...That I'm Really Glad I Got THAT Out of My System

This morning, at the office.

I'd just opened my browser so I could log in to our web-based contact database when I saw the following headline: "Snapped bungee plunges tourist into African river!!!!" (exclamations mine, because that's how I heard it in my head -- blaring like some siren)

My stomach dropped. I knew immediately that the "river" in question was the Zambezi, those glorious churning rapids that split Zambia from its southern neighbor Zimbabwe and spill into the wonderous Victoria Falls.

I clicked on the link to the story and learned that a thrill-seeking Australian woman had taken a dive off the Victoria Falls bridge and -- to her horror (and the horror of everyone watching) -- plunged head first into the crocodile-infested waters of the Zambezi when the bungee cord to which she was tethered snapped. Thankfully -- and miraculously -- she survived with only minor injuries (a broken collerbone and some scrapes and bruises).

If you want to see the video, click here:

 

When I watched it, I seriously almost sh*t my pants. And then thanked my lucky freakin' stars that it wasn't me. Because it could have been.

Some of you may remember that I performed that selfsame jump a few years ago. Twice. Once in '07 and again in '08.

Here's some photographic evidence (from the '07 jump):

I've thought about this all day -- thought about how, the first time I jumped, I was too naive to be scared, and I leapt of that ledge like it was nothing more than the high-dive at Casey Swimming Pool (less, even -- I was always more scared jumping off the high-dive at Casey). And I thought about how it wasn't until afterwards that I started to shake.

I thought about how, the second time I jumped, I was shaking even before we got to the bridge, because the second time, I knew what there was to be afraid of. I thought about how, on the platform, they made me take off my shoes, and how, without them, it felt like the ground had given way before I'd even jumped and I was already falling. I thought about those awful tourists yelling at me, jabbing at the air with their fingers, as if they wanted some part in sending me off. I thought about how I gripped the railing, white-knuckled, and leaned back, thinking "I don't have to do this. I don't have to do this. I could just turn around right now."

And then I thought about how I did it anyway -- with infinitely less grace and exponentially more flailing than the first time around. But I did it. And I didn't die or even hurt myself.

I thought about how "it's not brave if you're not scared" (thank you, Don Roos), and that there's something to be said for hanging yourself out there in your stocking feet and just ... falling.

And then I thought about how I'm really, really, REALLY glad that I don't ever have to do it again.

:o)

...That I Shouldn't Marry Him.

Right after I told him I would.

I know, I know -- this one is like serious ancient history (the ten-year anniversary of my divorce is in February). But I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I had a birthday, uh, a while ago (in fact, I'm closer to my next one now than I am to the last one, but whatever) and it was a big one. Well, not like the traditional kind of big one that marks the middle of one decade or the start of another. But still a big one -- at least for me. Because for the first time it really registered just how quickly the years have gone by. I feel a bit like Edward Norton's character in Primal Fear. "Well, what happened?" he's asked. He looks at Richard Gere blankly and just says, "I lost time."

I remember being a kid and hearing my dad talk about how the older you get, the faster time passes. Being a kid, where every minute that was not summer vacation seemed to stretch torturously into the next and I couldn't grow up fast enough, I didn't get what he was talking about. Plus, my parents were young -- younger than all my classmates' parents anyway -- and I knew that, so I couldn't understand what all the angsty fuss was.

But now that I'm roughly the age my dad was when he began this weary lament, I kind of know what he means. And speaking of being a parent's age, if I were my mother, I'd have a freshman in college and a freshman in high school right now. Gah!

Anyhoo, so it got me thinking about how we end up where we end up, and the choices that get us here. It's easy, I think (especially for me, who tends to rumination), to wonder about the might-have-beens and the should-have-dones and the wish-I-hadn'ts -- particularly if you wake up on your (cough cough, mumble-dee-somethingth) birthday, take a long look around, and find yourself exclaiming, "WHAT the F*CK!! Where the ... ? When the ... ?? Wait, how did I get HERE??"

In truth, this isn't at all where I thought I'd be. And in case it's not obvious, by "where" I don't mean "Colorado." I mean where I am in my life. I never thought I'd get here and still feel so lost. I never thought I'd get here and still not know what the hell it is I want for my life (er, other than my afore-blogged-about yearning to be known).

"Really??" I told my dad on a recent visit home. "I'm sitting here all these years later and I still don't know what I want? Ok, yes, I want a partner. But, come on. What about the rest of it? I mean, for f*ck's sake! It is seriously time I figure my sh*t out. Because, still, after all this time, I can generally tell you only what I DON'T want; I can't seem to figure out what it is I DO want."

"Well, that's a start," he said. "Knowing what you don't want."

I snorted. "You know that's what I told [my ex-husband] when I asked for the divorce? 'What do you want?' he kept asking me. 'What needs to change?' And all I could tell him was, 'I don't know. I just know I don't want this.'"

"Do you regret that decision?" my dad asked. "The divorce?"

"Not for a millisecond," I answered, without hesitation.

And that's when it hit me.

There are things we know in our bones, things we know to be true even when we don't have the words (or the strength) to express them. Things we know to be as real as the daily sunrise. But we make mistakes -- we do things we shouldn't, we DON'T do things we should, we fall in love with people who are only going to hurt us, and we say "yes" when we should be saying, "oh, HELL, naw!"

If you're like me, you make a LOT of mistakes. So many that, when you're taking inventory of your life and considering how you got to be where you are, it's easy to think you've lost your way. It's easy to think you don't know.

But you do. You always know. Your heart always knows. And the real courage is in trusting that.

I knew the instant my ex-husband asked me to marry him that I should have said no. Knew it knew it knew it. But I lacked the courage to say so. And it took me almost five years to remedy that wrong. I knew my last boyfriend was never going to love me the way I wanted him to, the way I needed him to ... the way I loved him. Knew it knew it knew it. It's the number one reason I kept saying no when he'd suggest we move in together. He insisted it must be because I was a Christian and had some arcane moral opposition to the notion. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Hahahaha! Ha ha... Ahem. (Sorry. That one still makes me laugh. The poor guy really did not know me at all.)

See, the honest-to-goodness truth is that there was nothing on planet earth I wanted more than to make a home with that man, to share a life with him. But deep down in my heart of hearts, I knew that even though it was forever for me, it wasn't forever for him -- it was only "for now." I am thankful I at least knew that (untangling our lives when it ended would have been vastly more complicated had we been sharing a mortgage -- or even just a cell phone bill).

But even though I knew that, I still stayed. And tried. And hung on -- hoping, wishing, wanting for more than I would ever get from him -- long after he had begun regarding me as scarcely more than a nuisance who "needed too much" and was pretty much only good for the occasional lay and being a sometime dinner companion or movie date (provided, of course, I didn't breathe too loudly or scratch any itches until it was over -- or tell anyone I was his girlfriend). But I shan't perseverate anymore about such regrets.

The point is, even when we think we don't know what we want, even when we think we don't know what's right for us, we actually do. A friend of mine -- actually, a couple friends of mine -- frequently remind me of this. They tell me that the answers to the questions we ask and the doubts we harbor are in us already, whispering with quiet, gentle certainty.

All we have to do is listen.

...That It Was Really Over.

And it wasn’t when we broke up. Not the first time or even the fifth time. It wasn’t when I learned he had a new girlfriend or when the bastard actually asked my best friend of 31 years if he could crash at her place with the new girlfriend when they were visiting his friends on the East Coast (can you believe the balls on that motherf*cker?). It wasn’t even when the egomaniacal f*ck texted me to ask me (whilst in relationship with said new girlfriend) if I still looked at the picture he had taken for me (during happier times) of his naked, erect penis (classy, right?).

Nope, it wasn’t then. (Although, admittedly, those were all pretty good clues.) It was some time just before all that. Er, well, between all that, I guess.  Some time before all the new girlfriend stuff, but after the actual breaking up (what can I say? I loved the guy and held out hope for far longer than any sane person should).

Anyhoo, it was an email he sent me after a particularly gruesome (and public) fight, in which he leveled an accusation so patently, absurdly, outrageously off-base that I actually laughed when I read it. Y’know, when I wasn’t weeping. On the surface, the allegation -- tucked in between some other more obviously harsh (if equally unfair) ones -- seemed almost inconsequential, banal even. But it pierced me through with the sharpness and coldness of an icicle through my heart.

Lemme explain.

See, I have this couch in my living room. It’s a striped couch. I’ve had it for years. Prolly getting time to replace it. Whatever. The important thing is that it’s striped. And, to me, those stripes look like they’re kind of a sage-y green. But maybe if you saw it, you might think the stripes look more like a shade of blue.

Ok, so, we disagree about the color. (Just go with it for a minute.) In fact, maybe we even argue about it -- me absolutely convinced of its green-ness and you 100 percent sure of its blue. And maybe the argument gets heated and maybe we make value judgments about each other because of this inability to see the stripes the same way (Me: “Why are you so unwilling to even consider the stripes might be green? You don’t respect me or my point of view. You don’t really love me.” You: “Stop projecting. You’re being irrational. And anyway, I’m right and you’re wrong. The stripes are obviously blue”).

Or maybe we don’t fight at all. Maybe we’re the type of people who decide it’s just not worth it. So one of us throws up our hands in defeat and concedes that, fine, fine, the color is as the other person sees it. Depending on how much we value being right about color, that concession either sits perfectly well with us … or sparks the first nascent bloom of resentment.

Or maybe, just maybe, we’re a wholly different type of people -- the type of people who can respectfully agree to disagree and find a way to celebrate the opportunity to share a life with someone who helps us to see blue when all we think we can see is green.

So maybe, just maybe (if we’re the wholly different type of people), when I look at the couch on certain days and could swear the stripes still look green, I’ll turn on a lamp or cock my head just so and see the particular way a finger of the amber afternoon sun hits a cushion, and I’ll say, “Y’know, I can sort of see a hint of blue in there...”

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll walk up behind me, slip your hand around my waist and say, “It’s funny, but … I actually kinda sorta see what you mean about the green.”

And then maybe we’ll look at each other sort of sheepishly, and wonder why the color mattered so much in the first place, and we’ll just be glad for a couch on which to rest our weary heads -- and consummate our love (rowr!).

But what if it’s not the color we dispute?

What if I look at my couch and tell you I see green stripes … and you look at my couch and tell me you see polka dots -- or, say, a bicycle -- and I’m as convinced of the stripes as you are of the polka dots (or the bicycle)? That is a different sort of disagreement altogether. 

See, color is a matter of perspective; shape is a matter of fact (at least in this analogy). When we're arguing facts, how do we find middle ground? How can we agree to disagree? And if we can’t find middle ground, or agree to disagree, what option is there but for one of us to simply … concede? What would that cost us?  And is it fair to ask either one of us to pay that price?

I’m not talking about a couch, obviously. I am talking about the distinction between recognizing a difference in our perspectives versus a difference in our realities. I mean, if we both agree that we are looking at a striped couch, well, we can figure out how to address the difference in our perceptions of the color of the stripes. Ultimately, we may discover that color is far too important a thing for us disagree about, and thereby go our separate ways. Or we may discover that color matters just enough for disagreements about it to needle us but not divide us. Or we may discover that color really doesn’t matter at all -- not when we consider everything else we share, everything else we value -- so agreeing or disagreeing about it is a non-issue.

But if we can’t even accept the premise that the couch we’re looking at is striped (and not polka-dotted or, y’know, a bicycle), then arguing about color is pointless -- whether we want to argue about it or not, whether we love each other or not, whether we’ve hurt each other a million times and apologized a million times and forgiven each other a million times … or not. Because asking me to agree that something I know to be true isn’t actually true is like asking me to agree that the world is flat -- it changes the whole model of my solar system.

It changes where my center is.

And when I figured that out, that’s when I knew it was over. No more arguments, no more “I’m sorries,” no more working it out. Just … over. Because I realized we weren’t disagreeing about whether the stripes were blue or green, but whether the couch was striped at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I rehearsed a thousand speeches and drafted a thousand email replies (even sent one -- or possibly twenty) with the hope that we might both see stripes again (I say "again" like we ever both saw stripes. ha!). Because I wished, with all my heart -- my whole huge, broken, bleeding f*cking heart -- that we would. On some level, I needed us to both see stripes, because it would mean that my reality would be validated. It would mean (or so I thought) that I hadn't completely lost my mind.

But here’s the thing: I’ve come to realize that I don’t need him (or you, or anyone, for that matter) to see stripes to know that the stripes are real. I’ve come to realize that the thing that matters is that I know I see stripes; which is to say, the thing that matters is what I know to be true.

Ok, the analogy is getting a little unwieldy now. So I’ll just say this:

There are so many things about myself about which I am completely unsure, so many more things I wish I were but realize I am not (yet!), still more that I recognize but struggle to reconcile: I am kind, wise, fiercely loyal, and strong, but I am also wildly insecure, passive-aggressive, narcissistic, and a perfectionist. I have impossibly high expectations of myself and other people (particularly those I love), and I have a troubling track record of letting those expectations (and whether they are met or unmet) define me. I love big but lose bigger -- I ruminate on the negative and frequently suffer from a persecution complex (some call that “being a victim,” and -- with several exceptions that I will defend to my death -- they wouldn’t be wrong). I understand intellectually that nothing is ever black and white, but in practical terms I only seem able to process information (and respond to it) as if it were. To compensate, I'm obsessively committed to hearing both sides of every story, which I like to think makes me fair-minded but often only makes me seem wishy-washy -- or, to people who want me (or need me or expect me) to be on their side, it feels like I'm abandoning them. I define honesty and virtue so narrowly that there isn’t a soul on planet earth who could hope embody either -- least of all me (despite my dogged pursuit of both). 

In a relationship, these qualities can be, at best, huge hurdles to clear; at worst, some can be monumentally destructive. And the damage I have done to people I love and relationships that matter to me literally keeps me up at night. My regrets, I’m afraid to say, are legion.

But for all the mistakes I’ve made, for all my shortcomings -- my insecurities, my impossibly high expectations, my short-sighted insistence that I see green when something is really blue -- for all my uncertainty, here is something I know beyond a shadow of a doubt:

My deepest, most profound, most character-defining, most heartfelt desire is that I want to be known. I hunger to be known. This has been my truth for as long as I can remember. It is the thing that keeps me waking up each morning. And, in true double-edged-sword fashion, it is the thing that often tempts me to the bottle or the blade for an endless sleep as well. In the simplest terms possible, this desire to be known is Who I Am.

A hundred years ago, when I first joined Facebook (oh, Facebook...), I found a quote by Frederick Buechner that expressed this yearning more elegantly and more precisely than I could ever hope to express it myself.  So I used it for my “About Me” section.  Because what is “about me” if not my deepest yearning?

Here’s what it said:

“We hunger to be known and understood. We hunger to be loved. We hunger to be at peace inside our own skins. We hunger not just to be fed these things but, often without realizing it, we hunger to feed others these things because they too are starving for them. We hunger not just to be loved but to love, not just to be forgiven but to forgive, not just to be known and understood for all the good times and bad times that for better for worse have made us who we are, but to know and understand each other to the same point of seeing that, in the last analysis, we all have the same good times, the same bad times, and that for that very reason there is no such thing in all the world as anyone who is really a stranger.”

-- from Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons

I know this about myself, this desire -- this hunger -- to be known. I know it as sure as I am sitting here, as sure as the shark-tooth-shaped scar on my arm, as sure as the ground beneath my feet.

I know it like I know the couch in my living room is striped.

Which brings me back to the infamous email and the moment I knew it was over:  “You want,” he said in the message (although sneered is more what it felt like, there was such arrogance in his certainty), “desperately, I think, to not be known.”

When I read that, I laughed. Guffawed, actually. Prolly even snorted (I do that). Because I knew in that moment that he had never been more riotously, ridiculously, egregiously wrong about me. I knew in that moment, with those nine little words, that most everything he believed about me -- most everything of which HE was completely, totally convinced -- was not even on the same planet as the truth about me, not even in the same UNIVERSE. It was, if you’ll indulge me a biblical metaphor here, as far from the truth as the east is from the west.

And then I wept. A LOT. Big snuffling, blubbering, wailing, grief-of-the-dead sobs. Because I also knew in that moment that it was over -- really, truly, finally, completely over. And I knew that this person that I had loved more fiercely and more deeply and more foolishly and more profoundly than any other living, breathing soul in all my life was lost to me for good. That -- even worse -- he had never been mine to begin with, and that believing for a millisecond that he ever was had been the cruelest lie I could have ever told myself. Because how could a person that disconnected from my truth EVER lay claim to my heart?

“He was the love of my life,” I lamented to a friend a while back. “No,” she said, firmly (although not unkindly). “He couldn’t have been.”

She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. Because I knew what she meant. And I knew she was right.

My regrets, I’ve mentioned, are legion. But I will never regret loving him. I will never regret wanting him. I will never regret fighting for him or believing in him (even when he remained convinced that I didn’t). But he was wrong about me. So so so very wrong. About so so SO many things.

So for all that I DO regret, there is nothing I regret more than the years I wasted believing in HIS version of me. There is nothing I regret more than how much of myself I gave up just so he could be right.

Regret is a funny thing. There are many who suggest that it is useless -- self-indulgent, even. But I disagree. If not for this regret, I would never know how dangerously close I came to losing myself completely. If not for this regret, I would never know the power that comes from discovering my own truth, from laying claim to my own heart.

The honest to god truth is that a broken heart just plain sucks. A broken heart full of regret is a bitter, heavy, black hole of a soul-suck. And if you let it, it can annihilate you.

But there is wisdom in it, too. And when it heals, it can also set you free.

...That Everyone Should Own a Hula Hoop.

Last Friday, when I was out dancing with my girlfriends.

We’d been talking about going for ages but never managed to coordinate our increasingly incompatible schedules … or motivate our increasingly sleep-deprived bodies. But Laura took the bull by the horns and got us all out and gussied up for a night on the town.

I can’t say it was the coolest bar in town – no velvet ropes,  no cover charge roughly equal to my first year of college tuition, and no waiting in line, shivering, while the bouncers leer at you and decide whether your boobs are big enough and your legs long enough to sufficiently up the “hot quotient” on the inside -– and the cute-guy pickins were awfully slim (the scant crowd there leaned decidedly Sapphic, and at least one of our bunch was propositioned by an adorable ‘40s-pin-up-looking brunette with a Marilyn Monroe figure and Betty Boop shoes). But it was, hands down, the most fun I’ve had in months!

For starters, when you’re at the not-cool bar, it means you pretty much have the dance floor all to yourself. There are no Night-at-the-Roxbury guido sandwiches to fight off; and if you’re sloshing your drink down your shirt, it’s not because some b*tch with a spray-tan and four-inch peep-hole stilettos is using you as her ballast –- it’s just, y’know, because the DJ has started spinning your favorite Katy Perry song and you kinda maybe got a lil’ too excited (whoops). You can also stage entire Broadway production numbers if you want to and, apologies to Mr. Fosse, we pretty much did. I seriously can’t remember the last time I let myself look like that much of an a**hole in public. Which is where the hula-hooping comes in.

See, when we got there, there was this woman. She was wearing a black mesh bustier and black skinny jeans tucked into knee-high black boots. She had short brown hair and dark, kohl-lined eyes. She was slender but not skinny, her fleshy hips spilling out over the top of her jeans, and a fine sheen of sweat set her shoulders and belly aglow. She was, in a word, smokin’.

But it wasn’t the way she looked that set her on fire. When we got there, she was in the middle of the floor, dancing all by herself. And I don’t mean she was standing there tapping her foot and bobbing her head while she sipped a Long Island iced tea and made eyes at Marilyn. I mean this woman was droppin’ like it was hot -– dipping, spinning, crawling (kind of gross, in retrospect, considering what that floor must have seen over the years), bumping, grinding. She was throwing moves we only practice at Stripper Workout class. And she didn't give a sh*t about what anyone else thought. It was amazing. I was in complete awe (and a little scared, too).

And then she got up on stage with a couple of hula hoops -– sparkly, lighted hula hoops that she spun and swirled like a ribbon around her lithe body -– and that was it. I had to see if I could do it, too.

I waited until after I saw her giving other folks a go, and when she stashed the hoops in the corner by the DJ’s booth, I scampered over, grabbed one, and scampered back to my friends. Then I planted my feet and gave it a whirl, swishing my hips around and around, the muscles in my midsection taut and burning. I remember having a huge smile on my face, although my friends would probably tell you that I was all furrowed brow and focused determination.

Whatever. I loved it.

Not to get too philosophical, but hula-hooping (do purists call it just “hooping”? I have so much to learn!) is a study in contradictions: it requires both groundedness and a liquid control of your body; it’s silly and it’s sexy; it takes very little effort to get the hoop going yet the smallest misstep will make it come crashing down, so you’ve got to pay attention (it’s an excellent opportunity practice what philosophers call “mindfulness” –- a deeply meditative state in which you are totally, completely present, aware of nothing but this very moment and the rhythm of your breath). It is also a hell of a workout and, once you get going, a hell of a lot of fun.

Seriously, you should try it. Go on. Target has 'em for like six bucks. (Yeah, that's right. Happy birthday to me!)

...That It's Good to Play Hooky Every Now and Then.

Yesterday.


I’ve been working ridiculous hours lately (three weeks in a row where the earliest I punched the "out" card was 11pm … and a week in the middle of that where the earliest was 3am - including one all-nighter), and the only time off I've had was a weekend jaunt to the East Coast to chase my niece and nephew around for three days. Fun, but scarcely relaxing or restorative.


I am, in a word, pooped. And I mentioned the can't-catch-my-breath-and-alarmingly-fast-beating-heart thing. I just ain't feelin' right.


So I decided that I needed a day to chill. And not like a weekend day, where ostensibly most of the rest of the country is also chilling. I mean like a bonus day, an unplanned, cracker-jack-surprise, take-care-of-myself day, with no other objective than to rest and rejuvenate. To sleep in, if my humming body will let me -- and to flop around in bed or on my couch and doze in fits and starts if won't. To maybe even go for a walk or a bike ride that doesn't feel like an item on my to-do list.


I feel guilty about this. I have a sneaking suspicion my boss is less than pleased with me. He's a workaholic, and has grown accustomed to my own workaholic ethic. I've been trying to set boundaries, which he says he respects, but there's something in the way he "jokes" about "missing our 9pm confabs" that makes me feel like my leaving after putting in an eight- or nine-hour day is somehow cutting out early -- like he's legitimately disappointed in me. And I have an aversion to disappointment like vampires do to sunlight -- I generally try to avoid it at all costs, even if it sometimes means I end up plowing headlong into some other destructive pattern.

On the plus side, I did it anyway. Lord knows I have the PTO. And you know what? It was totally worth it.

It wasn't exactly the day I'd planned -- I was picturing sunshine and lazy hours at the park with my Kindle and a good long bike ride on Bessie 2 -- but it was still exactly what I needed. I slept in til noon (sweet blessed sleep), practiced some deep meditative breathing ("practiced" being the operative word), got a pedi (french!), pit-stopped by the lab for a d-dimer blood test (my doc wants to rule out a blood clot as the cause of my breathing issues), and met a couple of  my favorite people for an impromptu dinner at our favorite pho place (oh, pho -- how I've missed you). Not even the rain could keep me down.

The best part? I didn't think about work once. Ok, wait -- that's not true. I thought about work exactly once. I'm running a virtual training tomorrow and needed to check in with the presenters. But after I did, I didn't think about work again.

Happy. :o)

...That I Should Start Writing Again.

Last night. Late. Whilst in the shower.

Some people do their best thinking on the commode; I do mine in the shower.

Maybe it's the vulnerability we inevitably experience in each of those scenarios –- in one, your pants are puddled around your ankles, effectively shackling you to you to your seat; in the other, you're completely, butt-a** naked (unless, y'know, you're Tobias Funke and possessed of a paralyzing and –- no disrespect to actual sufferers –- brilliantly, riotously funny gymnophobia). You are quite literally a captive to your situation in those moments, so what else is there to do but think?

Anyhoo, so I was in the shower, as I often am, and thinking, as I often do. And I just knew it was time to start writing again. Less, I think, because I have anything specific to say and more out of some fundamental need to be heard –- y'know, as something other than the echo of my own voice in my head.

See, I've had trouble catching my breath lately. I mean literally. It's like I've been laced into some invisible medieval corset and I can't seem to get my ribs to expand enough to make room for my lungs. I keep yawning, drawing in these huge gulps of air, but there's nowhere for the air to go, so it just hisses right back out. And then my heart starts beating faster, compensating for the work my lungs are failing to do, pumping furiously –- like a novice cyclist towing a covered wagon up a steep incline.

In other words I feel a bit … I don’t know -– constricted, weighed down. And one theory is that writing can be a useful tool for unburdening.

Soooo, I’ve started a(nother) blog. I know, I know –- how 2007 of me. But then, I’ve always been a bit behind the curve. Took me three years to finally squeeze my reluctant ass into a pair of skinny jeans. And even then I only rarely wear them in public. They’re just so … unforgiving. So unless you’re 5’10” and a buck twenty (I’m not), you better be really comfortable in your own skin (I’m getting there).

Consider this blog my skinny jeans, then. It took me a while to warm up to the idea, and I’m still not sure how much I really want anybody to see me in it. But maybe with just the right top and the perfect pair of kicks, I can rock the look.