One of the biggest challenges with blogging and social media is that once you create a public identity, it’s that much more difficult to make personal changes.

Take drinking, for example. Anyone who’s been hanging around this blog for longer than a few months knows that I used to drink a lot. Not a lot like “wow, she has a problem,” but definitely “damn, girl loves her some tequila.” Because I did. Cocktail parties, wine tasting, randomly getting drunk on a Wednesday afternoon and riding public transportation – alcohol felt inseparable from my identity, especially my blog identity, and I was terrified of how people would react if I quit.

Well, guess what? It’s been 9 months since I quit drinking, and no one gives a shit. I put it off for a while because one of my biggest concerns was what people would think of me if I didn’t drink, what that decision would mean to other people, but, for the most part, no one cares.

No one cares! Which means, really, that I’m free to do whatever I want. It also means that you’re free to do whatever you want, safe with the knowledge that no one cares even half as much as you think they do. Seriously, let’s do some “life less bullshit” math. Say you want to quit your job and go back to school, but you’re afraid that everyone will judge you. On a scale from 1-10 of how much everyone cares, you think they’re at about an 8. Well, here’s what I want you to do: take that number, divide it in half, and subtract 2. This is how much people actually care. You think they’re at an 8, but they’re actually at a 2. You know why? Because you forgot to account for the narcissism factor – the inherent truth that we’re all a bunch of adorable little narcissists and are therefore so focused on ourselves and our own issues that we don’t have time to overanalyze everyone else. You also forgot the mirror clause, the one that states that we’re so much harder on the person in the mirror than we are on anyone else. Sad, but true.

And yet, even when we want to make a change, even when we’re ready to quit our job or to lose weight or to start meditating, we’re often paralyzed by the fear of what other people will think of us as we change. From the depths of our own issues and insecurities, even though we aren’t judging other people’s decisions at more than a level 2, we’re absolutely convinced that they’re going to judge us at a level 8, and that fear is often enough to keep us stuck in a rut.

Sometimes, though, people really will be an 8, or even a 10. A few of those people, like your parents, might be an 8 because they care about you so fiercely that they’ll weigh in on everything you do to challenge you and make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. This is helpful. We all need people who are willing to call us on our bullshit – people who will poke our decisions full of holes, giving us the opportunity to either plug the holes with conviction or let the idea sink in the water of uncertainty. These people are good. Most of the other people who are an 8, though, they’re probably only an 8 because the change you’re making in your own life leaves them feeling uncomfortable about theirs. When you start making positive changes, it can shine a light on the not-so-positive behaviors in someone else’s life, causing them to feel threatened and to lash out. But, you know what? Their issues aren’t your issues, and you don’t have to make their problems your problems. I mean, whose life are you living here, yours or someone else’s?

Take me, for example. Toward the end of last year, I gave up sugar for 5 weeks. Very long story short, eating sugar makes me feel like shit. Addictive and mood altering, sugar has been wrecking havoc with my physical and mental stability and I finally got fed up enough to make a change. So, I quit eating sugar for 5 weeks, but I didn’t tell anyone about it. I mean, I did, offline, but I didn’t blog or tweet about it, because I felt like everyone would be at least an 8 on a scale from 1 to totally freaking out, and I just didn’t want to deal with it. Now that those 5 weeks have ended, though, and now that I’ve had a chance to test adding sugar back into my life and see that it really does make me feel like shit whenever I eat it, I’m going to try to build a sugar-free life, for good. This is intensely frightening on a lot of levels, and I’m not going to get into all of the details just yet, but the one thing I do want to admit is that I’m nervous about what other people will think of my decision. Will they be an 8? Will they be a 2? And, more than anything, how much am I going to let other people’s opinions influence what I know to be the best choice for me? Am I ready to take responsibility for myself, no matter what?

Because that’s the thing. Taking responsibility for yourself means changing when you need to change. It means following the little internal nudge you have to try something new and do something differently, and change is good. If you feel the pull to make a change, if you see a path that you think can lead you to being your best possible self, take it. Don’t wait for someone else to give you permission. Don’t take an opinion poll. You’re not running for president here, you’re just trying to live your own goddamn life, one step at a time, and sometimes that means making changes that other people won’t understand.

But, at the end of every day, you’re the only one who truly has to understand. You’re the one who has to live with yourself and your decisions, and you don’t have to apologize for taking care of yourself, even if it makes other people uncomfortable. It’s perfectly okay to make the changes that need to be made, look out at whoever might be judging you, and be all, “Listen, I’m doing what I can do to be my best possible self. Sorry I’m not sorry.”

I was originally supposed to be writing this post from a beach in Costa Rica. Instead, I’m writing it from my living room couch.

But wait, let’s start at the beginning.

Depression is a funny thing. I once heard that people who are susceptible to depressive episodes only need one small trigger to send them down the hole, and that about sums it up for me. The tricky part, though, is that I never notice the trigger as it’s happening. Especially when everything else in my life feels happy and solid, these sad days can seemingly come out of nowhere. One day I feel okay, and then the next day I wake up to find that just getting out of bed requires superhero levels of effort. I’m confused, burrowing under the covers, thinking that other people must be crazy ass fools to be doing anything as exhausting as walking around or showering or actually leaving the house to interact with other humans.

That’s how you know you’re having a really tough time, when the thought of talking to people at the grocery store gives you so much anxiety that you opt to stay home and eat candy canes in the dark instead.

Last week, I ate a lot of candy canes in the dark. I also did a lot of crying, and a lot of feeling sad and overwhelmed and exhausted and empty and worthless for no understandable reason. Which, I can assure you, isn’t really the best way to spend 6 consecutive days.

So I cancelled my trip to Costa Rica, waiting until the last possible minute to see if I magically started feeling less like the anxiety of getting on a plane would lead to full-scale meltdown and more like the fun, spontaneous person who had booked the trip in the first place, but it never happened.

And this is where the truly challenging part kicked in, the part where I had to email all of the lovely ladies I was supposed to go to Costa Rica with, most of whom I’d never even met before, and tell them that I couldn’t go.

I felt like such an asshole. On top of being so deep in the hole, here I was bailing on people who I was sure would think I was flakey and irresponsible and self-indulgent. I spent so much time obsessing about what I was going to say to them in my email that I almost managed to convince myself that the best thing would be to lie and say that I was really sick, or that I was having a family emergency, or a work emergency – anything that would save me from the vulnerability of being like, “Hi, people I don’t know. I can’t come to Costa Rica with you because any activity other than eating candy canes in the dark and watching old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy on DVD just isn’t physically possible for me right now. Sorry!”

In the end, I just took a deep breath and told them the truth, and to say that the emails I got in return were kind and supportive would be an understatement. And here’s where we get to the heart of what I’m trying to say, which is that everyone falls into the hole from time to time. Some people fall deeper than others, and some people take longer to claw their way out than others, but we all fall into the hole. And yet, when we’re down there, it’s so easy to tell ourselves that no one will understand and to stay as isolated as possible while maintaining the official party line that “everything’s fine.”

But guess what? Sometimes shit isn’t fine. Sometimes you need help getting out of the hole, and that’s okay. When you start to ask around, you’ll be shocked at how many people can relate to what you’re going through, and there isn’t anything more comforting than that. So if you need help, ask for help. Don’t feel embarrassed or weak, because you’re not weak and you have nothing to be embarrassed about. Life is full of holes, and sometimes we can’t help but fall into them.

So if you’re in the hole, tell someone how you’re feeling and let them reach down and pull you out. And if you’re out of the hole, don’t ever underestimate how much your small expressions of kindness can help someone who’s struggling. Sometimes, something as trivial as a few compassionate words traveling from one inbox to another are all it takes to shine light on a dark place.

Sometimes the internet makes me want to crawl into a sad cocoon and wallow in my self-doubt until nature does its thing and turns me into an absurdly creative/successful/wealthy/zen butterfly who also has stupidly sexy hair, the best-ever recipe for caramel apple donuts, and the secret to world peace.

REALISTIC GOALS, I HAZ THEM.

It’s not the internet’s fault, of course, but being two clicks away from All of The People doing All of The (Amazing) Things can go one of two ways. Either it’s a powerful motivator to launch your own amazing ideas, or it’s a war-ravaged dream killer. Nothing in between.

Lately, it’s been a dream killer. I’ve been doubting myself a lot, in pretty much every area of life that someone can doubt themselves (and even those you probably haven’t tried yet, unless you too have experienced the unusual sadness of not having pretty handwriting), and I’m honestly just exhausted from it all.

I’m exhausted from wishing I were better, prettier, faster, happier, more successful, more well-known, more relaxed, more passionate, more artistic, more everything. Because, let me tell you, feeling badly about yourself uses a lot of fucking energy. Living your life while constantly second guessing your life and reevaluating your life and picturing your life as someone else’s life takes so much stamina, I’m surprised I even have time left to bathe. Seriously though, how the eff do insanely successful people have time to eat and shower?!

The most frustrating part about feeling this way is that even as I’m submerged in the deepest of it, I know that it’s just a phase. It’s a phase, and it won’t last, which I know because I’ve been here plenty of times before, and it always passes. So, even though part of me is all, “WAAAHHHHH EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE HORRIBLE NO GOOD VERY BAD. MUST MOVE TO AUSTRALIA,” another part of me is all, “Dude, you’re FINE. You’re going to feel better in like a fucking day. Chill out, and stop comparing your life to everyone else’s life.” Which, hi, THERAPY.

I have to believe, though, that feeling like this and getting sucked down the occasional dirty rabbit hole of extreme jealousy is just a natural part of being a human who lives in a world with other humans. I also think, annoyingly enough, that we feel this way when we’re tip-toeing around the edges of doing something scary. It’s almost a test of how serious we are about taking the leap from our comfortable, well-worn lives and flinging ourselves toward what’s next.

For me, what’s next is the upcoming food blog and the 100 Lunches Project, both of which I’m belligerently excited about, but with that kind of excitement comes a lot of fear. What if people don’t respond well? What if I’m in over my head? What if there’s always someone out there who’s doing exactly what I want to do – but better? What if, what if, what if.

At the heart of it all, I think these kinds of self doubt-ey feelings come down to one single question: What do you want to be known for? Because once you can answer that, you can bust out of your sad cocoon and charge ahead toward whatever that thing is without looking back.

In the meantime, though, I think the answer is that you have to be nice to yourself. No pressure, no expectations, just stop being such an asshole to yourself and things will instantly improve. It’s easy to do nice things for someone you love when they’re feeling down, but yet it’s so much harder to do the same for yourself. Why is that? Why do we always seem to be standing in our own way when we should really be our biggest personal cheerleaders?

I don’t know the answers, but I do know that you (yes, YOU!) should do something nice for yourself, and soon. Need a little coaxing? Here, why don’t we do this. You tell me what nice thing you’re going to do for yourself, and as part of free-shit-September, I’ll send one of you a $25 Visa giftcard with which to do it.

Side benefit: if everyone shares the nice things they’d like to do for themselves, we can all get some new self-love ideas for the next time we’re stuck in a sad cocoon. Less sad cocoon, more badass butterfly. NEW PLAN.

Since the beginning of this year I’ve lost 20 pounds and learned two hard things.

The first is that not everyone in your life will be supportive when you make a big lifestyle change. The second is that the way people act toward you is often less about you than it is about them.

But, let’s start at the beginning.

When I temporarily quit drinking for five weeks back in February, I had no idea that that one small decision would be the catalyst for an entirely new life. I quickly learned, however, that my acupuncturist had been right all along, that alcohol was the cause of my insomnia, and that not drinking meant that I could consistently sleep through the night for the first time in over six years.

After those five weeks were up, I tried drinking on a few different occasions over the next month and found that no matter what I drank, how much I drank, or when in the day I drank, alcohol made it impossible for me to sleep.

And so I quit – for good.

I stopped drinking at the beginning of May and have felt incredible in the three and a half months since. People keep asking me if I’ll ever drink again, and I’m sure I will, but not until my body learns how to play nicely with Champagne. Alcohol is great, but there isn’t a cocktail in the world that’s worth spending the entire night staring at the ceiling over.

Right about the time that I stopped drinking and started sleeping, I signed up for my first half marathon. I had never been a regular exerciser, but it’s amazing how much newly found energy I had to exercise once I started sleeping 7-8 hours a day. It felt like, literally overnight, someone had given me my life back. And so, in a very short time span, I went from drinking a lot/not sleeping/never working out to not drinking at all/sleeping like a teenager/working out six days a week to follow my half marathon training plan. After all of those changes, my astonishment at the rapid weight loss can only be explained by saying that sometimes, I am not The Smartest.

But – and here’s where things start to get tricky and emotional – I was completely unprepared for how many people would have opinions about the changes in my lifestyle and, more than anything, the changes in my body. Over the past month, I’ve had people go on and on about how great I look, which of course brings up the nagging inner monologue of, “So, you’re saying I didn’t look great before?” and a whole slew of other insecurities. These are my issues, of course, but I find it really hard to know how to respond when people say, “You’ve lost so much weight!” in a tone that’s more like an accusation than anything else.

And then there are the people who immediately question whether I’m eating enough, looking at me with an expression of fake concern that secretly says, “Well, she has to be doing something self destructive to lose weight like that.” In situations like this I feel incredibly defensive, almost as if I need to be armed with proof that I’m actually the healthiest I’ve ever been so that I can satisfy other people’s judgements, because it’s these kinds of judgements that make me want to punch people square in the ovary.

But, after enough close encounters with your inner ovary-punching demon, you realize that actually, you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone. Not about your body, not about your job, not about your love life, not about your hobbies, not about anything, because no matter how carefully you explain yourself, there will always be people who come charging at you with their very biased opinions. No matter what, there will always be someone out there who thinks you’re getting paid too much, working out too often, or getting married too early. But who cares? Stop trying to squish yourself under the umbrella of what someone else thinks is “right.”

You don’t have to try to make everyone understand why what you’re doing works for you. You don’t owe anyone a list of details, and you’re not owed their opinions in exchange. Just like that old quote that says, “other people’s opinions of you are none of your business,” it’s okay to make a decision that doesn’t allow for an entire chorus of tag-along opinions.

In other words, it’s okay to tell people to shut the fuck up once in a while so that you can focus on the voice that matters most: your own.

Over the past two weeks, I read the entire Harry Potter series for the first time. I’m now recovering from the severe eye strain caused by reading so many books so quickly – and in particular, from reading the 759 pages of the final book in just under 10 hours straight.

(Pro tip: 10 hours is too many hours to read without stopping unless your goal is to never be able to open your eyes again ever.)

For those of you who have long since finished the Harry Potter books: I know, I’m extremely late to this party. For those of you who haven’t read them yet: Ha, I win! But also, what are you waiting for?

You’re probably waiting because there are so many books, and some of them are so long, and it’s such a big commitment to read a series that’s guaranteed to be a giant time-suck. But I finger crossie promise you, it’s worth it.

If you’re like me, though, you aren’t so great with the moderation. This means that once you read the first sentence of the first book, you won’t have much of a life outside of Harry Potter until you finish the last sentence of the last book, because you’ll have to know what happens next and next and next. The upside of this is that Harry Potter makes your heart feel good. The downside is that you’ll quickly realize how boring your stupid ordinary life is, and you’ll be very sad when the books are over and no one around you is making cars fly or spontaneously morphing into a dog. See also: cooking dinner by bewitching knives to chop the ingredients, disappearing from one place and immediately appearing in another, regrowing broken bones, and fighting dragons. Nothing gives you street cred like fighting a fucking dragon.

In the hours after finishing the final book, I did a lot of crying – both about the overall emotional impact of the story and about the sadness of not having any more Harry Potter books to read.

(Yes, I’m very, very cool.)

I then proceeded to obsessively watch JK Rowling interviews online and cry even harder at the thought that she spent 17 years writing these books because a) how is it possible for someone to be that committed to anything? and b) how is it possible for someone to be that insanely talented??

Clearly, I have realistic aspirations and goals for my life if I’m overcome with crippling amounts of jealousy toward THE MOST SUCCESSFUL WRITER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.

I just, I can’t imagine what it would feel like to spend 17 full years working on something incredible enough to touch the lives and hearts of millions and millions of people. Not that my life’s work (or your life’s work) should be judged on a scale from one to JK Rowling, but the reality that there are people like her out there who can create something so astronomically stunning gives me a wicked case of the crazy eye.

And I guess that’s the takeaway for me in all of this; my experience of reading the Harry Potter books isn’t just about the passion and the whimsy and the fun of the story, it’s about being in awe of the person who created it. And really, it’s about being in awe of the creative process itself, and of the fact that we – each and every one of us – has the potential to create something that can change other people’s lives.

(Cue the uplifting and motivational soundtrack!)

Clearly I’m still having a lot of feelings about all of this, and I don’t really know what to do about it. The only thing I do know is that everyone should get the chance to experience the magical Harry Potter-ness for themselves, so I’m doing my part by giving away the complete series of books this week.

If you haven’t read the books and would like to win so you can commiserate with me over fantasy fiction induced eye pain and billionaire writer career envy, let me know in the comments. If you’ve already read the books and would like to win for someone else and do a double pay-it-forward, that’s totally okay too. I’ll pick a winner on Friday, and in the meantime I shall try very hard to resume a normal life in which I don’t randomly chant spells under my breath while feeling around the room for people covered in invisibility cloaks. Ahem.

{And the winner is… @KatharineS84!}

When I was single, I ate a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It was easy, I was lazy (read: hungover), and cooking was clearly not worth interrupting my dedicated “roam aimlessly around the internet” time.

Looking back, I can best define my single years by three things: vodka, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and spontaneous decisions. It’s no surprise that the vodka and the spontaneity often went hand in hand, and that in light of the excess of the two I was often left with just enough energy to force myself to eat PB&J while sprawled across the floor.

It’s a strange and freeing process, thinking about the details of who you used to be, and as James Bond and I celebrate our year-and-a-half anniversary this month, I’m feeling a little bit of shock at how much has changed in such a short amount of time.

They say that you can’t look to your partner to make you happy, and I believe that’s true. They say that you need to be a whole person on your own in order to be part of a successful relationship, and I believe that that’s true, too. But what they don’t tell you – what nobody seems willing to tell you – is that it’s also okay to work this stuff out with someone else by your side. It’s okay to admit that you’re the best version of yourself because of the person that you love.

And yet, there still seems to be a stigma of weakness surrounding these beliefs. It’s like, at some point during the drive down Feminism Road, a few people got out and put up sign posts declaring that being a strong, kickass woman meant that you had to stand completely on your own.

And it’s not just the issue of relationships. Lately, I’ve begun to notice some polarizing and not-so-nice groups popping up around the internet with all sorts of definitive opinions on what it means to be a woman. Clusters of people who believe so strongly that you have to breastfeed, or that you have to take time to travel abroad, or that you have to ditch your 9-to-5 in favor of an entrepreneurial career path, otherwise you’re a giant failure.

Seriously? Fuck that.

I might breastfeed and I might not. I might spend a year backpacking through South America and I might not. I chose the entrepreneurial route, but I also see a huge number of benefits in sticking with the alternative. And yes, being a strong woman means being responsible for your own happiness, but no one ever tells you that it’s okay to admit to being happier because of someone else. It doesn’t make you weak or cliche, it doesn’t make you less of a fucking rockstar, and it doesn’t mean that you need your man to complete you in some intense, Jerry Maguire kind of way. It just means that you’re your best self as a result of the growth you’ve done alongside someone else, and that’s okay.

You certainly aren’t any less you because you’re part of a we.

I thought that not drinking for five weeks would be the decision that solved all the other problems. I thought it would help me feel better, think better, and sleep better. I thought it would allow me to finally take a better look at what I want from every area of my life. Basically, I thought that after five weeks of sobriety, I would be this whole new person.

But hey, guess what, shit never works out like that.

The five weeks are over and I’m not a new person. Of course I’m not a new person. Why do we let ourselves believe that changing one thing will make all the difference? We aren’t one thing, we’re many things. We’re the sum of an overwhelming amount of parts, and it takes more than one small change to impact the whole of who we are.

What I realize, now that the five weeks of not drinking are over, is that taking space from alcohol wasn’t the final step in figuring things out, it was the first step. Not drinking was like clearing the weeds out of an incredibly overgrown garden, but just because the weeds are gone doesn’t mean that all of the sudden the garden is filled with bright yellow sunflowers. You can’t get rid of the weeds and nourish the soil and plant new seeds and grow something beautiful in the same step. It’s not a one step process; a lot has to happen between overgrown weeds and blooming flowers.

So that’s where I am right now. I’m free of the weeds, but I’m still in the soil. I’m restless and frustrated and impatient, and I’m struggling to decide what now and what next and what after that. I hate this, I hate being so fucking in it like this, because the only thing to do is to just keep moving, which isn’t always easy. But it’s the only option, right? When you’re stuck, the only way to get unstuck is to keep moving.

I’ve been repeating that to myself a lot lately, focusing on the fact that staying in motion doesn’t have to mean moving forward. We can’t know whether any one step has taken us forward or backward until we’re looking at it retrospectively, so why is there so much fear over making the wrong choice or taking the wrong step? Just choose, and step, and stop obsessing about right and wrong. Stop guessing which step will lead to which other step. We don’t know how we’re going to feel until we feel it, and we don’t know what we’re going to love until we try it.

So I’m trying new things. I’m thinking of projects and activities that might make me happy, and I’m doing them. I’m baking homemade oreos, playing with the new blog design that Jamie made for me, and having fun with my Twitter account that’s solely dedicated to tweeting quotes from my favorite TV show. Have those changes been magic? Of course not, just like the alcohol hiatus wasn’t magic, but they’re changes and actions nonetheless. And these actions, this fight to stay in motion, it’s the only way I know to hopefully overcome the restlessness and get out of the damn soil and into the sunflowers.

The only way to describe the mood I’m in right now is to say that if I lived alone, I’d rearrange all of the furniture and paint one of the walls orange.

Do you ever have those days? Where you’re looking around at your life and thinking, “Something has to change.” Not a big thing, necessarily, because I’m calm and happy about the big things, which means I must be restless somewhere down among the details.

Here’s the trouble: everything in my life right now can be categorized by the fact that I’m in either one of two places. Either I’m in the middle of a long-term thing, hitting that stretch of time where the initial high of starting something new is gone and the momentum of nearing completion is still a long ways off, or I’m two steps behind the starting line of the next idea, not crossing it because I’m scared or lazy or blocked or it’s just not time yet. I fucking hate when it’s just not time yet.

Restlessness is worse than any other feeling. It’s worse than sadness and anger and jealously and grief, because there isn’t any passion in being restless. There isn’t any heat or explosion, there’s just the slow twitching pull to do something, anything, to wake yourself up.

I feel like, in the most basic way, I’m starving for inspiration. What do you do when you’re starving for inspiration?

16 days ago, I quit drinking.

It was a Friday afternoon and I was walking home from my acupuncturist’s office, replaying our conversation about the negative impacts that alcohol can have on insomnia, and I asked myself what I was willing to give up in exchange for better sleep.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I couldn’t explain the role alcohol played in my life. And the more I thought about that, the more I realized that it wasn’t just my drinking choices that I couldn’t explain; I was having an embarrassing amount of trouble articulating why I do most of the things I do on a daily basis.

Have you ever had a moment like that? Where you look at the little parts that make up the sum of your life and realize that you have absolutely no idea why most of them are there? It’s fucking terrifying. I thought about my habits and behaviors and I wondered, “Why do I do that one thing? And that? And that?”

Frustratingly, I couldn’t find many answers. For most things, like drinking, it came down to the fact that I do what I do because I’ve been doing it for so long. I drink frequently because I’ve been drinking frequently for 7 years. That’s it, that’s the reason. And I don’t think it’s a very good one.

I decided to make a pro/con list about alcohol. In the end, I counted 14 things in the con column and only one thing in the pro column, which was “My favorite social situations almost always involve drinking.” I looked at the 14 negative things again, and then I asked myself, “Is drinking worth it?”

In a word, yes. I thought it over and knew I didn’t want to quit drinking permanently. What I wanted to do though, was put it down for long enough to let myself come up with better reasons for why I drink then, “because I’ve been drinking for seven years.”

I decided to stop for five weeks, acknowledging a principal I’ve come to believe is true, that in order to continue to fall in love with ourselves over and over again, we need to get in the habit of putting things in our life down for a while to reexamine what they’re doing there in the first place.

Over the past 16 days, I’ve thought a lot about drinking, something that’s caused me to put my other habits and behaviors under the internal microscope as well. With all of this active (and sober) thinking, I feel a little bit like I’m living in a self-discovery tornado, continuing to pull new things in for evaluation as I whiz by. It’s exhausting, and emotional, and the main question I keep coming back to is what role do I want drinking to play in my life at the end of these five weeks. I mean, if drinking is mostly a means to a social end, aren’t there lots of other paths I could take to achieve that same end? Ways that don’t have a 14:1 negative to positive ratio?

The conclusion I’ve reached is this: alcohol is a crutch. Meeting for drinks is the easiest activity to plan. The friends whose relationships I truly value are friends I have fun with no matter what we do, and we often have the most fun when we’re doing something more creative than paying too much money for too many drinks. I want to include drinking in my life, yes, but I don’t want one-dimensional friendships that revolve around an inevitable hangover.

With this in mind, there’s a quote I’ve been using to guide my choices lately, something Karen Karbo wrote in her deliciously lovely book The Gospel According to Coco Chanel. About mid-way through the book, after revealing that Chanel didn’t sketch her designs out on paper before creating them with fabric, Karen says, “Cut to the chase, don’t waste time doing stuff that seems to be essential to your life and business, just because other people do it. Why make nachos if what you really want to do is pick the browned shreds of baked cheddar off the cookie sheet? Just cook the cheese and be done with it.”

In other words: Cut to the chase, don’t feel like you have to use drinking as the main social activity just because other people do it. Why go to happy hour after happy hour in an attempt to deepen your friendships if what you really want to do is become good enough friends with someone that drinking isn’t a social necessity? Just invite people to go cheese tasting or skydiving or salsa dancing, have a glass of Champagne while you’re reminiscing about it afterward, and be done with it.

I had Nutella for lunch today. Not like a Nutella sandwich or a Nutella crepe. Just Nutella – on a spoon, in my mouth, for lunch.

At first, I was a real bitch to myself about it. I was all, “BATHING SUIT” and “CARDIAC ARREST” and “SERIOUSLY?!?”

Until I realized that, hey, it doesn’t matter.

Not just the “it” of eating Nutella for lunch, but most of the things we waste an inordinate amount of time obsessing over. Those things – you know, the ones you think about and feel bad about and give yourself an exceptionally hard time about? Yeah, those things. They don’t matter.

Why do we make everything such a big fucking deal? Why does it have to mean something if I eat Nutella for lunch? Or, more accurately, why does it have to mean something if I don’t?

What’s with the need to over-define every action?

Spending so much time online, I often catch myself half-consciously comparing my life to someone else’s life. Sure, comparison is inevitable if you’re going to be an active participant in the world, and it can help you keep a healthy check on yourself, but I’m not talking about that kind of comparison. I’m talking about the times when you look up and realize that you just spent the better part of an hour reading blog post after blog post about the life of a total stranger and are left feeling jealous and dissatisfied about your own life in comparison.

I read some blogs and think, “She’d never eat Nutella for lunch.” I read other blogs and think, “How can someone work out that much?” And then I read other blogs and think, “How can someone be that creative and adorable? Or that nurturing? Or that in love? Or that fearless?!” Or or or or.

But no one tells the whole story. It’s just not possible. I don’t tell the whole story, not because I’m trying to hide anything, but because there are so many more layers to who we are than there are words in a blog post, and things just naturally fall between the emoticons and get lost in transcription.

And yet, we beat ourselves up over even the smallest self-defined missteps and we forget that while we peek into the keyhole of someone else’s day to day, it’s just that, a peek. We get glimpses of each other, sometimes long ones, sometimes not, and we tell ourselves that it’s okay for these glimpses to serve as our barometer for a good life.

That doesn’t add up, does it?

I’m tired of all of the comparisons, and I’m tired of giving myself such a hard time over such insignificant things. So how’s this for a new rule: you’re allowed to do whatever you want, but only if you don’t carry it with you after you’re done. You can eat Nutella for lunch, but once you’re done eating it, be done eating it. It’s almost never the actual thing that’s the problem, it’s how we continue to be weighed down by the thing, even long after it’s over. That’s when we go comparison shopping for other people’s lives. That’s when we’re Mean Girl bitches to ourselves. That’s when we conveniently forget that if anyone else ever talked to us the way that we talk to ourselves, we’d dropkick them, no question.

So get your dropkick on. Live your fucking life. Leave everyone else’s lives out of it. Make more good choices than not good choices. Let go of the not good choices. Eat Nutella. Repeat.