Do you ever look at the calendar and think about the unbelievably fast passage of time and wonder, “Whaaaat? How?” Yeah, I’ve been having that reaction all week, because somehow an entire year has gone by and this Tuesday was my sober-versary, which means I haven’t had alcohol in over three hundred and sixty five days.

A few years ago, if you would have told me that this is the path my life would take, I would have looked at you like you had thirteen eyes. I would have shaken my head and declared, “Nope, never.” But, just as our mothers warned us, never say never, right? Because truly, this would have been the biggest “never” of all. I “never” would have quit drinking. Not me, not the girl who hosted all the happy hours and cocktail parties. Who drank bottles and bottles of wine with her friends. Who was notorious for spontaneously getting drunk on patios in the middle of the day. Nope, not her. She could “never” do this.

And yet…

When I first found out that alcohol was the cause of my maddening 6-year run of insomnia, I was relieved. After all the doctors and all the sleeping medications and all the attempted “cures,” I finally had an answer. No alcohol, no insomnia – simple as that. And at first, sleeping for 7 or 8 hours at a time felt like the most delicious gift I’d ever been given. I’d wake up every day and think, “Is this how normal people feel?” and wonder why everyone else wasn’t running around curing cancer and solving all the world’s problems with this giant surplus of energy. But, like everything else that’s shiny and new, sleeping through the night quickly became my regular routine and soon I wasn’t quite so appreciative of my nocturnal gift.

Around the time that sleeping became my norm, I started to lose my mind a little bit. My mind, and my identity. I had chosen sobriety as a means to an end, but I hadn’t given any thought to all the little strongholds that alcohol had on my life and the fact that I’d have to deal with each and every one of them. For the next six months, I tried to make sense of my feelings and of who I was without alcohol. Was I still as fun? As outgoing? As interesting? I had to relearn social behaviors – sober – and I had to come to terms with the fact that I was the only person I knew who was making this choice. I also had to accept that my 6-year coping mechanism was gone, and acknowledge for the first time that quitting drinking wasn’t just “an easy thing to do because it meant I got sleep in exchange.” Worth it? Yes. Easy? Not at all.

For those first six months, I still treated what I was doing like an experiment. In the back of my mind, I assumed I’d be able to start drinking again someday, and I told myself that this period of alcohol abstinence was temporary. Sometime between that six month point and now, though, I’ve come to realize that that’s not true. I’m not just giving up alcohol for a little while, I’m giving it up forever. If this was just about sleeping, I wouldn’t be so sure. But it’s not. It’s about the realization I had a few months ago that almost every bad decision I’ve ever made has been fueled by alcohol. And fuck, I’ve made a lot of bad decisions. I’ve done a lot of messed up things that could have hurt a lot of people if I wasn’t as good at secrecy as I was at drinking all the drinks, and I’m not okay with that. I’ve gotten myself into some pretty dangerous situations, and I’m not okay with that, either. Do I blame alcohol? Yes, no, kind of. I don’t know. I think people are still responsible for how they act when they’ve been drinking, especially since they chose to drink in the first place, but I also know that we often make mind-bendingly stupid intoxicated decisions that we’d never make in the crystal light of a sober morning. One look at my sloppy, drunken track record is all it takes to prove that.

Now, though, my entire life is a crystal-bright sober morning. I’m finally free of the cycle of self-destructive behavior followed by massive guilt followed by drinking again as an escape from that guilt, and overall I feel amazing. Not to mention that I’m pretty much well-rested all the time, and as I’ve thankfully been able to learn firsthand, sleep really does make everything better.

I’m still deeply troubled by some of my past decisions, but I’m working on that. A few days ago, on the phone with the person who – other than me – was undoubtedly the most impacted by my bad drunken choices, I finally asked the question that’s been on my mind all year.

“Did I completely fuck you up? I mean, do you look back on those years and feel like I ruined your life?”

He thought for a moment. “No,” he said carefully. “But those last few months, at the end, those were pretty awful.”

“Yeah,” I responded gently. “For me, too.”

And that was that. Because, as much as we might want to, we can’t change what we can’t change. Even with all of my newfound clarity, I can’t go back and undrink and undo and wrap the past up with a pretty little bow. All I can do, really, is be grateful for my insomnia-inducing allergy to alcohol that caused me to take the infamous road-less-traveled and wind up here, three hundred and sixty five days later, finally making decisions that won’t lead to future conversations about whether or not I’ve ruined someone else’s life. And from where I’m sitting, that feels like an enormous amount of progress.

So, yeah, I basically spent the entire weekend recovering from Bad Mood Friday. It all started first thing that morning, when I got up so far on the wrong side of the bed that you’d think the bed had been moved to hell in the middle of the night. And, you know, maybe it was. That would explain a lot, actually.

Nothing was wrong – not really. It’s not like I was actually upset about anything in particular, it was just one of those days. You know, the kind where everything is infuriating and all you want to do is lay on the floor and hide because you’re thinking, “HATE ALL THE PEOPLE AND ALL THE THINGS FOREVER AND EVER NO MATTER WHAT.”

It’s a good, healthy mental space to be in, I’ll tell ya.

The worst part about it, though, is that OF COURSE that would be the day I wind up comparing myself to everyone else and feeling like shit about my whole entire life. Yep, my whole entire life. YOU SEE? I HAZ ALL THE DRAMATIC FEELINGS. Have you ever had those moments, though? Where you’re reading someone else’s blog or going through their career achievements and feeling all of the raging jealousies? Where you’re all, “This person wrote a book and that person is profiled in The New York Times and that person over there was just asked to speak at a prestigious conference and that company just got bought for 200 million dollars and holy shit I haven’t written a book or been asked to speak anywhere and I don’t even read The New York Times and I’m not entirely sure I could accurately count to 200 million and therefore I fail at life and am a completely worthless human. HOORAY!”

Yeah, Friday was the day of the raging jealousies. And like, the worst part is that I know these types of life-to-life comparisons are useless. I’ve written about this before, about the fact that we truly have no idea what’s going on behind the public internet showing of someone else’s life, and yet it’s so easy to compare the inner workings of our own lives to the often carefully constructed view of everyone else’s. Those feelings are normal, though, and I have to assume that, no matter how emotionally/mentally/spiritually stable you are, sometimes you slip into crazy comparison mode and kick up a whirlwind frenzy of jealousy inside your head.

The real issue, then, isn’t whether or not you compare your life to someone else’s, because that’s totally inevitable from time to time. The real issue is how you handle it. Do you stay up until 3am watching sad episodes of Grey’s Anatomy in the dark and thinking about how everyone else is loved and how you’ll be alone for the rest of your life? Been there. Do you eat ice cream and cry after deciding that everything you’re working on is pointless because you’ll never be as successful as x person? Done that. And then comes the best part. You know, that part while you’re in the midst of being terribly upset about the “failures” of your own life and then you start giving yourself a hard time about comparing yourself to other people in the first place. You’re all, “STOP IT! OBSESSING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVES ISN’T GOING TO HELP YOU LIVE YOUR OWN.” So then on top of feeling sad and discouraged, you’re also feeling guilty because you’re fucking YELLING AT YOURSELF.

It’s an awesome cycle, huh?

But, this weekend I had a mini breakthrough. (THANK GOD FOR MINI BREAKTHROUGHS!) I realized that, sure, while blindly comparing yourself to other people makes for an emotional train wreck, there’s actually some good that can come from the raging jealousies if you’re able to get to the heart of what’s really going on.

With this in mind, I sat down and created a Raging Jealousies List. I wrote out the handful of people who I most often find myself playing the comparison game with, and then I wrote down why I’m jealous of each one of them. That’s the key, I think, to look at the “why” instead of the “what.” Knowing what you’re jealous of is helpful, but knowing why you want it – what it would mean to you to achieve something similar – is infinitely more useful. My Raging Jealousies List helped to show me where my otherwise out-of-the-blue feelings were coming from and, most importantly, it allowed me to see which jealousies were the result of real things I wanted to pursue and which jealousies were just based on my needy little ego. After making the list, I was able to go back through it and cross off a bunch of stuff that I realized I don’t actually want (or at least, don’t want right now), and fuck, that was absurdly freeing.

At the end of it, I was left with 6 different jealousies that actually resonated with me (as opposed to the, ahem, TWENTY EIGHT that I started with), and now I actually feel like I can get to work on moving those 6 things from my jealousies list to my “shit that’s just a normal part of my life” list. And I mean, it’s a whole new day and a whole new week and a whole new month, so it should be as good a time as any to start making some effing dreams come true, right?

COME ON, APRIL. LET’S DO THIS.

It’s been a little over a month now since I decided to give up sugar and started working to build a sugar-free life. I know I made the right choice (in a lot of ways, I actually think I made the only choice) but so often the right choice is the hardest choice and you have to go through hell before you come out on the other side.

And so, predictably, I’m in hell right now.

There’s the physical part of it, the part where I’m literally detoxing from sugar and then re-detoxing from sugar every time I either slip up and eat it or accidentally eat it at a restaurant because, by the by, sugar is hidden in fucking EVERYTHING.

(Hi! I have a lot of resentment & anger to work through about this sugar stuff!)

Sigh. Deep breath.

Anyway, as far as the physical aspect of the process goes, I’m finding a lot of comfort in Kathleen DesMaisons book, Potatoes Not Prozac, which provides an absurdly clear breakdown of how a sugar sensitive person’s brain chemistry works and what it means for me to have lower serotonin and beta-endorphin levels than “normal” people. Learning that abstaining from sugar is so much more than just an issue of willpower has been an enormous relief, and I’m finding that with the science behind sugar sensitivity, knowledge isn’t only power for me, it’s a life raft. The book moves from the science itself to a 7-step program to heal sugar addiction (I’m currently on step 2), and if you’re at all interested in this process I 100% recommend Kathleen’s book.

On top of the physical struggle, though, there’s the mental and emotional struggle, and I’m finding this part, with its lack of 7-step programs and scientific data, to be the most hellish of all. I’m working with a sugar-addiction coach every other week, and she’s unbelievably helpful, but right now it still feels like the best I can do is to just avoid drowning in my rough riptide of seemingly impossible questions. “How do I change the way I’ve been eating for almost 27 years?” “How do I live this way without threatening other people and constantly having to explain myself?” “Will a birthday without cake and a holiday season without sugar cookies make me feel depressed and deprived?” And, most difficult of all, “WHY CAN’T MY BODY PROCESS SUGAR LIKE EVERYONE ELSE’S AND SAVE ME ALL THIS GODDAMN PAIN?!”

Like I said, there’s some decidedly unsubtle anger & resentment, not to mention a lot of tantrum throwing and self pity, but I have to trust that it’s just part of the process. Another part of the process is the not-so-occasional breakdown, the kind where I’m hysterical and dramatic and yelling that, “OHMYGOD THIS IS AWFUL AND I’M NEVER GOING TO FEEL BETTER AND MY LIFE SUCKS AND IT’S GOING TO SUCK FOREVER AND EVER AMEN.”

Anyone up for a sugar-free playdate? I’M SO MUCH FUN TO BE AROUND RIGHT NOW. But, again, I have to just keep telling myself that eventually, it’s going to get better. I mean, it has to, right??

Thinking back over my past experiences, I’ve found that the easiest way to describe how I’m feeling about giving up sugar is to compare it to a breakup, one of those curtains-drawn-wailing-sobs-positive-you’re-never-going-to-move-on-ever-again breakups where the world is dark and your every thought reads like a Joni Mitchell song. I went through a breakup like that once, seven years ago, and I’ll be the first to admit that at the time, I never thought I’d be okay again. But, as the cycle goes: things change, time passes, and we heal.

Two weeks ago, in fact, I saw my Painful Breakup Ex for the first time in years, and it was a delightful relief to find that I didn’t feel anything other than happy about it. Happy to catch up, happy to know he’s in a great relationship, just… happy. No lingering pain, no hoping for attention, nothing. Just happy. And man, if you tried to go back and tell my hot mess of a mid-breakup self that that’s how it would turn out, I never would have believed you. Because what I really needed, more than encouragement and assurances from the future, was time.

So I guess what I’m saying here (more to myself than anyone else) is that time really does heal all the things. No matter what you’re going through, if you just keep going, keep paving the path of your life with one good decision after another, things will get better. You’ll get through your breakup, your illness, your job loss, your detox. You’ll get through it. You’re already getting through it, you just can’t see that you’re a quarter of the way there or halfway there or even almost there, simply because you aren’t “there” yet. But you’ll do it, you’ll arrive, and then you’ll look back and want to hug the you you are right now and whisper, “Just keep fighting, honey.” I mean, that’s all we can do, right? Keep fighting, keep plunging ahead through all the painful shit, reminding ourselves over and over again that even if we don’t feel like we’re making progress, we are. Because that’s the thing: progress usually doesn’t feel like progress as it’s happening. True progress isn’t sexy. We can’t see how each little action and each individual day fits together to form the big picture of our recovery, but without those actions and those days, recovery would be impossible. So we keep fighting, knowing that we’ll be in hell for a while – maybe a long while – but that eventually, we’ll get to the powerful place on the other side of hell: freedom.

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.