my dad when I tried to hang the curtains in my house and messed up my wall with my new power drill. I cried alone the next day when I watched that YouTube video about spackle and realized no one was coming to help. This guy came to look at my hvac yesterday and asked “Has anyone told you about the damper?” and said something about some kind of drain and I just handed him my credit card and smiled.
2. Pivot tables. I have a motherfucking PhD in Statistics. I developed, theoretically proved and empirically tested my own motherfucking method of dimensionality reduction. I wrote a 100 page dissertation. Yet, pivot tables in Microsoft Excel make me act like a little baby. I can’t figure them out, I don’t like how often I need them, and my boss hates me.
3. Nail salons and the dentist. See my previous blog post. I’m really sorry I cut my nails too short and don’t floss enough. Please don’t hit me.
4. The non-cardio part of gyms. You know, that big area with all the weights and stuff? And all those machines? I’d go over there but everyone is looking at me and judging me for the way I pick stuff up and put it down. What’s that? No one gives a shit about me or is looking at me at all? The world doesn’t revolve around me and I’m not as interesting or hot as I think I am? Oh.
5. Driving in DC. I am not one of those people who is under any false impression that I am a good driver. I’m terrible at it, I don’t like doing it and it hurts my feelings when you honk at me.
6. The girls on my running team. They are 6th, 7th and 8th graders and I can tell they don’t think I’m cool and they know that I never was cool and will probably never be cool. And they are right.
7. Eating at restaurants with new friends who don’t know how picky I am yet. Look. I know that you know a great little Indian restaurant in Arlington and I would love to go there with you because I am absolutely desperate for you to like me. But also, no.
8. First dates. That part where he is going to see what my face looks like in person, while doing things like talking and drinking is really scary.
9. Second dates. What’s the big idea here? You saw my face in broad daylight and talked to me for like an hour the other day and yet here you are, back for more. Do you need money? Trying to win a bet with the guys in homeroom? Running from the law? Here, take my wallet, don’t hurt my puppy.
10. Active Dry Yeast. You never know when that shit is just not going to make my dough rise, and it is going to happen when I’m making dinner for Chris Pratt or something. So embarrassing.

I had a long meeting with a former client on Friday (believe it or not, he used to intimidate me, heh). He’s this guy from West Virginia who calls me “Becky” without my consent, and after years of interacting with me, he’s gotten comfortable. We scheduled time to just catch up and he mentioned that he and his wife were celebrating 40 years of marriage, which got us onto the topic of my marital status. When I told him I was single, he nodded and said “not surprising.” My mouth kind of fell open because most people aren’t so bold as to call me “fugly” to my face, but then he followed with “I imagine it will take a special man to match your intellect. You probably intimidate every man you meet. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

People say things like this to me all the time and it always makes me laugh. “He’s just intimidated by you. He realized how awesome you are couldn’t handle it.” I’m 5’0″ tall and 120 lbs. I get bullied by a 10-year-old on my street. I’m not kidding about this. More than once I have been walking home from the grocery store, and this little girl will step in front of me and assume this youth-league basketball defensive stance, and she’ll shuffle her feet left and right as I try to pass her. And all I can do is just stand there with this mean child all up in my personal space and take it until her little brother distracts her enough that I can make a run for it.

But sure, all of these grown men are intimidated by me? I do wonder sometimes if there’s any truth to that. Not because I’m as smart as Greg from West Virginia thinks I am or as amazing as my girlfriends will tell me when I call them upset on a Saturday night, because these things almost certainly not true. No one is sooooo smart and sooooo amazing that someone is going to be like “nah, it’s gonna be a no from me, dawg”. But maybe I give off some sort of vibe – like this intense I’ll-love-you-forever-and-make-you-steak-dinners-once-a-week vibe that makes the “Back off, none of your business, we don’t need to label this” crowd nervous about moving too fast. Or maybe it’s a vibe that says “I worry so much about having my shit together that you will worry about how not together your shit is and that won’t feel good.” Or maybe I’m fugly. Who knows?

I always complain about the word “vibe” and how about 2 out of every 5 dating profiles say “good vibes only”, as if I’m going to intentionally show up with my bad vibes and you better be okay with that and love me at my Marylin Monroe worst. But now that I’m writing this post…what if I’m showing up with these bad, intimidating vibes by accident? Now I’m intimidated by my own intimidation and this rabbit hole is getting dark. But I guess I just need to read back to the beginning of this post where I was talking about my coachee and how the secret for her to get over being intimidated is for her to…well…get over it (super, duper helpful coach of the year, am I right?!) If these fellas actually are intimidated by my authentic, intense, loving, shit-together-having-self – I guess they’ll just have to…get over it? And if I’m just fugly, I guess I’ll have to get over that. LOL.

I hope I cheered you up some on this Tuesday, I’m gonna go try to get my shit together.

September 17, 2022

When I find a song on the radio that I enjoy, I’ll often listen to it 500 times in a row until all the joy is sucked out of it and I *may* be able to actually enjoy listening to it again in a year or two. It’s like that time I worked in the Pentagon for a year and ate Subway every single day. It’s been three years and I still haven’t been able to stomach a bite of a 5-dollar footlong. Anyway, I’m currently in the process of sucking all the joy out of this country song that I love called “What He Didn’t Do” by Carly Pearce. It’s a slow, pretty song about a break-up where a woman describes that it was ultimately the things that her partner did not do for her that caused their relationship to deteriorate, rather than anything he DID do.

“Treat me right, put me first, be a man of his word, stay home ‘cause he wanted to; Always fight for my love, hold on tight like it’s something that he couldn’t stand to lose; The devil’s in the details, I won’t tell the hell that he put me through; All I know is in the end it wasn’t what he did, no it was what he didn’t do.”

Nothing too insightful in there, but every time I listen to it (which has been many many times now) I get stuck on that “be a man of his word” line. I had a few dates with a guy a few months ago and on the very first date he made a big deal about being a “man of his word” in the context of dating. He was trying to tell me that he never cancels dates or ghosts because his word means so much to him. Of course, it was no surprise that his “man of his word” integrity-bond to the women of the world didn’t include women named Rebecca. In fact, in a city full of men who blow me off for better opportunities ALL THE TIME, I would say he blew me off the most. Or maybe I simply gave him the most chances. We would make a plan and it seemed like something would always come up. My family needs me to blah blah blah. I forgot it was my friend’s birthday.  I fell asleep after work and just saw your message. This went on for weeks – maybe the entire month of June, before I finally gave up.

This is hurtful behavior, and it’s really common in dating. I’ve had dates cancelled an hour before the agreed upon time, I’ve been ghosted the day of the date, and I’ve been caught in endless rescheduling cycles – “Let’s see, I can’t do Thursday but the 5th of never might work. I dunno, thoughts?” I once found myself sitting on a beautiful little bar patio in Leesburg wearing a pretty blue dress, crying into a cocktail because my date didn’t show up. The sweet waiter comped my yucky drink for me, so my evil plan to get free disgusting drinks alone on a Tuesday night worked, although the mascara running down my face did spoil my party mood. These are just the hijinks you experience in the dating phase. Then you end up in a relationship, and realize that the man you’ve chosen, however handsome and charming and funny, may not be a man of his word. I’ve been cheated on, lied to, and spent more nights alone wondering when/if my partner was going to make time for me than I’d care to admit.

I know the “sisters are doin’ it for themselves” crowd are reading this and shouting at the screen – WHY DON’T YOU PUT THESE MEN IN THEIR PLACE? If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that putting people in their place is never as satisfying in real life as it is on Designing Women. I could go all Julia Sugarbaker on them – “JUST SO YOU KNOW, TAYLOR, AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL KNOW, AND YOUR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN WILL KNOW….YOU STOOD ME UP AND *THAT* WAS THE NIGHT THAT THE LIGHTS WENT OUT IN GEORGIA…errrr…VIRGINIA!!! YOU, SIR, ARE NOT A MAN OF YOUR WORD.” Unfortunately, it would fall on deaf ears. Here’s the ugly truth. Taylor the fireman who stood me up may very well be a man of his word. He might be a loyal, trustworthy, kind gentleman with a heart of gold. When he meets the right woman, he may be inclined to do all the things Carly listed in her song for that lady. But he didn’t want to be that person for me. I’m using poor Taylor as a representation of all the men in the DC area, which is not fair, but I doubt he’ll ever read this. But that’s the truth – the way he treated me is probably not a true representation of his character, it’s simply the side of him that he thought I deserved to experience.

That’s a bleak outlook and it can hurt if you dwell on it. You start to compare yourself to these other women that you’ll never see or meet and ask the universe why your favorite asshat is somewhere out there treating some other woman like a queen. How can it be that I keep presenting the best, most-thoughtful, authentic, well-dressed, showered, agreeable version of myself only to receive the worst version of him? I know people will disagree with me on this and say that those other girls aren’t getting anything better than what I got, but I just know that can’t be true. It simply can’t be true that these asshats are asshats all the time to every person they meet and it’s just an asshat city out there.

With the death of Queen Elizabeth II in headlines, my potpourri of podcasts have reminded me of one of King Charles’ most scandalous moments of the nineties. The incident is commonly known as Camillagate and involves a recording of young Prince Charles having a telephone conversation with his well-known mistress, Camilla. Charles was married to the lovely Princess Diana at the time. It went like this:

Prince Charles: He was a bit anxious actually.
Camilla: Was he?
Prince Charles: He thought he might have gone a bit far.
Camilla: Ah well.
Prince Charles: Anyway you know that’s the sort of thing one has to beware of. And sort of feel one’s way along with – if you know what I mean.
Camilla: Mmm. You’re awfully good at feeling your way along.

Prince Charles: Oh stop! I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out…
Camilla: Oh!
Prince Charles: Particularly in and out.
Camilla: Oh, that’s just what I need at the moment.
Prince Charles: Is it?

Camilla: I know it would revive me. I can’t bear a Sunday night without you.
Prince Charles: Oh, God.
Camilla: It’s like that programme Start The Week. I can’t start the week without you.
Prince Charles: I fill up your tank!
Camilla: Yes, you do.
Prince Charles: Then you can cope.
Camilla: Then I’m all right.
Prince Charles: What about me? The trouble is I need you several times a week.
Camilla: Mmm, so do I. I need you all the week. All the time.
Prince Charles: Oh, God. I’ll just live inside your trousers or something. It would be much easier!

Camilla (laughing): What are you going to turn into, a pair of knickers? (Both laugh). Oh, you’re going to come back as a pair of knickers.
Prince Charles: Or, God forbid, a Tampax. Just my luck! (Laughs)
Camilla: You are a complete idiot! (Laughs) Oh, what a wonderful idea.
Prince Charles: My luck to be chucked down a lavatory and go on and on forever swirling round on the top, never going down.
Camilla (laughing): Oh darling!
Prince Charles: Until the next one comes through.
Camilla: Oh, perhaps you could just come back as a box.
Prince Charles: What sort of box?
Camilla: A box of Tampax, so you could just keep going.
Prince Charles: That’s true.
Camilla: Repeating yourself . . . (laughing). Oh, darling, oh I just want you now.
Prince Charles: Do you?
Camilla: Mmm.
Prince Charles: So do I.

This recording was very scandalous when it was released to the public. I’ll spare you my thoughts about the privacy violation this is and the Panda-at-the-zoo existence that British royalty are subjected to. I also don’t condone the context of this call because it’s a clear cut example of infidelity. I’ve never cheated on anyone or thought about it or wanted to, and I’ve been on the receiving end of this sneaky behavior, so my knee-jerk reaction is to be grossed out. But if I suspend that for just a moment and read this as a conversation between two lovers, I have to say THIS IS CUTE. People act all grossed out by the talk about knickers and tampons and clutch their pearls, but I think it is so so so adorable. These are two people who are just into each other and want to be together. It’s beautiful.

I went down this road because I think Prince Charles’ behavior here is a prime example of what I’m talking about. He’s in relationships with two women and those relationships are like gardens. One of his gardens is lush and green and bursting with life and blooms, and the other is full of wilted plants and the ground is dry and cracked. All evidence points to Charles and Diana having an awful, mean-spirited marriage in which both of them were problematic. But it seems like his relationship with Camilla was beautiful and sexy and full of kindness. His behavior with Diana wasn’t exactly indicative of who he is as a man or a partner – it was indicative of who he was with her. And she was Princess Diana, for Pete’s sake! If Princess Diana’s life was sometimes like a country song, maybe it’s okay that mine is too.

I know that I’ve met some great men in my life – my dad, my grandpa, my uncles, my brother-in-law Joey, my boss and many others. As for the men who have been less than kind to me in this single-journey I’m on – I think some of them may be great guys too. They may be great when they meet a Camilla or as they age, or whatever. At some point, I think timing will be on my side and a man will look at me and decide that I’m a garden worth watering and weeding, and whatever else you do with gardens (I’m not a plant lady, yet). He’ll treat me right, put me first, be a man of his word…and all of that. And maybe he’ll be so enamored with me that he’ll want to live inside my trousers.

September 11, 2022

“Jesus, it’s like trying to manicure a baby.”

I have a special occasion coming up this week, so I thought I’d treat myself to a manicure to look nice for it. It was my first one since Christmas time, so I was very excited. I drove all the way to Pentagon City to go to the salon there because “proximity to charming nail salons” was not one of the selling features of my house in Aldie, as it turns out. So I made the journey, stopped for a SweetGreen salad, walked around the Ann Taylor shop, sighed with relief that I still felt too young to wear anything in there (no shade if you love that store – men have a Peter Pan phase and women have a Loft phase, and I am in my Loft phase). Then I made my way to my appointment. After I chose my color and sat down, the nail technician took one look at my fingernails and grimaced. “Oh no,” he said “so short.” I said “ha yeah, I like to wear them short.” A few minutes later he said “Jesus, it’s like trying to manicure a baby. Do you cut these yourself?” I nodded reluctantly. “Well you need to stop.”

I felt bad, guys. Like bad. Bad enough that I didn’t leave him a tip. That may not sound like a big deal but if you’d ever been ANYWHERE with me, you’d know how seriously I take my tip game. I once left a waiter at Uncle Julio’s a 50 dollar tip on a 15 dollar fajita just because he smiled at me and told me he liked my earrings. It doesn’t take much. But this guy made me feel embarrassed and just so bad. And what’s worse: later on I felt bad that I didn’t leave him a tip and looked up his venmo on the salon webpage and left one. Just a cycle of bad feelings caused by this encounter.

Anyway after he said these things to me, I sat there feeling my cheeks redden and put my headphones in my ears as a cue to him that talking time was over. I listened to my podcast about trashy reality tv and tried to figure out why this guy hurt my feelings so much. I looked at him – he had a mullet and an “Essentials: Fear of God” t-shirt on with blue sweatpants and the kind of New Balance sneakers your dad wears. It wasn’t like I looked at this nail technician in his active wear and thought “now, there’s a man whose opinion matters to me”. But as it turns out, it does. I tried to cheer myself up with a pretty solid joke, “Great, this is the first time a man has held my hand in months and it’s turned out like this,” which consoled me and helped me move my thoughts away from it until the final “please wash your hands.”

I cannot figure out why I reacted so strongly to someone criticizing my fingernails of all things. It felt kind of like when I was a kid and the dental hygienist would give me a hard time about drinking coke and it made me feel like such a failure every time. Like I had let her down and committed this sin of coke drinking, when in reality I was just enjoying sweet things and being a kid. I’d say having someone criticize your fingernails or teeth is infinitely better than being criticized for your character or behavior, and I’m very lucky that I don’t hear much of that – not because my character is good and I don’t misbehave, but because I live alone and no one is ever around to be annoyed by me. Maybe I felt bad because of the dentist thing- some kind of kid trauma I haven’t worked out with my therapist yet. Maybe it was because getting my nails done was part of this process I was going through to try to look nice for an outing, and was met with this attitude. When you think about it, it’s kind of fucked up. You go to a professional and ask them to help you look prettier, and while doing so, they tell you all the things that are wrong with you.

Look, I know that having short stubby fingernails is something that is completely within my power physically, but I am mentally incapable of growing them out. If they grow out beyond my fingertips, my brain starts telling me I’m the dirtiest, yuckiest woman on the planet and I must cut them SHORT immediately. Now this compulsion has made me feel bad about yet another part of my body. I have to be honest, as I age, more and more of these body part of mine are landing on that list of things that make me feel bad, but I didn’t have fingernails on my 30’s-bad-body-image bingo card. When you think about it, there are so many things that can make us feel bad about ourselves. Today alone I have fretted over my weight, the color of my teeth, my calves, laugh lines around my eyes and the zits on my face. I guess the benefit to having a nice long list of things you don’t like about your body is that you don’t spend too much time dwelling on any one of them.

One of my favorite writers (you may have heard of the late, great Nora Ephron) has a memoir called “I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts About Being a Woman”. I obviously ripped off the title from this blog post from her, so I guess I’m the worst kind of fan. I love that book. It’s this collection of little essays about her life – I guess you could call it a blog before blogs existed, except the writing is actually good and very funny. In it she says “Anything you think is wrong with your body at the age of thirty-five, you will be nostalgic for at the age of forty-five.” I’m not sure fingernails apply here, but a lot of that other stuff I mentioned above does. In ten years, I may long for the days when the scale told me I was one pound overweight according to BMI. She makes a good point, but mostly hearing her take on body image is yet another reminder that everyone feels bad about some parts of their body sometimes – and that doesn’t make us vapid or shallow or ungrateful for everything we have. It just means we are people who feel bad about stuff sometimes, even when we are getting 50 dollar manicures.

September 6, 2022

I woke up this morning to a very sick puppy dog. She made a colossal mess in my beautiful townhouse with various doggie bodily fluids and I drove her to the emergency vet with eyes blurry from tears and said various doggie bodily fluids all over my new dress. I knew she was fine, or that she would be, but I felt a little stretched during that drive. “Stretched” is a word we often use at work when we are trying to tell someone NO in a very polite way. “Todd, I’d love to teach that class on proposal writing this month but I’m a bit stretched with client work right now. How does October sound?” This morning I was really feeling it – stretched. I woke up with a long to-do list in my head and got up extra early to make my way into the office before the noisy masses arrived to start the work week. 1) Kick ass. 2) Take names. 3) Take Brian to lunch to celebrate the ass-kicking and name-taking. Those were my plans. Of course, my plans changed in a hurry.

Yesterday I wrote an extremely charming listicle about how being single is awesome. Today, however, was a great example of how having a life partner would come in extremely handy from time to time. A partner might have been able to take the dog to the vet for me, or pick her up in the evening so I could get some work done, or simply be an emergency contact I could put down on the damn form to answer the phone for updates while I’m trapped in my phone-free vault at work. He might have helped me clean up the crime scene Maudie left behind in the house, or picked up some dinner to save me one more chore. He could have helped me hold Maudie’s mouth open while I shoved her antibiotic pill down her throat, or just sent me a text around mid-day that said “Hey girl, you’re doing great.”

Alas. Ryan Gosling is not my boyfriend and Maudie and I have to make things work. I think about my friends who are single moms or single dads to little human babies and want to ask them “HOW?” How are you doing this? My guess is that you are also feeling pretty stretched. And my friends who are not single moms or dads – they’re stretched too. All the moms, all the dads, my friends who are librarians, nurses, welders, accountants, bus drivers and teachers who are simultaneously operating as coaches, friends, dog parents, Bible study leaders, swimmers, dancers, Instagram sales-people, bakers, dress-makers, knitters, car guys, brunch-goers, and so on. You name it, we do it. We all have all this stuff going on that stretches us this way and that way. We have various levels of support and help, but we just use that as an excuse to keep stretching further and further.

I know it’s weird that I keep thinking about the Donner Party so much. It’s probably even weirder that I keep telling you about it. I listened to a podcast about that story the other day and haven’t been able to stop researching it. I’m scared to death of all the cannibalism, but those people were survivors (and most of said survivors were YOUNG WOMEN). The thing that’s so interesting about these pioneers and explorers from back in the day is that most of them came from pretty privileged backgrounds just based on the selection-bias. If you didn’t have enough money for a wagon, some oxen and supplies, then you just didn’t get to go on these journeys. So it’s not like the surviving members of the Donner Party catastrophe were a bunch of hardy soldiers who set out to rough it in nature for an adventure. They were little kids and young women who were being led to a new life in California by the patriarchs of their families, who almost certainly never did a day of hard labor in their lives before they were stranded in the mountains. Yet they ended up climbing mountains, building shelters, enduring long days in miserably cold conditions, and just figured out how to make it all work. They were stretched but they didn’t break.

Statisticians have looked at the survivors of the Donner Party and other similar predicaments and determined that the more people you have in your social network, the more likely you are to survive in these difficult circumstances. For example, all but one of the single men (without family on the trail) who were part of the Donner Party died in the Sierra Nevada. First hand accounts of some of these deaths mention things like “he gave up” rather than “he starved to death.” But the people who were traveling with their families were more likely to survive, especially mothers and children. There are tons of confounding variables at play here, but the idea that the people who survived were the ones who had other people to survive for (and vice versa) is kind of a nice one. Even for a spinster lady like me.

My point is that my morning of mild inconvenience with my sick dog is comparable to the plight of the Donner Party. The end. Be sure tip your waitresses on the way out.

JUST KIDDING. That’s ridiculous. I guess my point is that we are these incredible creatures that can do unthinkable things, especially when our survival instincts kick in – designed to stretch and bend and twist and change direction based on what life gives us. And when we aren’t feeling “stretched” enough by our own lives, we tend to take more things on. We risk being stretched a little further so that we can offer support to the people around us. And that beautiful little factoid about most humans is what helps us survive and thrive and do incredible things together.

I started this blog entry complaining about how I wanted Ryan Gosling to support me or be my boyfriend or something like that. That was the old Rebecca. The Rebecca from 20-minutes ago. Now I can look back on my day and realize that even though I felt pretty “stretched”, I definitely had some non-Ryan-Gosling people stretching themselves a little further in their day to relieve me. My boss took my client meeting for me today, and offered to Google Search carpet cleaners when I sent him a text that said “Steve. OMG, my house.” My mom called me to check on me and Maudie. My co-worker sent me a Teams message to tell me he hoped my pup would be okay and to thank me for being a “slide-making beast” this weekend. The vet tech was sweet to my Maudie girl and gave me a bottle of water. None of these things are extreme or grand gestures, but I’m surrounded by the kind of people who support me during my tiniest, most insignificant set-backs. I am confident that they would help me stay alive in the mountains. Or, you know, they would let me die of natural causes before snacking on my corpse. Which really means a lot.

September 5, 2022

I got a notification in my email the other day that reminded me that the flat fee I pay each year to own and operate this blog page was being removed from my bank account. I immediately felt some guilt because I haven’t written a post since April. I’ve been going down this rabbit hole of researching the Donner Party and one of the many things that shock me about the immigrants making their harrowing journey west was that they never stopped writing. Even when they were starving, freezing, trying to climb mountains in cumbersome, homemade snow shoes, going snow blind, etc. They still took time to write down their experiences. Now I can use my dainty, manicured index finger to select a book about them that I found on Audible.com and listen to their first-hand accounts of what I hope was the worst year of their life (because if not, woof) while I take a hot bath with a cupcake in my hand. Yet I can barely be bothered to sit down at my 1500 dollar MacBook and jot down a few lines. I guess I should give myself a bit of credit and remember that the Donner Party members had fewer evening distractions from work, whiny goldendoodles and reality television shows about polygamy.

Anyway…hi. I’m back. I started this blog just over a year ago because my boyfriend at the time told me I needed to get a hobby and make some friends. Which was man-code for “get a life” or “please for the love of God, find something to do besides bug me and ask me to be a better boyfriend.” So I started this blog because a new hobby is a much shorter order than new friends. This little landing strip of mine ended up being a nice place of refuge as I navigated some heartache that the aforementioned man thrust upon me and worked tirelessly to “get over it”. My therapist went through a period where she would pull up my own writing during our sessions to help me unpack it, and I was like “DAMN, how dare you read the writing that I published publicly on the internet (and sent you a link to) and hold me accountable for it! Now please take my money!” Just kidding – it was really helpful and constructive. She had a lot of things to say about the “My Life on the Clearance Rack” piece and made me read it out loud in her office. I remember being in tears throughout the entire recital. I re-read that one the other day and was overcome with relief that I’m not in that place right now. In fact, it’s been about a year since I wrote that one and I’m happy to say that *most* days don’t feel like that anymore.

Over the last year, there have been a lot of ups and downs. The bad dates, the good dates, the ghosting, the time I cried into a fancy pink cocktail because someone stood me up at a restaurant, the booty call texts, the lonely weekends, the time that guy called me a bitch because I put up a boundary and stuck to it, the time that guy brought me flowers on a first date and on the second and became a good friend to me, the time I trained for a half-marathon to fill the hours, the time a guy told me I was 15 lbs heavier in real life than in my profile pictures, and… well you get it. A lot of shit has happened. But overall – it hasn’t been *that bad*. Which we all KNEW would be the case. But one year ago today, I really thought things would never stop being “that bad”. But here’s the thing. Sometimes being single is AWESOME. And not because you get to date and have sex with randoms and chat with your girlfriends about your wacky dating experiences – because honestly that stuff is only fun on HBO. But here are some solid, practical reasons being single is the shit:

1. You can put tacky decor in your home and no one cares. I recently bought a giant pink Lovesac which clashes with everything I own and IDGAF.
2. You can eat what you want, when you want, and don’t have to tell a soul. Look, I’ve eaten a lot of hot wings and spicy pickles this year. Jalapeños are a food group for me. I haven’t spent one second of the last year fretting because I burned the asparagus – because guess what!? No one is coming over for dinner.
3. You learn how to do stuff on your own. Now before the totally called-for “Duh”, what I really mean here is that you learn what independence means. It’s not just a Destiny’s Child song about paying your own bills and buying your own jewelry (although, yeah you can do that too). It is the act of taking yourself to dinner, taking yourself to movies, going on hikes, planning trips and adventures – finding ways to treat yourself as good as (okay, way better than…) any partner ever has. It’s about figuring out how to be alone with yourself and enjoying it. If there’s anything I’ve learned this year is that I’m a hell of a good time and I really like hanging out with me.
4. If you want a big truck, you get a big truck. I have this joke that I tell at work that goes “Every time someone dumps me, I end up with a larger vehicle. So I have to be careful choosing my next relationship because I don’t think I can park an F-250.” But also, a huge perk of being single is that you get to make large (and small) financial decisions by yourself.
5. No cats. I don’t think I need to explain this one.
6. Pretty selfies/Thirst Traps without drama. I saw a meme the other day that said something like “You’ve been naked online for a whole year and you’re still single. Get dressed.” and felt personally attacked. But here’s the thing. I spent the first ~30 years of my life believing I was fat and ugly, an idea that was often reinforced by the men in my life. I’m just about over that mindset, and I’m going to post my pretty face and body while I can do so without making someone jealous/uncomfortable/sad.
7. Guilt-free naps. If I want to take a nap at 5:30 pm on a Tuesday, that’s totally cool. I have no husband or kids to feel affected by this, and my dog is more than happy to join me. Bonus points if we are in the Lovesac.
8. You can truly be “really into your career right now.” I know, I know. Men have said this to me and I just roll my eyes at them because we know it’s more likely that they are just not “into” me. Honestly though, I have been absolutely crushing my goals at work this year. I volunteer to do a lot of extra work because I don’t have many other obligations and enjoy the distraction. Surprisingly, managers like that! I also have this focus on my own growth and the growth of people around me that wasn’t there before. I catch myself saying things like “I’d like to challenge you on that…” or “May I offer a suggestion?” and then look around trying to figure out how Michelle Obama’s voice started coming out of my mouth.
9. Girls, Girls, Girls. Boy oh boy, I’m a great friend when I’m single. I am much better at maintaining my female friendships, and super open to making new lady friends. I joined two running clubs this year and have met some absolutely fantastics ladies (and gents) through that. I signed up to coach a Middle School girls running team and our practices start next week. I’m also just generally a better mom to my Maudie girl. Not that I’m *bad* at these things when I am attached – it’s just natural that some balls get dropped when you have new priorities.
10. The Queen sleeps like a king. I have an absurd King-sized bed that sits so far off the ground that I have to take a running jump to get on it. I bought it when my ex was still around, thinking it would be nice to have the extra space. I was right! Now that I’m single, I can sleep on whichever side of the bed I want, in the middle, sideways, diagonally, upstairs in the guest bed, on the floor, on the couch, in the Lovesac. The sleep possibilities are endless! I can get up to pee 5000 times a night and no one cares. I can fall asleep listening to gay men talk on podcasts about reality tv, and no one cares. I can flop around like a grizzly bear and snore and talk in my sleep and no one cares. No one cares!

I could go on, but you get it. I don’t think it’s any secret that I’ve been trying to find that single person on earth who fills my life with joy. I want to be loved and desired. I want to be a mom some day if my partner is into that. I want someone to notice when I come home late and miss me when I’m out of town. I’ve been on the apps and off the apps and back on the apps (currently off of them, btw). I’ve worn pretty dresses, cooked steak dinners, put little bows on bottles of Ale-8, all to show up for a date with ol’ what’s-his-name, full of hope and doubt. I’ve put in a lot of effort. But I’ve also been putting a lot of effort into me lately, and really trying to enjoy this time. It’s pretty likely that someone else will come along and it might really be the best thing ever – the gift from the universe that I’ve been waiting for. I am excited for that, but this time I have with myself feels like a gift as well. I know quite a few ladies who met really wonderful partners early in life and maybe sometimes look at my life with the kind of longing I feel when I look at them. I need to remember that and try to suck the marrow out of this season.

Thank you, as always for reading. Drop me a line and let me know what you think!

April 10, 2022

“Every man I date has a cat, and I don’t know what that says about me. Sometimes I think they don’t have a cat, and then I show up at their house and realize there’s a surprise cat. “

Most of my day-to-day conversations fluctuate between general nerd speak (“The principal component analysis function in our pipeline is throwing an error”) and sarcastic, goofy jokes and stories that I tell to anyone who will listen because I think I’m HILARIOUS. I have little bits that I do – maybe ‘catch phrases’ is a better way to describe them, but I’m always saying things that are a little bit silly trying to make other people (but mostly myself) laugh. Sometimes I’m reciting things that I stole from movies or tv. For instance, I like to tell my boss “I’m starting to hyperventilate and I’m not wearing a stretchy fabric” (a Gilmore Girls quote) whenever I’m having trouble getting data to query. I also think that the moment when Happy Gilmore screams “SUCK MY WHITE ASS, BALL” at a golf ball is one of the funniest moments in movie history, and I love to yell adapted versions of it in my every day life (“Suck my white ass, Pikachu!” during a round of Smash Bros, for instance). Sometimes I’m telling jokes that make me chuckle mostly because they make other people uncomfortable. When my free covid19 tests from the government came in the mail, I started asking my friends when they thought the suicide kits would ship out. Most of the time, I’m just poking fun at myself. I make fun of myself for being afraid of the “rich lady taxes” that I seem to owe every year. Last week I had the worst heartburn of my life and was walking around very conspicuously with a huge bottle of Alka Seltzer making comments about how “this is 32”. By the time Friday rolled around, my boss would ask me to do something and I’d say “But Steve, my heartburn…and these rich lady taxes…”

Most of the time, I’m just telling stories from my own life that I think are funny. Self-depreciation is a bad habit of mine, but I’ve found that if I can take every awful, painful experience and turn it into a funny story, then I have control over the way it makes me feel. I make fun of my dating life – and in turn, the people around me make fun of it too. I was telling my coworker about my Pikachu Halloween costume from last year and said “my boyfriend at the time dressed up as a Pokemon catcher” and without missing a beat, he said “and now we know why he dumped you.” Zing! I was so proud. This happened at the very same happy hour that I tried to explain to some new work friends why I’m trying to find a man who doesn’t have have a cat, which evolved into discussion of one guy’s pet turtle that he left with his parents when he moved to DC, and how he’s a deadbeat turtle dad who doesn’t pay turtle support. It is so disarming to me when people make fun of themselves, and will laugh at my expense as well. I probably need to unpack that in therapy, but here we are. That happy hour was one of the most joyful evenings I’ve had this year, and it was all because I laughed until my cheeks were sore, mostly at my own expense.

The last six months have been hard for me. It’s no secret that I got my heart broken last year and I’ve been in this seemingly never-ending grieving process. I have really good days and really bad days, but overall I’m doing okay. I’m focused on running a half marathon at the end of this month, and hopefully getting promoted at work over the next year or two. I have goals. I can sleep through the night now, sometimes without needing a podcast to drown out the silence when I’m falling asleep. I know, it sounds like I’m talking about a newborn baby – “She is sleeping through the night already!” But overall, I’m doing a lot better than the last time I wrote in this blog.

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you know that I passed my ex-boyfriend while I was running last week. I took a little selfie and made a joke about how I hoped he got “a good long look at my ass”, and it’s true that I ran by him with my head held high. But I also cried in the shower. Later, I talked to my therapist about it with with a hint of panic in my voice as I tearfully described “I’m just worried that I’m never going to get over it.” She was really helpful and talked to me about the grieving process. She told me that grief is like a rubber ball inside of a box, and at the bottom of the box, there’s a panic button. When you lose someone or something, the ball is really big and as it bounces around the box, that panic button gets pressed all the time. So in November when I couldn’t make it through the day without crying and relied on podcasts or New Girl playing in the background to make me feel less alone, my grief ball was really big. Now that time has passed, my ball is much smaller, but it’s still in the box bouncing around, and sometimes that panic button still gets hit by my grief ball.

This was the first time I ever thought about grief that way, and I started thinking through the things I can do to make my grief ball smaller. I’ve been on a few dates, but my dating efforts have been really half-assed, so I decided I would “put myself out there a bit more” and maybe my grief ball would shrink. This is what led me to the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad date I experienced last night. It was a dinner date in Arlington, and it was the shortest date I’ve ever been on. This poor guy could not carry a conversation to save his life, and would not smile or laugh at anything I said. And I think we established above that I’m HILARIOUS. It’s so hard to describe in words why this was such a bad experience – he didn’t insult me like the guy who told me I looked 15 lbs heavier than in my pictures, he didn’t insult my dog or lecture me on my water heater. It was just the type of awkward interaction that makes you want to crawl under the table. I was working so hard to carry the conversation. I fell back on a tried and true tension killer- “tell me about some of your bad dates” and got crickets. So I just started telling my own stories and found myself laughing and smiling at my own antics – which I think signaled to him that I was having a wonderful time. When the check finally came, I paid it (one of the only things the man verbalized to me was that he’s broke) and he asked me if I was having as much fun as he was. I gave him an honest answer “No, it was nice to meet you but I don’t think we should meet up again” and scurried as quickly as my new tan pumps would carry me to the sweet solitude of my 4Runner.

I felt terrible. It never feels good to tell someone you aren’t interested in them. But if you saw me after my date last night, you would never have known how terrible I felt, because as soon as I left the parking lot, I fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. I called my best friend and we laughed together for like ten minutes, and then I called my mom and dad and we all laughed some more. It is NOT a funny story, but the cumulative circumstances of my dating life paired with this poor Eeyore of a man tickled my funny bone so much that I had tears in my eyes from laughing. I was laughing over how awkward I felt and the relief I felt to be alone at the end of the night, and how for just a split second in time I felt so grateful to be going home to my empty house. I was laughing about how this guy with no money, no sense of humor, no plans for the future, with nothing interesting to say thought he had a chance at a second date with me. Then I was laughing because that’s the first time I’ve ever walked away from a date feeling like I was out of someone’s league or too good for them. I have to be honest, that feeling doesn’t suck. I haven’t laughed that hard in months, and I think my grief ball shrank some just from all of that laughter.

I know it sounds like I’m cackling at this poor guy’s expense. Okay, yes. I am. But he did get a free dinner out of the deal. I realized that the reason he missed the signal that I was having a terrible time on the date, was that I was doing the same thing I’ve been doing to survive the last few months – I was being silly and funny, and trying to use good humor to power my way through a difficult situation. I thought about it, and I really was smiling and laughing for almost the entire date, and it was simply because I was entertaining myself. None of that came from him, it was all internal. It sounds weird, but that’s…pretty freakin’ cool. It’s cool that I still managed to have fun enjoying my own company and that I was able to laugh about a situation that sucked and cost me 50 dollars plus gas.

Some day I’m going to meet someone who thinks I’m adorable and awesome and hilarious, and he’s going to make me laugh and smile. But until then I’ll try my best to think all those things about myself and continue making myself laugh uncontrollably.

March 9, 2022

This is what I typed into the Google search bar on a crisp fall day in 2020.  Immediately, the Google autocorrect feature assumed that I was asking the entire internet the existential question we have all asked ourselves at least once – can I be happy alone? Immediately, Google showed me suicide helplines I could call in case I was thinking about doing the unthinkable.  But in reality, the search was brought about by a video game.  You see, I wanted to play Super Mario Odyssey on my adorable Nintendo switch – the one with the neon pink and green controllers I was so proud of when I bought them.  Most peculiarly though, I did not want to play the game as the hero – our favorite short plumber, rescuer of pretty princesses in pink, bopper of Goombas and defeater of Bowser – Mario, himself.  I wanted to play as the sidekick in the game – the whimsical, spinning cap that Mario tosses to give him leverage over the enemy.  I would like to say that Cappy is to Mario as Robin is to Batman, but that may be giving the cute headpiece with eyeballs too much credit.  A more relevant analogy would be: Cappy is to Mario as the webs that come out of Spiderman’s hands are to Spiderman.  He’s a fashion accessory that doubles as an accessory to murder of Goombas, Piranha Plants, and bunnies alike.  He is what most gamers refer to as “Player 2”.  Very quickly after Google realized I was more silly than suicidal, all of the internet informed me of one simple fact:  There can’t be a Player 2 without a Player 1. 

Side note: Check out this cute video about Mario Odyssey from my favorite YouTube Duo - Girlfriend Reviews. 

I started playing video games during the worst year of my life (so far): 2019.  That year found me in an emotionally abusive fake-relationship with a cheating, alcoholic, narcissist who made me cry all the time.  But honestly, when I ignored all of the qualifiers in the previous sentence, we had a lot of fun. We drank, we went to hockey games, we drank, we went to the pool, we drank, and we played video games while we drank. During this time, I realized that the video game world – the world that had complicated the real-relationship I had been in previously – the filthy, lazy habit that I had always judged as a waste of time and money – was a shit ton of fun! I won’t bore you with the details of the end of my fake- relationship, but one positive thing I took away from that experience was a Nintendo Switch (and all the accessories! And an X-box! And a PS4! And all the accessories for those! Look, I don’t half-ass things). 

Enter 2020. Like the rest of you, my world practically stopped turning in March of 2020. I found myself single, living in a studio apartment, skinny as a rail in the throes of disordered eating (not to worry, therapy is a wonderful thing), and suddenly, unable to leave my apartment to even go to work. My office was in my bedroom, my bedroom was in my living room, my living room was in my kitchen, and my dog was in my face. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Most of my friends on social media that have families – husbands, wives, and children – suddenly found themselves trapped in their own homes with people they loved, like an overdose of the greatest drug. Children losing their freaking minds, unable to see their friends or burn enough energy, husbands and wives sharing office space and living without bro/girls nights or any escape from their adorable, sweet, nerve-wracking families. I get it, and I want you to know I sympathize. But I was trapped in another type of environment – I was alone, trapped in my own mind, inside of my small apartment with a dog that never speaks but still manages to sass me relentlessly. 

When I wasn’t writing python code for work or running – I played video games. 2020 was the year I finished my first video game in full. I played Fire Emblem: Three Houses from start to finish, and experienced the heartache that comes with finding a nice, blonde JRPG boyfriend named Dimitri, only for him to return in the second-half of the game as a blood-thirsty, vengeful madman with an eye-patch (I ended up marrying that guy in the game and I think the developers deserve an award for most realistic gameplay). My character in that game was a green-haired lady named Rory, who was a level 98 killing machine. I went on to catch all kinds of Pokemon, experienced the time-suck that is Animal Crossing, the cuteness that is Stardew Valley, relived my angsty teen years by playing the Sims 4 on Xbox, caught up with my good friend in the Navy while he taught me to play Halo all the way from 29 Palms in California, and celebrated like an idiot when I conquered a game that I am certain was created for 4-year-olds- Yoshi’s Crafted World. Oh, and I delighted over Shantae the Half-Genie Hero, who shakes her hips and turns into animals (and inspired me to try to dye my hair purple during the shut down).

Now, returning to my Mario Odyssey woes – why was I so hell-bent on playing as Cappy instead of hero Mario? The obvious answer is that it’s funny, because it’s a big hat with eyeballs that doubles as an assassin for a man in overalls.

Sometimes it’s just really nice to be Player 2. It’s nice to be a secondary character. Player 1 gets to call all the shots and be the star, while Player 2 is a helper. Player 2 can sip on a Corona, while Player 1 figures out how to beat the level. And most importantly, being Player 2 means you are by default, not playing alone (as my Google search taught us). You’re part of a team, but not the leader. When I think about it, 2020 was a really great year to want to be Player 2. I am definitely Player 1 in my life and my household – Maudie doesn’t pay her rent, and rarely chips in for groceries unless it’s hotdog night. I am the leader of my household, the caller of the shots, primary decorator, chef, trash remover, handyman, cleaning lady, bread-winner, appointment maker, dog walker and poop scooper. At work, it’s a similar story. I lead my team, I make the final calls, I am the technical expert, I control the client relationship. Being in charge is great. Leaders are empowered, have the ability to empower others, get to deliver good news and plan celebrations, get to watch their teams grow and improve. And being in charge at home means I always eat what I want, I’m surrounded by my favorite colors in my home, and I never have to answer to anyone else for financial decisions. It’s awesome. Being Player 1 can be awesome. 

Independence in general is awesome. I have to be honest though. Sometimes it would be nice to have a break. Petty conveniences aside- you know, coming home from a long day of work to have a meal ready for you, or to find that the dog has already been walked, or that the laundry has been folded – sometimes it would be really useful to have someone to help with the big decisions in life. I recently bought a house – and I am so proud of myself for going through that process all by myself and choosing my house, my offer, my furnishings – everything all by myself. There was also a lot of anxiety that came with that – not knowing if I should trust my own instincts, not having another stakeholder to offer up pros/cons/preferences. I know now that I’m living in my dream home and LOVE it, but at the time, I felt very lonely in the process. At the beginning of 2020 – as much as I joked about the situation and tried to make the best of my isolation, I really did experience a lot of fear. All of the what-if’s were hard to handle on my own. What if there is a recession and I lose my job? What if I get sick and can’t get help? What if someone in my family gets sick and I can’t be there? What if? Where is my Cappy to help me boop these Goombas?! Better yet – can I be Cappy and let Mario deal with this shit?!

I guess the big difference between my video game life and my real life is that I’m laughably bad at video games. When I finally gave up on being a Cappy sidekick to a computer-driven Mario in Mario Odyssey, I played the game as Mario. As much fun as that game is, I gave up within the first hour because I got frustrated with losing all of my coins. I’m just bad at it. I can never remember which buttons do what, I have a lack of hand-eye coordination. My only real asset is enthusiasm. I was so much better at being Player 2. The last few years of my non-video game life have been hard (I know they’ve been hard for you too, dear reader) but all the difficulties have allowed me to keep leveling up over and over again. As challenging as it is to be independent, and despite all the anxiety and self-doubt that comes with it, I have learned that I’m skilled enough to be Player 1. I’m Mario.

January 9, 2022

What does she look like? Thin. Pretty. Big tits. Your basic nightmare.

When I was in high school, I was having a sleepover with my best friend, Megan, and she introduced me to “When Harry Met Sally”. I remember feeling annoyed that we were watching a lame movie from the 80’s. Now it’s one of my all-time favorite movies and I think about Megan every time I watch it. The screenplay for that movie was written by Nora Ephron – an absolute comedic genius and perhaps one of the best writers of all time. You probably know her work. In addition to “When Harry Met Sally”, she wrote the screenplay for some of the films you are destined with watch begrudgingly with your significant other some time in February, including “You’ve Got Mail” and “Sleepless in Seattle”. She also wrote a few movies that don’t prominently feature the unique combination of Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan and Harry Connick Junior warbling in the background such as “Michael”, “Julie and Julia” and “Mixed Nuts”.

I’ve always been a fan of Ephron’s movies. I love telling my friend Jill that she’s at least as good looking as a mailbox, because that was Joe Fox’s (played by Tom Hanks) only expectation when he was about to meet his online paramour in person for the time in “You’ve Got Mail”. If she turns out to be as good looking as a mailbox, I’d be crazy not to turn my life upside down and marry her. I think about there being “too much pepper in my paprikash” every time I get my pepper shaker out of the spice cabinet. I love telling people that I don’t eat eggs because I was a “very willful child” just like Amy Adams’ character in “Julie and Julia”. If I’m quoting a movie, it’s probably something Nora Ephron wrote.

I guess that’s why it’s so surprising that it took me 31.9 years to get around to reading Ephron’s most famous novel, Heartburn but I think the universe put this book in my hands with perfect timing. I found it when I was killing time walking around the Barnes and Noble next to my favorite movie theatre waiting for the doors to open for the showing of “Encanto” I chose on a Wednesday night. If I’m out on a weeknight, chances are that I’m getting a fajita at Uncle Julio’s and catching a movie at Alamo Drafthouse by myself in Ashburn – but on this particular night, I made a pitstop at the bookstore and walked out with a masterpiece in my hand.

The protagonist of the book is 38-year-old Rachel. Rachel is 8 months pregnant, and in Chapter 1, she has just discovered that her husband Mark has been having an affair with a woman named Thelma. When she confronts her husband about his infidelity, she learns that Mark is in love with Thelma and is deciding to stay in the marriage only for the sake of their 1.5 kids. Rachel flees their home in Washington DC to stay with her father in New York City. Hilarity ensues as Rachel deals with the absolute devastation of her situation with Ephron’s brilliant, sardonic sense of humor. The book delves into Rachel’s experience with her therapist and group therapy, and Rachel revels in her chance to be interrogated by the police after her therapy group is robbed at gunpoint by a man who winked at her on the subway. That’s the thing about Rachel that I adore – she is the type of person who survives something harrowing and is excited about it because she gets to tell the story after.

I identify with Rachel in a lot of ways – we are both cynical, sarcastic, opinionated women, who love to write and cook potatoes. Seriously, there’s a whole chapter in this book about potatoes and it was an absolute delight. The thing about Rachel that reminds me so much of myself is her love for telling stories. She has the following exchange with her therapist, Vera:

“Vera said: “Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?”
So I told her why.
Because if I tell the story, I control the version.
Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me.
Because if I tell the story, it doesn’t hurt as much.
Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.” 

I have read so many books by so many brilliant, insightful people, but nothing has captured me like those words before. I have often been accused of over-sharing things. Being too much of an open book. Just today, I had you all laughing and commenting on a bit of commentary from my date from last night on my Facebook page. Some people might look at that and wonder why I didn’t just keep it to myself. But I think this excerpt from Heartburn is the perfect explanation. No matter how hurtful, or upsetting, or excruciating an experience is for me – if I can sit down and write about it, if I can find the humor in it, if I can use it to make myself laugh or to make you laugh, then the memory loses some of the power it has to hurt me.

The truth is, last night I was pretty upset when that guy left. I was feeling guilty that I let him convince me to lock Maudie in a room. I was feeling disappointed that yet another potential partner was not going to pan out. I was feeling discouraged because I always find myself with men who talk down to me and try to make me feel dumb. I was feeling embarrassed for not having a recycling bin and the way the guy looked at me when he realized it. I was feeling really devastated because I still love Josh and I miss him so much sometimes I can barely breathe. I’m having a hard time moving on. If I focus on that – if I let all the confusing, conflicting, painful things swirl around unorganized in my head, I would never be ok. But I can sit down and write about it in a way that is funny and light, but also real at the same time. I can tell you about it in a way that doesn’t bum you out, but I can still get your support and companionship. I write it down and I have control of it and the way it makes me feel, even if just for a moment or two.

If you are looking for a book to start your new year, I can’t recommend Heartburn enough.