I got back from Thanksgiving in Philly yesterday afternoon. The train ride back was full but not packed, we got a little bit of a lead on the crazy rush back to New York.

I'm trying to teach myself how to sew on a 1964 Singer machine that my neighbor gifted me in 2010. Over the last seven years, I've lugged it from apartment to apartment without ever really even examining it closely. It's a beast, probably 20 pounds, if we're not counting the weight of my stubbornness, which adds at least a few more. Two years ago, in a burst of DIY optimism/delusion I had a friend teach me how to thread it. Now that a full seven have passed, I figured it was time to actually put stitches in fabric. I'd like to sew something by 2028.

This time I got a full hour and a half of practice (read: sewing circles into pieces of paper) before the bobbin ran out of thread. Another hour was spent trying and failing to use the machine to rewind it, then when I turned it on its side, a teeny tiny piece fell off, which apparently was not decorative. Two more hours were spent trying to fix it using whatever internet results I could scrape together for a 53 year old sewing machine (read: sparse, and mostly erroneous). Finally I gave up, and sent pictures of the mess I made to a repair place in Queens along with a pleading and hopefully charmingly email.

Then I made a bunch of grumpy pasta* to eat in the sweatpants I had never changed out of from last night's zzzs.

Silver lining (no pun intended): the actual sewing part was super fun, before the machine breaking part and the banging of heads against walls. Very much hoping that with this skill I'll finally be able to start making my own clothing, and thus make progress towards my lifelong dream of becoming the third Olsen triplet (that's how triplets work, yeah?) Already working on subsisting on just cigarette smoke and my lost childhood, and sucking in my cheeks so my face looks hollow while thinking about upsetting things when people take pictures of me (read: poverty, being a size 6,  Lindsay Lohan's accent)

*pasta made and eaten defiantly, whilst grumpy

You guys haven't lived until you've done the holidays the way I do them!

Valentine's Day: Snuggle up with someone you like enough for now and hatewatch the Sex and the City episode where Carrie judges bisexuals

Halloween: Janky haunted house: get high in the afternoon and go to Hollister. Don't wear a costume, be in bed by 9.

Thanksgiving: Help with the cooking, then Skype your extended family in Texas and casually bring up abortion.

Christmas: Wear slouchy sweaters that are not as photogenic as you wish they were. Spend the time between Christmas and New Years having small panic attacks in your childhood bedroom. Watch old episodes of What Not To Wear with your family and gossip about how apparently Stacey and Clinton hate each other now.

It may come as a surprise to you, but my normal reaction to any basic girl mantras is an aggressive, face pulling eye roll. "Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels", "Dance like nobody's watching". Up until recently, the idea of "self care" was relegated to that category, buzzy terms that had no place in my life.

Beside finding the term très crunchy, it's alway felt like code for expensive facials where they extract both the gunk and the evil spirits of frugality from your pores, or yoga retreats where you pay a premium to pretend to be poor in a distant locale. The idea of taking care of yourself has always felt both fascinating, and financially irresponsible to me.

One of my favorite articles of all time to make fun of, which is a high honor, is this article from Elle about Amanda Chantal Bacon, the founder/owner of LA-based Moon Juice. Moon Juice is a store that purveys powders and liquids and what I assume are boxes of curated air that strike me as the health food equivalent of the Emporer's snazzy wardrobe. Amanda Chantal Bacon is its inappropriately named HBIC.

The article begins as follows:

"I usually wake up at 6:30am, and start with some Kundalini meditation and a 23-minute breath set—along with a copper cup of silver needle and calendula tea—before my son Rohan wakes."

It then proceeds to recount a full day of Baconing. Everything she puts in to her body is raw, obscure and boosts things I didn't know were in the peril of neglect- activated cashews support her brain chemistry, bee pollen feeds hormone production, quinton shots provide mineralization.

The article was quickly followed up by this gem of a Jezebel follow up.

I'm not sure if Elizabeth Gilbert ever actually used the term "self care" in Eat Pray Love, her 2006 memoir wherein her life falls apart and she responds by traveling around the world to find herself but I will denounce the book to anyone who will listen.

I can't help it. I find myself resenting the luxury of large chunks of time off of work to focus on your spiritual health. I am peeved (and, let's face it, a little jealous) about your doting husband who provides a 24/7 emotional safety net. I scoff over your regular acupuncture appointments and your insistence that you actually really enjoy your electively gluten-free diet.

These examples of excessively Instagramable "self care" are at face value harmless and hilarious, but at their worst, can be excuses for not even trying to work on yourself. They can make you feel like self care is always over the top and intimidating  and that it's easier to keep rolling along with the status quo.

I've been at this job for two years now. My first project was a monster, it required months of working really hard to finish it on time for a round of user testing. The Friday before the Monday tests, to my chagrin, there were still open bugs and assets that needed to be reviewed and implemented. Not sure how we were going to make the deadline, I begged the developer, Scotty, to come in and work with me on that Sunday.

I'll always remember being curled up on one of the couches at the office, shoes off, squinting at my computer screen. Scotty sat next to me, his fingers flying across the keyboard. Scotty is a few years younger than me, really talented and liked by every single person in the office. I can't remember what exactly we were talking about while we worked, but I said something about how I could spin some status email to our Israel office to make it sound better than the reality of the situation. His reaction, without any judgement, was just "I don't know. I try to be really truthful. It's important to me that I'm always at least trying to do the right thing."

This was a year and a half ago.

I remember at the time immediately feeling kind of stung. Like I had suggested we rob a bank and he was oh-so-gently gently reminding me that it was a felony and that it may not be the BEST idea I've ever had.

A couple of weeks ago, a close friend of mine had something really unexpectedly rough happen to her. I found out via text while at work, as I was looking over Scotty's shoulder (unabashedly back seat coding) as we rushed to fix something broken in one of the project. It stopped me in my tracks.

Later that night, my phone lit up with a text from Scotty. "How's your friend? If you ever need to talk about anything, just let me know."

This time, his good person-ness didn't immediately result in me feeling embarrassed and flawed. Or at least, not embarrassed. It just made me feel like I wanted to be better. Things over the last month or two have started slipping into better focus. It's becoming clear that my frustration and disgust with celebrity lifestyle preaching, while fair enough (and SO fun) is not actually helping anyone.

It's so easy to prioritize survival as you make your way in New York City. Throughout my 20s, my job has come first for the very simple reason that I need to pay my rent, and if the job goes away, it sets off a domino sequence of destruction: of stress, exhaustion and constant panic mode. I've eschewed the idea of active self care up until recently because I have no interest in drinking candeluna tea and I can't afford to hang out in a sensory deprivation tank.

For now, I want to try to make bettering myself a priority, for myself and for everyone around me and I can't pretend that it's impossible for me anymore. I don't need to belong to Equinox or study Reiki, there are other real actions I can take. I can drink less. I can make a point of being honest. I can be better about flossing. I can try to figure out who I am outside of my job.

I can give myself credit for the things I do well, and look at the places where I struggle with hope instead of stubborn defensiveness. I can forgive myself when I screw up and keep working.

And if all else fails I heard that Kim Kardashian is using healing crystals to get over that time she was robbed at gunpoint.

Sitting in my jeggings in our peaceful, tidy living room. Just made chocolate chip cookies from scratch, with cinnamon, marshmallows and a little bit of cayenne pepper. If you scratch your screen right here you can smell what I'm smelling. I'll wait while you orgasm.

Ok. Whew.

I've had the recipe for cookies etched on my brain since I was 8 years old, when I was the owner/operator of "Bon Mo Desserts". From age 8 to 15 I baked cookies, cakes and pies in our kitchen and sold them, at first to just our neighborhood, then, after years of hard work and cashing in on my cute kid factor, to an area very slightly bigger than our neighborhood. Crazily enough that's how I made enough money to take my mom on vacation to Jamaica, and buy my very first computer, which was gray and kind of lumpy and heavy and took up half of my room.

I was SO proud of that computer. It was the ultimate status symbol for a middle schooler in 2001, unless you weren't me, in which case status would have looked more like a Juicy Couture track suit. The desktop featured a beautifully generic picture of a Caribbean beach, courtesy of Windows 98. I can't for the life of me remember what I did on that computer besides obsessively send instant messages to people I already spent 6 hours a day with.

I've come a long way from typing things into a text box for other people to read.

Having one of those sweet Sunday mornings where I put SNL in one tab and ignore it while I write to you in a different tab.

I'm thinking maybe it's time I get some curtains... there's a family that moved into the brownstone across from my window and I've been doing a lot of getting dressed in a strategic location in my room so you can't see me through the two huge windows in my room. They moved in a year ago.

Guys. I watched Leap Year. I did it. I don't know why I did it, but I sat down and watched it from start to finish. Actually I didn't sit down, I watched most of it on my commute.

The general gist is that Amy Adams has flippy hair and lives in Boston, which is a fun little twist illustrating that this isn't like every other romcom, where she would live in New York. She's an actual terrible person who thinks she's owed a proposal by her cardiologist boyfriend, played by smarmy Ben Wyatt

When instead of a ring, he gets her a pair of insanely huge diamond earrings, she freaks out and follows him to Ireland where he has a heart conference or something. She's got a plan though. In Ireland, apparently, there's a convenient tradition wherein all women with flippy hair have permission to propose to their boyfriends as long as it's February 29th. Which is great because she couldn't have just done it in Boston.

Anywho, she can't seem to get to Dublin, where future hubby is cardiologing. So she totters all over Ireland in her ridiculous heels and drags this poor hot Irish guy around the country with her on a four day journey from Dingle to Dublin which according to Google Maps and my personal experience is typically a four hour drive. Also the hot Irish guy is really British IRL! He does such a good job with the accent. Also his real life wife is really hot and he's an Aries.

While they're traipsing all over the country, she complains about:

-The food
-The fact that no one cares about her non-problems
-Literally everything

She also falls down a hill into some mud at one point which may have been my favorite part. Or maybe the part where she's drunk and pukes on his shoes? Because you know what, Amy Adams is just like any other gal and pukes on hot guys' shoes.

Turns out that four days is way too much time to be a convincing journey duration to Dublin BUT it IS plenty of time for the surly Irish hottie to fall in love with her, despite her awfulness. Because of her awfulness? It's so hard to tell sometimes.

The final leg of the journey begins when she wakes up hungover with the most perfect blowout I've ever seen. I'm serious, not too bouncy but definitely nicer than anyone can do themselves even with a round brush and a hairdryer and the necessary product.

When they do make it to Dublin (JUST IN TIME FOR LEAP DAY OMG) Adam Scott has a ring for her!! She doesn't even NEED to propose! Which is great, because she is a woman after all and that. shit. is. not. our. job. #feminism

Ah, true love.

Blah blah blah, they go back to Boston (remember? they don't even live in New York! It's so quirky and fun) and Dr. Douchebag says something TERRIBLE to her along the lines of "the co-op board wouldn't have sold us this [tacky ass] apartment if we weren't married so I figured it would make sense for me to propose." What a charmer.

Amy's eyes glaze over and she hops on a plane back to Ireland, where she tells the guy who she had tricked into spending (just) four days with her that she wants to be together. like for realsies. His reaction? COOL HERE IS MY GRANDMOTHER'S RING. What the actual fuck. He just proposes. I'm still in shock. She's the WORST. There are billions of women in the world! Maybe not all with such good hair, but dammit man you have options. Why. Why the high maintenance girl with a shitty attitude and impractical shoes.

Also remember when Amy Adams was Jim Halpert's girlfriend for a hot second?

I'm still reeling (see what I did there)(like Irish dancing... it's late, I don't know). So yeah, I'd rate it a 2/10. It should be a 1 but I have to give it a extra point because it's on me that I saw what it was and I still actually watched the whole thing. But to be fair, my commute is 47 minutes each way.

Guys. I had an interaction the other day that really wigged me out. To be fair, this happens a lot. And it's almost never something that would bother a normal, well adjusted person. But lemme share this one.

I was sitting in the back at work, eating some free work grapes (which incidentally taste better) and chatting with one of my coworkers. One of my medium bosses came back to ask me about some reference moodboards we had sent a designer doing some work for me. We ended up talking about Pinterest- who uses it and why.

I casually said something along the lines of "I mean I'm not an active user but I have my dream wedding board like anyone else." and medium boss looked at me like his head had actually exploded and his eyes were just sort of dangling in space.

"I NEVER would've thought that you have a wedding board." My coworker chimed in "Me neither. That's crazy." When I asked them why, she said "I dunno, I just wouldn't."

And that's it. That was the entire exchange. But it has stayyyyyyyyed with me. I felt weirdly defensive, and a little proud but a little offended and now I keep thinking about it. Because to me it feels like the most natural thing in the world to have a dream wedding board where I can hoard pictures of geode cakes and succulent bouquets and vintage lace wedding dresses that would look terrible on someone my height. And I absolutely have an idea of what I would want my engagement ring to look like, if I ever decide to get married (sparkly, doesn't turn my finger green). There will be no mason jars and very little extended family.

Funny when you get a unexpected glimpse of how people see you.