The Girl

I’m Nicole Antoinette, and this blog is about my pursuit of a bullshit-free life.

If you’re someone who struggles with all the things you “should” do vs all the things you actually want to do, then yeah, you’ve definitely come to the right place.

Word of warning: we do a lot of swearing and all-caps yelling here, and if that’s not your thing then I hope the little x at the top of the browser doesn’t hit you in the ass on the way out.

Still with me? Magnificent.

If you’re new here, you should know that one of my most deeply held beliefs is that there’s always more than one way to get from point A to point B. Want to know a secret? The least direct routes are often the most interesting.

For instance, if you would have told me that I’d go from majoring in Food Studies at NYU to teaching cooking classes at Williams Sonoma to interning with an artisan chocolatier to spending 5 years as Director of a children’s summer day camp to co-owning a boutique web design firm to co-creating a lifestyle-inspired, design-focused iOS wallpaper app that was downloaded by over 100,000 people in its first week and a half on the App Store, I would have laughed in your face.

Which is to say: the road really is long with many a winding turn. Huh. Who knew?

So, given that you really can’t predict where you’re headed or what will happen, I feel pretty strongly that the best course of action is to make sure you’re always having fun along the way. Yeah, fun. You know, that shit you used to have as a kid when you ran naked through your neighbor’s sprinkler on a hot summer day. You need more of that. But I mean, maybe pick a different activity because I’m pretty sure your current neighbors aren’t going to be thrilled if a grown ass adult starts running naked through their azalea bushes.

[Legal note: If you do decide to strip down and run naked through your neighborhood, I accept zero responsibility for you. I would, however, very much like to hear the resulting story, so please make sure to send me a note at nicole{at}nicoleisbetter{dot}com once they let you out of jail.]

Now, since I’m pretty sure there’s no natural segue from public indecency charges to, well, anything else, here’s a totally disjointed list of shit you should know about me:

1. I live in Los Angeles with my boyfriend, who I refer to on this blog as James Bond even though he’s not British and doesn’t own a tuxedo. I know, I don’t understand myself either.
2. I have a food blog, a life list, an annual goal setting template, and a plan to sit down to lunch with 100 fascinating people before I turn 30.
3. If you’re reading this in March of 2012, it’s been 10 months since I quit drinking and 3 months since I started the process of building a completely sugar-free life. If you’re reading this later than March of 2012, I trust that you can do the math on your own.
4. I once did an unpaid internship with The Bloggess in which I was tasked to research porn movie titles, falcon hunting habits, and oddly shaped potatoes.
5. I’m an endurance runner who went from “never playing sports or doing anything even remotely athletic” to spending all of my money on races and running skirts. If you want to read about my most recent half marathon, click here. If you want to see a list of my favorite running gear, upcoming races, and PRs, click here. If you want to subscribe to my weekly running newsletter, Runner’s Brain, click here. If you want to avoid being gently peer pressured into running with me sometime in the near future, well, fuck, I think it’s probably too late for that. As all of my friends will tell you, I’m shockingly good at convincing people to do shit with me. They call it “The Nicole Effect.” I call it bullying done right.
6. I believe that obsession is a prerequisite for success and that you can learn a lot about someone just by asking what they’re currently obsessed with. The answer will change over time, because people change over time, but knowing what someone can’t stop thinking about is a pretty good litmus test for who they really are at any given moment. Right now, I’m obsessed with listening to the Twilight Saga on audiobook while I run. If you’re going to make fun of me for the Twilight thing, all I can say is “Oh well, sorry I’m not sorry.”
7. Other than running and vampires, my list of “shit I’m generally pretty interested in” includes: vintage dresses, truffle oil, buying new underwear to avoid doing laundry, sending emails written in all caps, talking about television characters as if they’re my real friends (HI, DEREK SHEPARD!), overdosing on peppermint tea, and finding people who can say “y’all” without sounding like total douchebags.

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If you’ve made it this far and still haven’t had enough of me yet, you can catch my real-time rants on Twitter (@nicoleisbetter). If you’d like to read my manifesto, you can find it here. If you’d like to jump in a Las Vegas fountain with me in May, you should sign up for Bloggers in Sin City. If you’d like to friend me on Facebook, please include a message telling me how many people you’ve slept with so I know that you came by way of this blog and are not trying to creepily pop up in front of my window on a random Tuesday morning. If you’d like to do the window thing, you should just ask. I’m all about surprises.

To sum up, here are my general public service announcements:

My public service announcement to the ladies is that leggings are not pants.

My public service announcement to the gentleman is that chivalry is not dead and that they should fucking hold the door open for me once in a while.

My public service announcement to my parents is that everything is probably their fault.