[Or, "USE MORE."]

I couldn’t afford this when I bought it. But I bought it anyway. And as it turns out, I’m a Gucci-lover’s worst nightmare.

This, the only luxury product I own, has been repeatedly dropped in parking lots, dumped indiscriminately onto soiled surfaces, spilled on, stepped on, and once, it was drunkenly thrown off a 4th floor balcony, where it hit somebody’s head before falling into the street below.

It’s tattered, stained, dingy, and unraveling.

And I love it.

A “Better Woman” with pearls and a coral pencil skirt might be horrified if I removed this beast from my purse to purchase a fancy coffee. Maybe she’d burst into laughter at the expense of the irresponsible 28-year-old child standing in front of her with no socks on and shorts with a grass stain on the side and smeared hangover eyeliner that makes her look like a crazed raccoon. Maybe she’d think that I’ve desecrated an item that was too good for me to begin with.

But, hold on.

Isn’t the reason I made this completely luxurious and ridiculously unnecessary purchase so that I could use it?

The idea that I’ve somehow wasted upwards some 400-something dollars by pushing this piece of leather and fabric to its physical limit seems… not like a waste at all.

This tank of a pocketbook came with me everywhere I went for 7 solid years. It was with me through 9 apartments, 4 cities, 2 continents, and about a hundred thousand cruddy bar bathrooms (rough estimate). I loved this thing hard, and it loved me back.

And when it finally came time to retire its number, I felt satisfied that I squeezed every ounce of usableness from its dapper leather soul.

Still, I get caught up in the stuff-worship cycle. My iPhone screen was exposed to Earth air for approximately 15 seconds before I suffocated it in a screen-like protective sleeve. I hesitate before cracking the spine of a brand new book, or before setting a pen down on the blank pages of a freshly purchased notebook.

But then, I think about my little Gucci wallet, or my favorite book, all tattered and torn, or those awesome lived-in designer jeans I got purple paint all over, and I know that there’s nothing more satisfying than bringing an item into your life and loving it beyond recognition.

Our instinct is often to hoard the new. To keep that new car smell or to keep the pages of a brand new book un-dogeared.

To save our best ideas for a rainy day, for when we’re older, for when we’re ready.

But if my best stuff never sees the light of day, does it even exist in the world outside my head at all? Did I even get to use it? Or enjoy it? Or live it? If my best idea never gets executed, is it even mine to own?

When I was 8, I had this idea that I thought would make me famous. I was convinced that people would eat this idea up, be moved to tears, and then, I’d be famous like Connie Chung and I would buy the most amazing pog collection in the world.

And 20 years have now gone by, and my idea’s been done and done well, without me ever speaking a word of it to anybody.

I’m determined to never let a good idea go to waste anymore. Never to let something I invested time, money, or effort into sit on a shelf, hidden from the world.

So, take the plastic wrap off the remote control, pull the tags off that swanky new outfit, and hit the publish button on your new website — then, use these things to their maximum useableness. Until you can’t possibly squeeze a single more day, a single more use, a single more iteration out of it.

Wear the stains, the failed attempts, and the broken pieces as a badge of honor. A tribute to where you’ve been, how hard you’ve lived, and where you’re going next.

But for fuck’s sake, leave the screen protector on your iPhone — I’ve seen one of those things protect a screen from the teeth of a snowplow.

(Or, 10/52: Embrace MORE)

My reality, since I was a little kid, has been defined by me assuming I’m pretty fucking lame. And not in that cool Star Wars-y, PBR-drinking, I’m-such-a-nerd kind of way.

I spent a lot of time trying to surround myself with people who are somewhere higher up on the cool-and-put-together meter.

7-year-old me would hang around the cool kids’ houses and watch them do things I assumed were so much better than the things I could do. I’d watch kids beat video games I didn’t own, I pretended to know what a boner was so that I wouldn’t have to have the joke explained to me, and I’d make mental notes about what to order at the ice cream truck (Bomb Bags and Ninja Turtle popsicles, yes; vanilla ice cream cup with wooden spoon, sadly no).

Once, I brought my Littlest Pet Shop playset over to my mom’s friend’s house. She wanted to visit with her friend, who supposedly had a daughter close to my age. Turns out, girls age a lot quicker outside of the suburbs, and I ended up hiding behind a book eavesdropping on her phone conversation with a boy, when really, I just wanted to go home and play with my brand fucking new pet shop toys (THERE WERE TINY PLASTIC DOG FOOD CANS THAT NEEDED SHELVING).

When I got older, I hid Disney soundtracks behind my Janet Jackson CD, and never ever told anybody I knew in real life about my sweet Geocities website with all the twirling Calvin and Hobbes gifs and the sparkling galaxy wallpaper that I lovingly tended to every single day.

Eventually, I became pretty good at covering up my uncool bits.

But after 28 years of life, I’m finally realizing what a waste that is. It’s tiring, it’s confusing, and every time I find myself getting suckered into doing someone else’s favorite thing, I feel just like that dorky little girl eyeing her Littlest Pet Shop playset in the corner while fake-laughing along with a conversation that’s not even mine.

It’s taken me a little too long to realize that we’re all kind of suspiciously eyeing each other, assessing each others’ traits and wondering what we can do to be on the same level. Subtly one-upping one another, or nodding along to avoid confrontation, or dropping little clues into the conversation that scream “validate me!”

Choosing traits we see in others that we want for ourselves, ignoring the traits they see in us.

For the last several years, I’ve been happy to be surrounded by people who are – in some way – cooler than me. Taller. Less spazzy. With better taste.

They’re usually well-versed in the Correct Bands and Fashions of the Moment, they’re full of interesting and intelligent things to add in conversations, they’re caught up on HBO shows that I don’t fully understand, they look over 50% presentable when outside in public, and when they don’t, they aren’t all self-conscious and weird about it. Smart, self-assured, successful people who make life look effortless and fun, all the time.

But the more I hang around the lives of The Cool, I realize that I’ve conveniently overlooked the fact that being awesome at something doesn’t mean that you’re not also a total spaz at times, too. That once the intellectually stimulating dinner conversation is over, everybody parts ways and goes home relieved that they can finally let out a fart.

Regardless of whether we lounge around our houses in drape-y kimonos or 13-year-old jeans with a hole in the crotch, we’re all just outcast losers waiting for our moms to finish talking so we can go home and play Littlest Pet Shop without being judged by the junior high girl with graffiti on her bedroom wall and totally too much lipliner.

All that really matters is that you take those moments when you feel inferior, lame, or socially inept, and instead of retreating sadly into your cave of loneliness, you reach out and hug them. Because rocking out to some generic Top 40s shit or doing the dance moves you saw on Dancing With the Stars instead of doing whatever it is you think a better human being is supposed to be doing in these moments doesn’t make you a loser.

It’s what makes you human, relatable, and loveable.

And I’m sorry that it’s taken me 28 years to realize that saying skateboarding is cool, but badminton is not is kind of like saying green is amazing, so orange must be shit – it makes no sense at all. There’s room for all of us to exist and be normal and be weird and be cool and be lame, all at the same time on the same planet.

So maybe I’m not so uncool after all.

Every morning, before I do anything else, I open up my email inbox.

I browse through subject lines, opening up messages that intrigue me, make me laugh, remind me of a sweet sale, or notes from actual people that I actually know.

And every morning, before I’ve finished my cup of coffee, I’ve read about how I can avoid the 6 mistakes that guy made when building his business or how to build my “money muscles” or the one piece of advice I must follow to have a successful blog.

In the first half hour of my day, I’m told to meditate. To write something for myself every single day. To sit at a desk when working. To go outside to get some fresh air. To stay inside forever. Send a thank you note. Keep your receipts. Put on some god damn pants.

Every day, my inbox is full of advice. Some solicited, some not. Some valid, some complete and total bullshit.

Every day, my relaxing morning cup of coffee is wasted on reading emails full of words. Words meant to be encouraging, but words that tell me how to be, how to learn from the mistakes of others, and how to follow the rules.

Hungry and encouraged and a sponge for self-help-y encouraging fuzzy feelings, I spend a lot of time reading it all, half convinced that this is all bullshit and half convinced that the next sentence is the only thing standing between me and a better me.

But this morning, as I sat down with my coffee reading about how to be a better writer, the thought crossed my mind: WHO CARES??

Who cares if this guy thinks I’m doing it wrong?

Who cares if I AM doing it wrong?

Who cares about mimicking this guy’s road to success? Is he even where I want to be someday? Is he even anything like me?

Did I really walk away from a decent salary and dental insurance and 40 hours a week of staring blankly into the wall just so I could stare blankly into a perfectly optimized 800-word newsletter telling me about how I can “find my power?”

I’m not sure what kind of power I’m supposed to locate or where it is or who I’m supposed to become, but I have a hunch that blindly following other people’s advice into the fray isn’t going to get me there.

So, with all due respect to the thinkers, leaders, and those who’ve found success, joy, purpose, and fulfillment before me — today, I unsubscribed.

Because, yeah, there might be a billion ways to do this life wrong, but there are also a billion ways to do it right.

And, fuck it, I can do this on my own.

My first day on a snowboard, I was 18 years old.

My most vivid memory of that day was when laying on the ground at the top of a chairlift, looking bleakly at the sky. The back of my head hurt, my butt hurt, and my ego hurt. The kid working at the top of the chair peered over my face, laughed, and said “Get ready for a lot more of that. Now get out of the way.”

He was right. There was a lot more of that. Falling. Humiliation. One particularly bad starfish-like cartwheel down the hill. At one point, I crashed into a tree and cried.

But hours later, I stood at the bottom of the hill, rubbing my ass, when somebody handed me a beer and said “good job.”

It was the best beer of my life. (And not just because I couldn’t buy it myself.)

It’s 10 years later, and I’ve gotten past the part of snowboarding where you scootch around everywhere on your hands and knees, shouting “I’m sorry!” to everybody around you. Instead, I have new mountains to overcome.

Over the last 6 months, I’ve been working hard on building a business, a life, and an identity that’s not dependent on someone else’s dream.

Every time I feel like quitting, crying, or drinking heavily, I go snowboarding to remind myself of these lessons:

1. Falling is not failing.

I’ve taken many friends out on the mountain for their first time ever on a snowboard. Before we even get near a chairlift, I hand them their board, help them get strapped in, and wait. Almost immediately, they fall flat on their asses.

I laugh, we celebrate their first fall, and then we can move on with the rest of the day.

In snowboarding, in business, in life, in love, falling is not failing. It’s just a part of the process. You plunk down on the snow, you scream an obscenity, you catch your breath, and then you get up and go on with your day.

2. Keep on falling.

“I don’t want to fall right now.”

That’s the most common response I get from a friend when I ask them to try something new. As soon as people initially learn to stay standing on their board, they tend to hit a mental block.

Bracing yourself for a fall the entire time you’re scootching, stiff and robot-like, down a tiny bunny slope on your heel edge is not snowboarding. It’s not even fun. And it’s fucking exhausting.

Just sticking to what’s comfortable and what you believe will keep your butt off the ground isn’t going to help you improve. Hell, it’s not even likely to keep you from falling.

3. Ignore the noise.

When I was learning how to snowboard, everybody around me had a tip to shout at me from the sidelines. None of their weird snowboard jargon mattered.

I’d watch other people carve graceful turns down the hill while riding up the chairlift and make mental notes about what they were doing, what their arms looked like, and what mysterious piece of the puzzle I could possibly be missing. None of my attempts to mimic them mattered.

I Googled “how to snowboard.” Nothing I read mattered.

The only thing that mattered was getting out on the snow, strapping in, and trying again and again.

4. Trust yourself.

Snowboarding is, in my opinion, nearly all mental. All you do all day long is make decisions that scare you and just frolic around happily at the edge of your comfort zone.

As a beginner, when you’re attempting your very first toe-side turn, you can’t really see what’s on the other side of that turn. You just know that you’re supposed to go for it, and that a last-minute panic attack is probably going to bring your butt crashing onto the mountain. The only way to pass this stage is to lean into the fear and commit.

When you get a litte better, you feel the fear more and more often. Every time you start riding toward a jump that’s just a little bigger than the last or each time you peek out over the edge of a steep cornice, you’re battling that scaredy-cat pansy in your head that’s screaming “ABORT!”

And the most satisfying thing about snowboarding is when you get to tell the scaredy-cat pansy to kindly shut the fuck up, tighten up your helmet, and take the plunge.

And most importantly, 5. An end-of-the-day beer tastes a hell of a lot better when you’ve actually earned it.

[Flickr photo: SportSuburban]

I’m always surprised when people get on me for not providing the amount of salt and pepper they need to make a recipe that I suggested. Or for typing out recipes with phrases like “add some cayenne pepper until it tastes good,” rather than a specific measurement.

But I’ve come to realize that the way we think about cooking says something about the way we think about life.

I can understand why. Cooking for others is intimate and it’s scary and it puts your mistakes in the spotlight for people to put in their mouths and push around with their tongue and investigate and analyze and chew on and salivate all over. When you’re done cooking, you lay your meal out to the table for them to cast their judgement (and gravy) all over.

We don’t want to fuck up, even if it’s the first time we’ve ever made that stupid spinach lasagna. And instead of trusting our instincts, our intuition, or our actual physical senses (just taste it before you add the salt!), we cover up that fear by following the recipe word for word. Or we bail and choose instead to treat people to a restaurant dinner. At least that way, when things go wrong, we can say “but Jamie Oliver said 40 minutes!” or “the Yelp reviews were waaaaay off!”

When we cook for others, we’re vulnerable. We’re opening up our ovens and potentially exposing ourselves as incompetent losers who don’t even know how what sous vide is.

We fear that the effort of inviting somebody into our homes with the intention of nourishing them, the effort of creating and sharing a dinner you made out of thin air, is not enough. And we simply cannot leave that kind of risk up to our own judgement.

So we ask exactly how much salt goes in that thing, or exactly how many minutes does it go in the oven for, or what size (in millimeters) should I cut these carrots down to. We stare at a photo of somebody else’s handiwork and struggle to fix up plates to look just like that.

We eliminate choices and we eliminate risk. But inadvertently, we’re also eliminating joy. We’re removing experimentation. And when we have a successful plate, it’s not our success, because we’ve already worked so hard at eliminating our responsibility for it.

The lesson here: there’s no glory in doing it “right.” Just do your best to figure it out, do it genuinely, and have some fun.

… And really, friend, if you are nice enough to invite me into your house, let me drink your alcohol, and put it all out there, only to present me with a burnt pot roast, I will love you so much more than if you’d treated me to a mediocre steak dinner at the restaurant up the street.

Shawn came home from work earlier this week to find me sitting at my desk, with no pants in, painting my fingernails. He looked around and saw piles and piles of laundry that I’d abandoned hours earlier, and 6 pairs of wet, hand-washed underwear that I’d hung up on the banister to dry.

He didn’t say a word.

In appreciation, I made him this. It’s an emotion-avoiding, non-mushy way of saying thank you. And I love you.

Because, why not?

—

I recently discovered that, while I’m an insanely joyful human being, my resting face resembles a little bit of a stoned, dazed, remotely angry lady. I blame my slanty Asian eyes.

Making a conscious effort to smile more kind of hurts my face, but suddenly, I’m all approachable and shit. Particularly when I’m walking my 80-pound pit bull down the street. Slightly fewer people scurry out of my way, and I’ve noticed a marked increase in people who want to pat my dog or say hello.

And then there are definitely people who just think I’m a lunatic who won’t stop grinning idiotically into their faces.

(Their discomfort makes me smile even harder.)

[Photo: ucumari]

I’ve been spending much of my time these days in full-on consumption mode.

I’ve been reading and absorbing bits and pieces of wisdom, humor, and art from people who I suspect might be better than me at something. I’ve been soaking in their content, in the vague hopes that some flakes of knowledge will make their way from my iMac to my brain-box.

I love seeing what The Greats are up to. I love seeing how others interpret life, and seeing what they choose to fill theirs with.

But it’s paralyzing me.

I’ve been reluctant to create tiny sentences of my own, to doodle with the frenzy I once had. I’ve been busy trying to learn and improve that I’ve forgotten the fun and adventure of discovery.

So, for the last several weeks, I have been creating new rituals. This one’s my favorite:

Each morning when I wake up, before I taint my brain with the minutiae of the day that’s about to happen, I open my notepad. Some days, it’s incoherent thoughts that I can’t understand when I read them back later. Other days, crazy ideas surface for a few minutes in the form of a manatee comic strip, a thought bubble or a paragraph of scribbled handwriting. It’s not a journal, it’s not a diary. It’s a container where I can barf my brain-thoughts to make room for more. It’s a springboard for stupid ideas I might not pursue elsewhere. It’s a place where I can draw a ladybug wearing a top hat for no reason.

And while my notepad full of junk may seem inconsequential while I’m filling it, it won’t once it’s full.

That doodle of a robot holding flowers that you snuck into your boyfriend’s lunch seems perfectly throw-away-able today, but, 6 years later when you find a ziploc bag full of paper towels covered with robots and smears of mustard from the sandwich it once held, it’s one item from a historical record of lunches. A relic from a time when we didn’t totally want to kill each other on the reg. Proof.

The dots never seem to connect until you’re looking at them in retrospect.

Severing ties to your Internet umbilical cord really brings up a lot of weird emotions.

I’m never alone anymore. And if you’re reading this, you probably aren’t either.

Geography is no longer important — no matter where you are, as long as you have a connection to the Internet, you aren’t alone. I live in an isolated town, hours away from the nearest big city, but it doesn’t matter. I’m alone in my quiet house, and yet I have no less than 6 half-conversations going on at once. Whether it’s a brief few words here and there between strangers on a word game, an email conversation between family members, or a flood of Tweets with some people I’ve never met, in places I’ve never been — I’m not alone.

I don’t even poop alone anymore. (If you’ve ever played Letterpress with me, you have definitely pooped with me.)

I started noticing how easy it was for me to reach for my laptop, even in the presence of close friends or family. How, in the quiet part of a sad movie, I skimmed an email from a former co-worker to keep myself from bursting into tears. How quickly time can pass when you’re playing The Simpsons: Tapped Out. How occasionally, I’d stop playing with my dog and try to get him to hold his pose so I could Instagram him. How I couldn’t stand to sit alone at a bus stop, without starting a conversation with someone who isn’t there.

It occurred to me how uncomfortable I am being actually, truly alone.

I left my phone at home one day while I ran errands around town. I had nothing to temper my awkward emotions with, and felt naked and exposed. Standing in line was the worst. I had nothing to distract myself with, and when somebody cut in front of me, I actually noticed. Making “pshchhhwa…” noises and shrugging to commiserate with the person behind me was weird, but kind of pleasant. Then, I made eye contact with a mustachioed man buying tampons. (He started texting somebody.)

I stopped using my laptop in the bedroom. Instead, I’d lay back and stare up at the dark ceiling. Sometimes I’d fall asleep immediately. Other times, I’d chat with my boyfriend about how illogically cold my feet get, what he had for lunch that day, and “did the dog just fart or was that you?” I realized you can see the moon from my bedroom window.

Another day, while feeling the sting of an argument that would never be won, I felt the urge to grab my phone. Often, in times of emotional distress, the faint glow and monotonous finger-swiping would calm me down and temper the hurt and anger. Most of the time, I wouldn’t even be reading, typing, or doing anything. Just flipping from my home screen to the next page of apps and back. Over and over, until I no longer wanted to cry. Instead, I just cried.

Yesterday, I went to get a cup of coffee. Not at my normal hurry-up-and-snatch-an-outlet place, but a place I’d never been in before. I sat down, and resisted the urge to distract myself. Instead, I looked out the window. I looked at the faces of the people at surrounding tables. I looked at the back of my hand.

I felt alone. But it felt good. Real. Like I’d done it on purpose.

I enjoyed my moment of captivity while I sipped my coffee, and when it was over, I walked home. Alone.

…

Oh yeah, unplug so you can remember what your kids and your dog and your family look like, too.

I recently lost about 20 pounds and got a hell of a lot healthier by making a few adjustments to the food I was putting into my body.

It started out as an experiment.

Tired of telling myself every night that I “need” to start eating healthier, then diving face-first into a bowl of pasta with cream sauce, I was hit with the realization that TELLING myself to eat healthier wasn’t really going to get me healthier.

So, I did some research and then I went mega-Paleo. 

To kick-start my experiment, I told everybody I work with that I was cutting dairy, processed foods, grain, and a bunch of other things out of my diet for the next 6 weeks. Only one person was excited for me. The rest either rolled their eyes, got incredibly defensive about their eating habits, or just dismissively predicted that I’d cave within the week.

I started out with willpower. I wanted to prove those beer-guzzling cube-drones in my office wrong.

Every day, I ate pre-packed Paleo lunches, and I ate it in front of them and made annoying lip-smacking noises, while they ate their pastas, sandwiches, and other things I secretly eye-fucked while choking down my veggies.

Still, I didn’t give in. I had something to prove, and I was letting that fuel my willpower. And it worked.

For about a week.

That’s the thing about willpower. It fades.

It’s completely based on what’s going on around you — whether there are people egging you on, whether the cookies that are in front of you have melty chocolate chips in them or not, or whether you’re currently feeling super motivated or not.

After a week of letting “I’ll show you!!!” fuel my eating decisions, what I was eating became old news. Nobody really cared anymore what I was eating, and nobody really asked anymore if I missed cheese or spaghetti and meatballs.

I wondered if anybody would notice if I ordered from the pasta bar at work one day.

But then I realized – I WOULD NOTICE. Nobody cares what I’m eating. EXCEPT FOR ME.

I care about the choices I’m making.

I care that I had been able to stick with something I thought I couldn’t do for longer than 10 days. I care that my body feels like it’s running better, I care that I finally figured out how to make vegetables ACTUALLY TASTE GOOD, and I care that my pants fit better.

And at some point, I realized that I’d stopped fueling myself on willpower, and started acting by CHOICE.

Choice, unlike willpower, is there there all the time, even when there’s nothing present to tempt you away from your goals.

Choice is intentional.

Whatever goals you’re working toward — building a business, writing a book, quitting booze – you don’t need willpower.

You just need to make a choice. A choice to care about what you’re doing, to work harder when you don’t have to, to keep your eyes on the road ahead of you.

And then you need to keep making that choice.

Over and over and over, 

every single day.

Oh, and it’s been months since I started my Paleo experiment. When people see me passing on cake or sugar cookies, they’d remind me: “But your 6 weeks are up! You can eat whatever you WANT now!”

And I get to tell them: “I AM eating what I want.” (All snobby and shit.)

Hooray!