As we all know, I AM THIRTY. If you had asked me when I was in second grade what would be happening when I’m thirty, I probably would have said, “Umm… dying? That’s so OLD!” But as far as I know I’m not dying. Not quickly at least. So here I am, thirty, healthy, and still calling my dad when I get a notice in the mail that I don’t understand. The way I justify it is that honestly, he always knows what to do about it. Granted if I had a husband he might know what to do with it too, but as we all also know, I am a very good looking spinster. Now, I don’t really care to hear the feminists right now telling me about how it’s extremely sexist to assume my husband or dad should deal with confusing mail. You’re absolutely right. That being said, I still don’t want to deal with it. And in my experience, women tend to go, “Eww I don’t understand what this says!” And men tend to go, “Just call the DMV and make an appointment to renew your license.” We get overwhelmed. Okay, I’m getting off track here and feel like I’ve dug myself into a bit of a weird misogynistic hole.

Let’s get back to the topic at hand: Family. I’m extremely lucky that most of my family lives here in Los Angeles. When I’m sick my mom can bring me soup, when my dad is going to a dinner alone he can ask me to be his date, when I’m having a hard day I can go cry at my sisters house even if I’m not making sense. There is a constant flow of safety around me. And I find that I would rather be with them than with most anyone else. I don’t think there is room for anyone new to become my family. Think of us like an Italian family where if you skip Sunday dinner everyone starts screaming and throwing pasta and saying you’ve brought shame to the family name. Or even better, think of us like The Kardashians. Like, do you ever see Kourtney going on vacation with Scott’s weird family? No. The only person I could have a real future with is going to have to be an orphan. Also, I would kind of prefer it if he didn’t have his own friends either. Everyone else’s friends are WEIRD. Is there a world where a guy could have friends that I’m not just tolerating, but actually enjoying? It’s a tall order, I know. It’s just that, my family is A LOT. There are eight marriages just between my two parents, and it’s a full time job keeping everyone on speaking terms. And it’s a job I take seriously. Sometimes I feel like I owe it to someone to stick it out in the relationship just because they put in the time to learn everyone’s name.

Also, this is really important: I LOVE my family. And if I complain about them, you are not allowed to agree with me! Isn’t that a secret code that every human being learned at the same time we were learning not to punch people in the face? If we have been together less than ten years, you do not have the right to criticize my family. I mean, you can do it, but I’m always going to choose them. So, actually if you’ve been trying to break up with me for a while and didn’t know quite how to do it, that would be a really easy way. There are many safe ways to respond to me complaining about my family. You could say, “Ah, that sucks.” or “Yeah, I could see how that would be frustrating.” But, “Your dad sounds like a dick” is not one of them.

The post The Dirty Thirty: I’m Obsessed With My Family appeared first on HelloGiggles.

So, I like other people to pave the way for me. I’m not looking to be the first to do anything. Sure, I love the idea of it, but I just don’t have the follow through. I need to know what lies ahead. That being said, if the people I’m following started to get into some dark shit, I would have the confidence to lecture them on why I disapprove and then drop em ASAP. Like, if I lived in the sixties I would have definitely been burning some bras and screaming, “I’M NOT JUST A HOUSEWIFE!” And if I had lived in the fifties I’m pretty sure I would have paraded around holding hands with the only black guy in school, just to make a point. So, I’m not saying I’m following people into the depths of hell or anything, I’m just following them around in the book store.

Making a decision and sticking to it is very hard for me. I can be bullied into almost anything. Like, I know for sure how I feel about almost everything, but someone can convince me that those feelings just aren’t as important as what they are feeling. I mean, I have stayed in relationships with people I can’t stand, just because I don’t know how to break up with them. I’ve let people talk me back into staying with them even when I know my reasons are valid. I feel like a lot of people do that. Like, you go over to their house with one mission: Break up with this idiot. And then you calmly broach the subject with a sweet voice that comes from a very fake place, and you try desperately to pitch the break-up as something they are going to benefit from more than you are. But sometimes these people have been down this road before, they aren’t going to be dumped too easily. So they start trying to talk you out of it. I mean, WHO DOES THAT?! Listen people, I’ve been dumped as much as the next guy, but I honestly don’t think I’ve ever tried to talk anyone out of it. I’ve tried to REMIND them why they are going to miss me by possibly pulling my shirt down a little bit, but my desperation has all been in my actions, not my words. While my body language might have been saying, “I’m literally going to die the moment you leave this room,” my words have always said, (eye roll) “Whatever”. Have some pride. But most people aren’t gifted with my kind of maturity, so they try to talk you out of it. And you find yourself weighing out the factors. “Let’s see… The thought of having sex with this person makes me want to fake my own death, and every time he walks into the room I feel like I’m suffocating, but… He says he’s never been so happy and really thinks we make sense together… He’s right, I need to give it one more chance.”

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So, I’ve been here in on this tropical island for three days and I’m having a hard time relaxing. The first day I attributed it to the time change and just adjusting in general to a sudden vacation day on a Monday. But it’s now Thursday and I keep having to remind myself to relax. Am I that obnoxious that I don’t know how to just sit back and enjoy a free trip when it’s handed to me? Oh, I forgot to mention that this trip was free for me. The perks of inviting yourself on your sister’s family vacation.

Now, I understand that you might be struggling with feelings of not being happy for me or having a tough time feeling sorry for me, even, which I find rude. But I’m bringing it all back to something I think you might be able to relate to. All day, every day we are faced with small decisions. Forks in the road. Deal with this, or blow it off. Clean the mess, or leave it for later. Work or take a nap. Call the person I’m fighting with or push it to the back of my mind. Respond to that email or ignore it. Work out or find an excuse why you can’t. Pay the bill now or wait until the reminder comes….

I’m guilty of doing the latter on a lot of these. And sometimes when I feel torn between these kinds of decisions, I literally can sit at the end of my bed in a daze wondering how to take the first step. And they seem like simple steps. Like, incredibly simple. But something stops me from dealing. I can’t deal. I say that a lot. I CAN’T DEAL. What can’t we deal with? If you take them apart and look at them all separately, they are absolutely manageable. But sometimes I don’t know which one to do first, or I get mad that I have to do any of them at all. Not in an entitled way, but in a panicked way. In a way that it feels like life is pushing so fast and so constantly that I think if I just sit at the end of my bed and zone out, it will all go away. Or that the next day I might wake up as someone who is highly skilled at DEALING. But that day doesn’t come. What comes are moments of clarity when I emotionally slap myself in the face and get it together.

What we don’t see are how these things pile up. How, when enough of them haven’t been dealt with, you find yourself on an island in The Bahamas and you don’t know how to relax. Being able to relax is the result of one of two things; A. Having dealt with your shit or B. Being in denial. Plenty of people are relaxed that shouldn’t be. They just float through life without a care in the world, while meanwhile, their life is a wreck. But these people think they have a free pass. They think they can talk their way out of the mess. They think they can trick the universe into forgetting them. Or the IRS.

I know this is a little pretentious of me, but there’s a Robert Frost quote that I have next to my bed, that I think is the most important lesson of all. It says, “The best way out is always through.” When there is something that needs to be dealt with, you have to go right through the middle. You can’t tip toe on the edge. There is one way in and one way out, and it’s best to rip the band aid off. Run through the middle, where it is the darkest and hardest. I’ve been avoiding things lately. And it’s taken a toll. I was supposed to be practicing my meditation on this trip. I was supposed to be doing yoga every day. I was supposed to be writing. Guess what I’ve been doing the whole time instead? (See above picture.)

But it’s never too late! We have to not be too hard on ourselves. We are human, after all, and it’s that voice in our head that gets frustrated with ourselves which keeps us doing the right thing. It keeps us in check. I always have that voice giving me a hard time. And she’s such a bitch. She’s like little miss perfect. She expects me to always do the right thing. She expects me to apologize to people, and to be kind, and to swallow my pride ALL THE TIME. And to believe in myself. And to work hard. And she’s always right.

Relax. But do the work it takes to get there.

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I used to love to say that I was an Atheist. I was a little obnoxious as a child. And teenager. And young adult. (I’m currently perfect.) I just really liked the way it made people act when I said it. They were so offended by it. I always felt like, if you are so sure about your beliefs than it shouldn’t matter if I don’t believe in them. I’ll be the one burning for my sins at the end of the day. Eventually as I got a little older and wiser and softer, I realized I don’t love being someone who doesn’t believe in anything. Maybe I could find something to believe in. So I threw that into the pile of things I needed to work on which also included road rage and waiting until the last minute to pay my cable bill.

The first thing I found myself believing in was yoga. I can’t get myself to a gym, I just can’t do it. Everyone there is the worst. There are too many mirrors everywhere and too many dudes flexing and coming up with ridiculous reasons to talk to you, and too many treadmills, and too many people sweating, and too many hyper trainers, and too many people who are in better shape than me. No thanks. Then there is yoga. Ahhhh the peaceful and non competitive world of yoga. Where no one talks to you. Where no one is on their bluetooth asking their manager for feedback on their audition. Where no one looks at your ass and says “You’re getting there!” Yoga. The positions they ask you to be in, the length of time you have to hold them, the heat from the room, it all makes it impossible to think of anything else besides just getting through it. So, by the end of that hour or so I realize I haven’t invested any time into thoughts about my ex boyfriend who I hate, or that writing I was told “isn’t quite there yet”, or that weird thing my friend said to me that felt passive aggressive, or my mom saying she’s sad, or my bank statement saying I have a lot less in there than I thought I did. None of that has room in my little brain which can only handle thoughts of not passing out while holding warrior 2. So, I found something to believe in. Maybe it’s not a religion, or a tangible connection to God, but it was certainly a good start.

Then my yoga instructor invites me to come to a meditation class. And I’m like, whatever I have to do to have your mellow energy just tell me and I will do it. She smiles so much and I scowl so much, I figured it’s best to follow her lead on this one. I had always thought of meditation as sitting and being quiet while your mind forcefully ran images of the most negative things you could think of and then you feel ashamed of not being able to quiet your mind. At least that’s what it had always been for me. Turns out I was doing it wrong. I sat through a guided meditation and when we finished I felt like I had been hypnotized (If you read my posts faithfully then you know I’ve been hypnotized before). I felt like I was floating. I was shocked at how I had been able to cooperate and not imagine people getting murdered the whole time. Maybe I could do this? At the very least I was going to try.

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I always tell people that I’m not competitive. “Oh, I’m just not a competitive person,” that’s how I say it. I learned to say that I’m not competitive early in my life when I realized that I was really bad at many things. I was never someone that people would refer to as someone who “does everything well”. In fact, I became known for my failures. I think that’s when I started leaning on being funny. See, I had a sister, I still have her (can’t get rid of her) who was just a year and a half older than me and was one of those irritating people who did everything well.

We were put on the same club soccer team for six straight years. Every single year she made it to the All Star team. Every year I did not. In fairness to the coach, whenever he put me in the game I would get really overheated and my face would turn red and I would mouth to him, “TAKE ME OUT.” It was just too damn hot out there. After a game of less than mediocre performance from myself I would think, well it’s not like I want to be a professional soccer player, I just like hanging out with my cool sister and our neighbor who’s on the team, and I love the orange slices that my mom keeps cold on the side lines. It stopped bugging me that I was bad.

Soon I would discover that I was also alarmingly bad at tennis (also takes place in the heat), running, swimming, tag, softball… and it wasn’t just sports. I was also terrible at Math, Science, listening, focusing, spelling, testing, and remembering. Oh, then there is the story of my piano lessons. See, my dad is a musician. Like, a really good one. He has a weird savant thing where he was playing piano at three and has perfect pitch, and all these things really should be genetic. So, he had me take piano lessons. We wanted to see if there was possibly some genius lurking inside of me. So, I took the lessons after school for months. Honestly, I didn’t like it. But I loved the idea that maybe there was a secret talent hidden in me and maybe it would just come through my fingers without me having to really do anything. I was expected to perform a recital. So, I prepared the song I was going to play and my dad came to watch. I remember this so clearly. I finished the song without any obvious mistakes, and I noticed my dad standing in the back of the auditorium. I walked right up to him. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “Well, you can quit piano lessons. You don’t have it.” I felt two things in that moment. Relief and shame. I don’t think I need to explain to you why I felt those. When I tell that story to people they seem to view my dad as a bit of a monster, but I don’t see it that way at all. When he was a kid he felt like he would die if he didn’t play music. He broke his hand once when he was little and was instructed to not play piano for six weeks. He didn’t know how to stay away from it though, so he kept playing, and the cast had to keep getting moved up further on his arm to stop him from playing. I didn’t feel that way about piano. He wanted me to go find the thing that I would keep doing even if someone said I couldn’t do it anymore.

The post The Dirty Thirty: Things I’m Bad At & Lie About appeared first on HelloGiggles.

So, my sister hired this sweet retired man who we call Builder Rick, to build Valentina a playhouse in the back yard. He comes every morning with a packed lunch and V watches as he nails the walls in, and turns a bunch of wood into a little house. She looks out and says, “Poopoo Jeff is making my house!” She won’t call him Builder Rick, she will only call him “Poopoo Jeff”. And she laughs every time she says it, like poop jokes aren’t completely dated and tired.

Saturday morning when I woke up at my sister’s house (my apartment is so lonely on the weekends!) I took my coffee and sat outside with Valentina to watch Builder Rick do his thing. He saw how natural I was with her. How effortless being a mother will be for me. How patient and loving I am to this little growing weird person. He said, “How many kids do you have?” Okay, that is NO WAY to start a conversation with a girl who is used to being asked if she is Taylor Swift. He thought I looked like I could have SEVERAL children? I said, “Oh, I don’t have any kids yet.” He looked at me with genuine compassion. “Well… that’s okay. People are having kids later and later these days.” Okay, Poopoo Jeff, I am not having kids LATER in life. I am right on target with my goals. I JUST turned thirty (seven months ago) (Fact added by editor to maintain accuracy on our site) and if I were to have a baby right now I would feel like a YOUNG ass mom. In fairness to Builder Rick, he saw me very early in the morning. That’s the only excuse I can come up with.

But truthfully, here’s what I think. I was born to be a mom. I know that. But also, when I was eight I thought I was born to be a cashier because I loved pushing buttons that made cool sounds. Turns out I’m terrible at math, so there went that dream. And when I was fourteen I thought I was born to be a poet, and now when I remember that my old poems are sitting in a stack in my hall closet it makes my throat tighten because I know how terrible they are. Most of my “no negotiating, this is what I want and I’m SURE” decisions have been ridiculous. Like, I decided to die my hair red for six years. Six years! I thought it looked so good! Upon reflection, it did not.

When I was twenty-seven I thought I was ready to be a mom, and then this week I feel like I’m not ready. I’d like to be a little more sure about it when I make that decision. And maybe the decision decides me. Like, I’m just going to be straight with you guys, I’ve never gotten pregnant. I’ve never even had a scare. Like, I haven’t even almost been a mom yet. And I really don’t know what I would do if it happened. Because I don’t think I could not go through with it at this point in my life. But I also really like being skinny. It’s such a tough decision. I really hope that guys who are considering going on a date with me read this first! It’ll just help us get past that standard, normal first date convo where he’s like, “Would you get an abortion now that you’re thirty?” and I’m all like, “Let’s have sex and find out!”

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The good people are at the bottom, being stepped on by the assholes who are always at the top. I went through a phase (okay it lasted the majority of my life so far) where I was like, just do whatever you want, the universe doesn’t give a f***. The universe won’t do anything about it. The worst people I know have the biggest house. The most selfish people get everything they want because people are afraid to stop them. What was the point of me stressing over every tiny moment when I thought I had made a selfish decision or possibly hurt someone’s feelings? It was clearly just a waste of time. I should just park my car in the handicap space, toss my keys to the parking officer and say, “I’m selfish and I’m rich! What are you gonna do about it?!”

Okay, maybe I didn’t want to be that awful, but I was also sick of being the only one who seemed to be losing any sleep over making sure I was being a good person. It was like, why am I so worried about everyone else, but no one is worried about ME! WHAT ABOUT ME?! Now, I know that came across a little bit selfish, which is ironic, but maybe I’m not always the evolved specimen you want me to be. Maybe I was doing it all wrong. Which would be weird. Because I feel like I do everything right. But it’s kind of cute that I had this one little flaw.

So I’ve learned two things:

1. Karma can be very subtle.
2. Don’t be so f***ing worried about what’s going on with someone else.

Karma is real. But it doesn’t work the way most people want it to. Karma doesn’t exist because life is fair. Let’s be really clear about this; Life is not fair. Sometime’s you get your heart broken, sometimes you struggle, sometimes you aren’t chosen. And there isn’t always a bigger reason for why it happened. And sometimes you think you are unlucky, but you have no idea how much luck you have. The fact that you are reading this on a computer already puts you ahead of 70% of the world, so let’s keep your complaining to a whisper. Like I said before, Karma is a subtle thing. You steal something, you don’t walk outside and get hit by a bus. But you set something in motion. Something negative. You have something to hide. Something to lie about. Something to defend. You are not trustworthy.

The post The Dirty Thirty: Knock Knock, It’s Karma appeared first on HelloGiggles.

Disclaimer: I really don’t think I’m a dramatic person. That being said, I had my first panic attack this week. I say “my first”, because I always kind of assumed it was bound to happen. It’s not like I ever thought being a person who gets nervous easily, who gets scared easily, who stresses over tiny decisions, its not like I thought me being that person could escape it all finally catching up with me. But it did. And it was NOT fun. So, I’ve been analyzing over the last few days, what it could be that I’m panicked about. Because it’s never the obvious stuff. It’s that deep dark shit that we don’t talk about.

And truthfully, I don’t usually have too much deep dark unspoken, off-limits stuff, because I talk about everything. I won’t shut up about my feelings. Everyone knows how I feel about everything. Sorry about that, everyone. So, what was hiding that needed to come out so badly that I thought I was going to die? Like, literally die. This is why I needed to explain to you how I’m not a dramatic person. Because I thought this anxiety was going to kill me. Dead. I thought about what I was wearing when it happened and was like, “Ugh, I’m gonna be found in my wide leg, draw string, capri pajama pants? They are my LEAST flattering of the pajama pants. Worst death outfit ever.” And I didn’t even know what I was upset about. My heart was racing so fast it was just one long heart beat, and I’m sweating, and I’m pacing, and I’m trying to crawl out of my skin, but I don’t know how. And all the while I’m thinking to myself, I can’t think of one single thing that I’m actually upset about. There isn’t one new factor in my life that is bumming me out. No rejection from a guy, no argument with a friend, no blood test I’m waiting to hear back about…

But I think I’ve figured it out now.

There is a period of time when we are allowed a free pass. We fail a math test because we’re in eighth grade and who cares. We sleep in until noon because we’re sixteen and just leave us alone. We get lazy at work because we’re twenty-three and it’s a job we aren’t passionate about. But at a certain point, we’ve run out of free passes and we have to be accountable for every single decision we make. There is no room for error. No one is asking you what you want to be, they are asking you what you are doing. Right now. What are you doing? Are you great at it? Are you making a difference? A lot of people are doing something important. Are you? Are you productive every day? Are you always working towards something bigger?

When I was twenty-one and I voiced an opinion or perspective on something, people would say things like, “You’re so far ahead of other people your age. You’re going to be great.” But now I’m at the age where I’m supposed to be doing that great thing. Am I living up to what people expected from me? Because now is the time. And I’m always trying, I’m always pushing myself, but sometimes I just want to get back in bed and tell you to leave me alone.

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