Ah, the rules. The big and the small. And I was really taught to follow all of them. You know, don’t speak up too much, be polite! Don’t be grabby or ask for too much, have it offered to you. Say please and thank you, a lot. And the ones I imposed on myself over the years….Exercise every day. Not too much sugar! Don’t buy too many cookbooks, or books in general….use the library! Stay where you are for a while to get familiar, then maybe ask for the raise but….do you really deserve it? Maybe not, maybe wait longer. Make SURE you deserve it. Save money, don’t rush to invest it too soon till you really learn EVERYTHING about investing…too risky otherwise. Is traveling there safe, I mean it is out of the country!!! Hmmmm, don’t think so. Better stay closer to home. Well turns out: Money saved does not make you comfortable financially, assets do!! Assets that don’t depreciate! If you don’t ask for the raise nobody if going to give it to you. And yeah, traveling internationally isn’t really that safe these days, but you know what else isn’t “safe”? Staying home and not experiencing the world….not learning how to enjoy a perfect sunset in Phuket Thailand before going back to your $30/night hostel. Not drinking a strawberry smoothie out of a plastic bag that gobsmacks you with it’s deliciousness. And not gaining the knowledge that you can make such incredible friendships with people you randomly meet on a plane and while on said plane decide to room together when you land and then decide to go to the floating market with, and, well….this list goes on.
The problems creep in when you follow the rules and you end up, well….miserable. Following them is not making you happy at all. And you realize the rules were not really made for you, they are kinda silly and stupid, and the times you broke them were the times you were the happiest (driving to Los Angeles after college with a boy I had met that day—a friend of a friend, I’m not that untethered to my own safety!) Also, quitting a job I hated (this was a big rule breaker-never quit a steady job!) to head off with Outward Bound for a month (best decision ever as it introduced me to Colorado!)….I got back dirtier than I have EVER been in my life, read: about 2 “baths” with the moose in the lake over the course of 30 days..does that even count as getting clean or is that just frolicking with moose in their watery paradise? Anyway after that trip I was so happy and wondered why? Well I did stuff I wanted to do, not what others wanted me to do. Turns out that is a bit of a recipe for happiness.
SOME OF MY RULES NOW
Intuitive eating. I always tried to eat what I “should” eat when I should eat it. Did not matter if I didn’t feel like it. You know, dinner foods for dinner, no kettle chips, bad for you! You get the gist. I grew up in a family where you didn’t snack before dinner, became a member of the clean plate club. Yuck. Now I eat what I feel like, within reason. I never pass up the chocolate cake (or my friend Ana’s flan below!) for breakfast and the kettle chips are ok too. Brings me right back to my San Francisco days when I would buy brie and a baguette on the way home from work just because I felt like it and then eat that while splitting a bottle of wine with my roommates and doing a deep dive on our days. Bliss.
I say No a lot more than I used to. And it is still hard because I was always taught that it’s bad. But the thing is it is not and you will do way more stuff you don’t want to if you don’t learn to LOVE this word.
Ask for the things you want. Because you will not get them if you don’t. For example, negotiating a job offer. Or rather not negotiating because it was my dream job! I was lucky I was hired they said! Well, guess what..I brought a lot of value to that job and my boss told me he could have gotten me $20K more had I asked. Well, two lessons there…1) He was an ass and 2) He was right, I should have asked for more.
I buy the books. Especially the cookbooks. Listen, a cookbook at top dollar costs say $35 which is way less that dinner out (especially in LA!) and I read it like a novel and then oogle over it a lot, crease pages, etc. And fiction, $12 for at least two nights of entertainment? Please, a movie here costs like $20 and definitely won’t expand your horizons as much as a book.
Don’t listen to anyone else about money. Or rather listen to everyone else but then make your own decisions that align with what you want to do based on where you want to go. I kinda want to make it cool to buy furniture on Facebook
marketplace but buy fancy lattes-ah the contradictions! Which brings me to this marvelous book about money dials and prioritizing your rich life. This was a game changer and is just such great advice I think. Ramit Sethi. May have written about him before but here I go again if not. SO good.Don’t go to super fancy restaurants. Not unless your really enjoy them….and, I never enjoy them, am hungry right after and poor right after too. In my opinion the best restaurants have nothing fancy about them. They are rated highly here and usually are pretty funky and off the beaten path.
Don’t do something you hate for a paycheck. Well, I have in fact done this. And it is really painful. And miserable. Somewhere along the line I got burnt out from my media job and decided I needed to do something more altruistic. Nursing! I took chemistry and statistics at a community college nearby to get enough pre-recs to apply for a 13 month BSN program at Georgetown. And off I went. I adored Georgetown, boy did i adore it, so it was kind of easy to brush aside the nagging feeling that nursing wasn’t really for me. I’m too bossy and don’t like to be told what to do (that doesn’t fly too well in this particular line of work). But I kept on the path as I thought I was too far down the rabbit hole. Fast forward 13 months to my first job as a nurse and reality came crashing down. I hated it with a passion that is hard to describe it was so intense (the graveyard shift didn’t help much). But still, I did it because I felt I was in too deep, until I was too miserable to do it for ONE MORE DAY. I started in earnest finding my new path which turned into my dream job, a sales job at Sunset magazine where I literally woke up every day excited to talk about all the stuff I love, food and home and travel (the garden part of it I could take or leave). For years I hid the fact that I had done nursing because it just seemed so crazy, who goes to nursing school and doesn’t continue to practice nursing? Well, the bigger question is who cares? I realized I didn’t, like at all. My lesson here, when you know it isn’t right, just pivot immediately.
Travel, as much as possible to as many new destinations as possible. As I write this my daughters are applying for a summer program in another country! All kinds of things flying through my mind….scary, safe, far, etc. But of course I want them to go. Travel is everything.
Other/lighter stuff for the week! Fun finds!
This traybake from Anna Jones fabulous cookbook One Pot, Pan, Planet. Delicious, super flavorful and super easy!
This mocktail! Now, I love my red wine but I like drinking it with good friends, on a weekend, while having great conversation and eating amazing food. During the week give me a good mocktail any day. My favorite mocktail remains at Santos in Boulder, when I asked for mocktail with a “kick” I received a concoction with dreamy coconut and pineapple whispers and a loud shout from a jalepeno. We will see how this one measures up but it sounds promising, very promising!
Hot and Sour Cherry
Shake up in a mason jar:
2/3 cup pure sour cherry juice (the kind from Trader Joe’s is my favorite)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon maple syrup
a pinch of salt
1/2 to 1 teaspoon chipotle puree* or something else smoky and spicy
A few ice cubes
Pour it, ice and all, into another class filled with ice, top with a little seltzer, and garnish with a cocktail cherry (I like the Amarena ones from Trader Joe’s, though I think you can only buy them at xmas).
* To make the chipotle puree, scrape an entire 7-ounce tin of chipotle en adobo (brands to look for include Embasa, San Marcos, Herdes, and La Costena) into the blender and puree it. Store it in your fridge in an impeccably clean glass jar where it will keep indefinitely—unless it doesn’t, which is what sometime happens.
This “recipe”……Honey Garlic Tofu bites. Now I used to hate tofu, but nowadays we eat a lot of it in our house and it is because I have learned to cook it like this recipe. I am convinced people that don’t like tofu have not prepared it correctly. Did I not learn this lesson from brussel sprouts years ago??? Why yes, I did.
This book! One of my very favorites! In my toolbox because it reminds me again and again to think pro-actively and make solutions happen. Women are really good at this but sometimes a reminder is necessary.
Anna Fusco print. Life goals right here. Buying this because it literally lays out my future!
Happy Tuesday all!
xo,
Lesli