Category: Finding Your Voice

There’s a lot of bullshit around the word “responsible.” We let this tiny word guilt us to the grave. Do the responsible thing. Act responsibly. Be a responsible adult. Don’t be so irresponsible. I don’t know if we should blame this asshole voice in our heads on our parents or not, but you might want to consider it. (Hi, mom!) There are a lot of things that are, by default, “responsible”—taking the kids to soccer, suffering through another Jillian Michaels

What is it? The thing you sighed with relief about this morning? The thing you didn’t have to do on a Saturday? The thing you exhaled about? (And maybe even shimmied around the room naked over. With this You Tube video playing. And at least two neighbors cursing you to hell.) That’s the thing. Pay very close attention to this thing. Whatever you found yourself delighted to be able to skip today? Is likely the same thing that’s creating a

Look, we’ve all got our faults. I, for one, have a wrinkly ass neck. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know when it happened. But all the sudden there are lines as deep as the Panama Canal cutting across my trachea. Fortunately, all the resveratrol I’ve consumed over the years seems to have spared my face…so far. Or, I don’t know, maybe I should be thanking Laura Mercier for that. Ever since I was twenty one, I’ve been

Being nervous sucks. Your pulse races. Your brain blanks. Your hands shake like little assholes. You tell yourself to take deep breaths, but the minute you do, you then worry that the entire room can see the fact that your heart is, in fact, doing the electric slide up and down your rib cage. (God help your soul if you’re wearing Spanx.) We’ve all had these moments—we’re a nervous bunch, you know? (Yes, even the confident ones.) Whether it’s the

The way you hold your wine glass. How leisurely you pour your words. The conviction found in your fork, as you slowly and quite deliberately raise each bite to your mouth, as if rushes were for commoners and you hold the greatest secrets of the universe right there in between your forefinger and your thumb. Maybe you do. After all, there’s something about being the most confident person at the table that wreaks a healthy havoc in the minds of

I like the term scrappy. I’ve always pictured some femme fatale bobbing and weaving and diving and contorting herself into any number of ways to get the one and only job done that she’s there to do: Win. It reminds me of my favorite Will Smith quote (oh, you don’t have a favorite Will Smith quote?) “The only thing that I see distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out

A lot of disgusting things happen when you’re a human. (And I’m not talking about chin hairs, though they definitely qualify.) And some of those things will require you, at some point, to make some really hard decisions. The kind of decisions that feel impossible to make. The kind that drag race through your large intestine. The kind that cause you to reconsider your position on Xanax. (Right after you learned it was sneakily spelled with an X.) A lot

When somebody doesn’t buy from you, which are you thinking? “Man, I’m a loser” or “Man, they’re a loser.” Getting cocksure is the very first order of business. And if you don’t feel sure of yourself, you know what you need? Not more clients. You need to sit your ass down, read 100 books, grovel for the chance to prove yourself, weasel your way into opportunities with people who ARE good, yank yourself kicking and screaming out of your fucking

You ever do that thing where you’re about to start that business, write that book, ask for that advance, release that product, pitch that service, or maybe just tell your boyfriend you want to try anal…and then you hesitate? Flinch? Get nervous? Worried? Scared that the response is going to be something like, “WHAT ARE YOU, OUT OF YOUR MIND? HOW DARE YOU? WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” (For the record, after a few Chardonnays I happen to think