10/ 03/ 2021
I’ve spent most of the past year in Florida, riding out the pandemic with my parents, in the house I grew up in. I haven’t spent that much time in my hometown since graduating from high school many years ago.
The pandemic has been stressful for all of us. I’ve grown to appreciate having more time at home and more time to reflect. I’ve also had more time to snack.
Lots of people are talking about gaining “the pandemic 15.” I’m definitely a little heavier, and because of my complicated relationship with my body, eating and food, gaining weight is difficult for me. My weight has been a source of anxiety for as long as I can remember, and my self-worth has been contingent on my size for a lot of my life.
Therapy helped me make a lot of progress. Some days, the weight gain is harder to accept, other days my confidence and appreciation for my body is sky high.
While in Florida, the way I think about my body shifted even more, and it all started with a crane.
Read more »11/ 22/ 2020
I sympathize with kids that have summer birthdays because they miss out on the joy of in school celebrations. In my day (the 1990s), it was the highlight of a child’s school year. Imagine, if you will… school ends early; classmates sing happy birthday to YOU; you all sit at your desks under those blinding fluorescent lights giggling and nibbling on Publix cupcakes with that insanely sweet whipped frosting, whilst guzzling down what seems like an infinite amount of soda.
The injustice of missing out on cake and soda at school was more than I could take (clearly, as I’m still talking about it decades later!). However, as I grew, I learned to love having an August birthday. There’s a more relaxed energy during the summer. The days are longer and the sun sets later. It’s usually more quiet at work, so it’s a less stressful time. I can take a few days off, sleep in and enjoy the big day. Forget those Publix cupcakes and soda. I can have multiple desserts with chardonnay now!
This year, I spent my birthday with family, which hasn’t happened since I moved to NYC over nine years ago. My mom ordered this incredible cake from one of my favorite bakeries, Milk Bar, and we picked up Thai food and watched Jeopardy. Yes, I made them sing happy birthday to me more than once—it was lovely.
Typically in birthday posts, I reflect on my growth over the past year. When I think about it, I know that a lot of my growth stems from the circumstances of 2020, which we’ve all been grappling with. Here are a couple things I’ve learned over the past year:
Read more »02/ 23/ 2020
Coming back from holiday break is always hard. I’ve been home in NYC for over a month and a half and I’m just feeling settled back in. I’m not alone though. Anytime a colleague or a friend returns from a long break we talk about the difficulty of getting back in the flow of everyday life. This particular time felt even more jolting than normal, and I began to wonder how I juggled my life before vacation.
These days, I maintain a pretty healthy work life balance. So it was surprising that upon my return, I had to force myself to stop and take time away. I also felt very overwhelmed with the amount of tasks I was trying to handle both at work and in my real life.
01/ 12/ 2020
If asked what I dreaded most when I was a teenager and twenty-something, I would have said confrontation. It didn’t matter what type of conversation: a fight, a break up or something as simple as telling the Starbuck’s barista that I’d ordered an iced pumpkin spiced latte, not a hot one. It’s not that I didn’t want to speak up. I simply felt too afraid to do so.
After eight and a half years of living in New York City, my mindset on confrontation has shifted. This shift is in part a result of NYC’s ecosystem. New Yorkers are more intense and stubborn—a perfect storm for heated conversations. Confrontation seemed to happen every day, and I had to become comfortable with it in order to feel more at ease in the City.
Looking back, I wanted to identify how exactly my mind shift had changed. Here’s what I learned and what helped make confrontation feel more natural:
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