On Friday, I was going to write a post about how kick-ass I’ve been feeling as I’ve ramped up my training for the Run to Remember Half Marathon I’m running in May.

For almost a month now, I’ve been running three times a week (at least four miles), heading to my new New York happy place, Yoga Vida, twice a week, and doing strength training once a week. In just that short amount of time, I’ve shaved a minute off my running pace, increased my daily milage from 3.9 miles to about almost 5 miles, and felt my arms get stronger and my flexibility increase with every push up in strength training and forward fold in yoga. I’ve been riding high on the awesomeness of setting a goal, making a plan, and following through on it every day. I even did a little self congratulatory dance to Ke$ha in my room Monday after squeezing in a run between an all day conference and my class that night. I looked in the mirror and for the first time, I thought, “Hey, I kind of look like a runner!”

Then yesterday happened. Well, it really started Sunday night when I couldn’t sleep. I did that thing where I laid in bed form 11:30 until 2:45am going back and forth from trying to meditate or count my breaths to giving up and getting on the internet to research summer classes one more time. I knew this lack of sleep would come back to bite me, though it didn’t on Monday. Monday, through my super long day, I somehow felt great, but then my alarm went off on Tuesday, waking me at 6:45am to get up for my regular 8am yoga class, and I just could. not. get. up. I tried. I really did. I thought through how much work I had to do that day and how if I didn’t go to the 8am class, I wouldn’t be able to go later. I thought about how I was breaking my work-out streak and how I would feel better if I went. I talked through all the usual stuff that eventually gets me out of bed, but that four hours of sleep I got on Sunday left me almost dead, so I stayed in bed. And I missed my first work out in three weeks. And I hated myself.

All day, I could not stop beating myself up. I even stopped doing the mountain of work I had to do mid-day and did some yoga in my room for 20 minutes hoping to alleviate the guilt, but it only made me madder at myself for not going. I felt like I had let myself down. I had ruined my streak. I had been riding so high; I should’ve know there would be an inevitable fall. Plus, I just felt crappy. My legs hurt. I felt lethargic, and I had that sad look of still being in my pajamas at 2pm.

Today, I woke up feeling equally gross, but my guilt laden mind would not let me skip another work-out. I got myself up (late) and managed to drag myself (through some RIDICULOUS wind! Damn you endless NY winter!) to the gym, and made it through 42 minutes of my planned 58 minute run…and it was awful. I felt tired and sore and never got into any sort of rhythm with the run, and I had to end early since I would’ve been late for work if I kept going. (Also, I may have collapsed had I kept going…)

On my walk home, I called my mom, as I always seem to do post-run to debrief how my training is going. I told her how terrible I felt about the last two days, how I’d been doing so well and was now…well not doing so well, how I feared that this was going to become a slide into me not training like I’ve been training, and as always, she pulled me back to reality.

She reminded me that I need to celebrate the fact that on Monday AND today, it would have been crazy easy to say, “Not today! Running would be too hard!” and stayed home and eaten a bag of goldfish while watching The Daily Show. But I didn’t. I went running.

And I need to remember that one yoga session does not make or break a half marathon training plan. Yes, I need to not make this a regular habit, but missing one class does not a pattern make. It means I didn’t get enough sleep one night, and I need to make sure that doesn’t happen regularly.

And I need to give myself a break. Seriously. I waver back and forth on this, because it was my unrelenting guilt yesterday that got me out of the house today to go running even though I felt kind of horrible, BUT there has got to be a way I can make this a positive, a way that I can keep myself going even when I’m tired that doesn’t involve beating myself up for slipping up and feeling terrible.

I don’t quite know HOW this will work out yet, but hopefully, I will figure it out soon, or else it is going to be a long way until May. And now I’m off to bed so I can get up for yoga tomorrow. Hopefully.

I am a raging feminist and social justice advocate.

There. Now that’s out there. As that will pretty much inform everything I’m about to say.

How did I get to be this way?

Well, I think it was through a series of related events starting with growing up Jewish and living for a time in the South. Now, I’m not saying that being a Jew in the South is the same as say, being Black or Latino in America, but I did start to develop empathy for anyone who has to constantly feel like an “other” in a sea of people who have no idea what that feels like or that there is a whole sea of people who feel differently from them that even exists.

It continued when I started working for Teach for America. Part of TFA’s mission is to change the prevailing ideology about low-income children and children of color – mainly the idea many people wrongly have that they are unable to achieve at the levels of white, middle class or high income children – and to do that, TFA enlists corps members and alumni to be what they call stewards of the movement. We are urged to share our experiences with the masses to help show people what all students are capabele of doing when given equity of opportunity, despite the bleak and frankly racist and bigoted picture that is often painted of low-income children.

My ideology grew more intense when my sister prodded me to start reading feminist literature. Books like Jessica Valenti’s Full Frontal Feminism and The Purity Myth put into words trends and feelings I’d always seen and felt but never had the words to express. It opened my eyes to the norming of misogyny in our culture that we so often just accept as truth or the way things are. This led me to read a variety of feminist blogs on a daily basis and to me reading up on social justice issues of all kinds. I just finished reading The New Jim Crow, which exposes the insane and horrifying way our criminal justice system systematically targets young black men, labels them criminals, makes it impossible for them to make a living or fend for themselves, and then chides them for being irresponsible.

It is extremely difficult to see the things I have seen in my life and to have read the things I have read without becoming a raging feminist and social justice advocate.

It is also just really really difficult to live in our country today and be those two things. For a whole lot of reasons.

First, it makes you feel like everything is the worst all the time. The more I read about Republicans lambasting the “takers” who want to “live off the state,” the more I feel like I’m fighting an impossible battle. The more I hear stories like this week’s This American Life about Harper High School and the tragedies these kids need to live through just to get to school in the morning, where their teachers are barely provided enough resources for them to get the support they need to deal, the angrier and less hopeful I become about how much change is really possible. The more I read about how intractable poverty is, just how hard it is to pull yourself up, despite our national myth that its totally possible if you just work hard enough, the more I mourn for those trapped in our country. The more I read about women needlessly dying or having blunt objects shoved into their bodies because a bunch of government officials, who are most likely men, don’t trust them enough to make decisions about their own bodies, the more I wonder how anything will change. And, most of all, the more I see people in my life or on the internet play it off like these things aren’t a big deal, like they are the victim because they can’t say anything they want, or like somehow their freedoms are being violated because they can’t force other people to live by their personal morality, like we somehow have double standards because privileged groups can’t make jokes about historically oppressed groups, I just want to scream that everything and everyone is the actual worst.

This leads to the second challenge – Its hard not to just be angry all the time. That is why my sister, Stephanie, and I constantly have conversations that just turn into us yelling at each other all the things we wish we could yell at the world.

“Dear white men, you are not actually oppressed when you don’t get to make sexists jokes about women! Dear Rich Republicans, poor people are not lazy. They are living in a cycle of poverty that you never had to battle your way out of on your way to making millions! Dear Internet Commenters everywhere, attack women for their words or their thoughts. Not the way they look!”

This brings me to my final challenge, and the one that led me to writing this post. It is really hard not to blow up like this at people in my life or online every single day. These beliefs that I have developed are such a huge part of me and of my value system, that when someone flippantly informed me that I’d probably be teaching behind a bullet proof window when I got into my school upon learning I had accepted my offer from Teach for America, (yes, that was a real thing that happened…), it was SO hard to not scream at that person that she was pretty much saying my students were going to be so messed up, they were going to SHOOT AT ME in the middle of class. (Please note: my students did give me hugs, buy me Steelers salt and pepper shakers, and are now getting into college….)

It becomes hard to not get into a twitter battle with someone who responds to my excitement over the mention universal preschool in the State of the Union with a comment about how lazy parents are the real problem, when I have never in my life met a parent who did not work their ass off when it came to their child, making sure they were doing everything they knew to do to better their child’s situation.

It becomes hard to not go off on a rant about how incredibly offensive (and frankly, unfunny and completely uncreative) I found Seth McFarlane’s Oscar hosting stint to every single person who says “Come on? What did you expect!? Its just jokes!” Yeah, jokes that perpetuate ideas about the importance of female beauty above all else told in a room of professionals in an industry that to this day is dominated by men and to a television audience of millions. Jokes like that have an affect and matter, and honestly, were exactly what I expected from somehow who writes Family Guy, which is why I was annoyed by his hosting in the first place.

These things and these ideas and our perpetuating them MATTER, and I firmly believe that with every fiber of my being, but I often hold my tongue. I suppress my rage and my full rants, because I don’t want to be the person who is constantly bringing down every conversation with serious discussions about how this is all super serious business that we need to take super seriously.

But its becoming harder and harder. Like I said, this stuff matters, because the things we say, the things we find funny, and the beliefs we hold about other people affect the choices we make individually and as a society, and nothing is going to change if I just sit here silently and let people make racist, sexists, close-minded remarks about groups of people I am either a part of or have worked with intimately through my career. I want things to change. I want us to actually accept and celebrate people’s differences instead of just claiming we do so that we can all feel good about everyone being “equal” without really examining what that means or doing what it would actually take to make that true. I want us to realize that it really is harder for some people to succeed in our country, so that we can work to help even the playing field instead of arguing that the people in power, who have historically been in power, are somehow getting an unfair deal just because they can’t say whatever they want, when really, they don’t want to be forced to examine their privilege because it makes them uncomfortable.

I know this post is super long and super ranty, but it was a long time coming. I’m tired of only saying these things to my sister and sometimes to my mom when she feels like listening. I want to say the things that I feel, the things that I know matter, to anyone who will listen, because we need to open our eyes to the way our society is – who it favors, who it oppresses, and why – not just the way we desperately want it to be.

I hope, if you feel the same way, you will join me in going on many much needed rants about the problems in our country and how we can actually start to address them.

One of my biggest goals for the first part of 2013 was to start a gratitude journal. I’d come across the idea in The Happiness Project, Flourish, and all over Pinterst – although those were more cutsey ideas than just writing down some good things in a journal.

All the resereach on positive psychology and happiness found that when people took time out of their day to express gratitude for the good things that had happened or to reflect on three good things that happened that day and why they happened, they were happier people.

After the hot mess of last year during which I spent a lot of time focused on what wasn’t going right and what I was not at all grateful for, this practice seemed really appealing.

I started on Janurary 1st, super gung ho. I wrote about how I’d had a great time ringing in the New Year on top of my friend Liz’s apartment building watching fireworks and drinking champagne. I wrote about the lovely lunch I had with Jillian and Steph…then I didn’t write for like three weeks. Changing habits is hard, yo.

Then the Elevate retreat happened, and I finally got my butt in gear. I added journaling to my daily to do list, (Sidenote: Wunderlist is the greatest thing to happen to my life this year.) and something clicked. After just two days of journaling, it became the thing I most looked forward to at the end of the day. Some days, I couldn’t write fast enough, there were so many things I wanted to jot down. Some days, it was a little harder to think of more than two or three things that went well, but really, having two or three things to be grateful for in a day isn’t bad at all. Plus it has been a great daily way to reognize myself for meeting my other goals, since I have a designatied time to essentially celebrate myself.

And do I feel happier? Its only been three weeks, but I really think I do. Maybe I’m just convinced I do because I want it to work, but even if that’s the case, it still means I’m happier! I think that taking the time to actually commit to paper things that are good in my life, even if they are small, even if they repeat every few days, (which, again, I count myself lucky to consider every phone call I have with my mother to be a thing I’m grateful for…), and even if its only one or two things, reminds me that I am living a pretty damn good life and that to spend my time sulking about the things I’m still working through is not how I want to spend my time.

I want to spend my time celebrating how great it was to have brunch with my Uncles, to get myself to the gym for six days in a row, to see Warm Bodies instead of sitting inside facebooking, to talk to Jillian or my sister on the phone, to get a fancy dinner and to meet new people, and those are the things I’ll be happy I wrote down to remember later when maybe things aren’t going so well. For now, though, things are looking up.

It only took a month and a half, but now, here’s the 2nd episode of the Super Cool Party People Podcast!

In this episode, we discuss unresolved sexual tension on some of our favorite TV shows, including our most recent obsession, Nick and Jess on New Girl. We then move on to dissect the feminist appeal of The Mindy Project, and finally, we end with our newest segment, Ahhh!/Uggghhh with things we are loving and hating this week.

And now for some links to things we talked about on the show, in case you feel like wasting the next four hours of your life learning more about things that are interesting to us:

Recap of The Mindy Project with every possible nod to romantic comedies pointed out.

New Girl Kiss!

Jezebel Article on a super pretty, super smart girl

Japanese Boy and his adorable French Bulldog

NYTimes Article on our national myth of equal opportunity

Some general horror film theory stuff: One / Two

Rebuttals to the annoying thing (Heritage Foundation study) Steph’s FB friend posted: One / Two

Ken Levin’s blog post on The Mindy Project

Super Cool Party People Episode 2 [ 55:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week has been…frustrating to say the least.

Last week, I wrote off my inability to start strong on my new goals to the time change/getting back into the swing-of-things-ness of returning to New York after over a month away. I was SO mentally set to get started on my half-marathon training on Monday when BOOM, Sunday morning I woke up with the beginnings of a cold.

Cue Zicam overload and stress-TV-watching.

By Monday, I felt terrible but I wasn’t about to let a stupid cold stop by training. (I mean, all you need is your body to train, and when that feels crappy…well you should train anyway, right? Wrong…apparently.) By Tuesday, I couldn’t get out of bed. I literally slept all day, waking up only to eat soup and Zicam like candy until I had to drag myself up to go to class during which I almost passed out doing yoga breathing exercises. (Yes, this is what I do in my Master’s classes.) Obviously, a 50-minute run was probably out of the question.

The rest of my week has looked much like Tuesday. Sleeping. Eating cough drops. Almost throwing my phone against a wall when reminders pop up to “Run” or “GO TO YOGA!” I want to phone BUT MY BODY IS BREAKING DOWN!

Last night, I couldn’t sleep because of all that pesky day-sleeping so I sat up and journaled for the first time since the Elevate retreat, and despite the fact that it was mostly negative at first, circling in on the fact that after my trip to LA, I somehow miss LA even more – especially now that I’m stuck inside for the day because of a storm named for a tiny fish –I was proud of myself for spinning it around by forcing myself to list all the things I like about living in New York that I will miss when I leave to attempt to appreciate them more now. It is unsurprising that most of the items on the list were food related.

So…yeah. That is where I am now. Not super happy about the lack of training or movement on goals, but happy with how I’m attempting to deal with my frustration. I have been much better about my other main goal for this month, which is starting a gratitude journal or log of things that are going well. I think it has definitely helped this week not be a pit of soul-suck.

Here’s hoping my body stops screwing with my plans so I can try to start again on Monday!

It’s the very first episode of the Super Cool Party People Podcast, starring me, Amanda, and my sister Stephanie, a PhD student in Media.

In this episode, we discuss our recent descent into the TV madness that is marathoning a TV show (in our case, The West Wing), things that delighted us in 2012 and the things we are looking forward to in 2013.

Some things you may want to check out from the episode:
Richard Lawson on twitter
Lindy West on Twitter (and her amazing live story)
The Monkey See Blog on NPR.org (By Linda Holmes of the Pop Culture Happy Hour)

And of course…
The American Girl Music Videos (I especially recommend “1000 Miles”)

Also, in case it wasn’t clear from the episode, The West Wing is now steaming on Netflix. Your’re welcome, and I’m sorry.

Super Cool Party People Ep 1 [ 55:42 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I realized yesterday that I never made an announcement here about my newest blogging venture, which is keeping me from blogging here. That venture is that I’m a season 7 blogger for the always wonderful Stratejoy!

You can check out all my posts here, and when I finish up with that, I will hopefully be on a regular blogging schedule to pick back up here!

I left LA exactly three weeks ago.

In the intervening time I’ve been in 13 states, ridden in a car for approximately forty two hours traveling to New Hampshire, New York, and Illinois, and of course, I’ve watched approximately 100 million hours of Olympic coverage. (Come back, Olympics…please??)

I’ve seen my Uncle, who was such a wonderful and important part of my life in Boston (and in general) get married to a man I could not be more excited to (legally! Thank you, Massachusetts!) welcome into our family. I’ve gone up to New York for a job interview and been offered the job. (Woohoo work study!) I’ve dropped my big sister off at school, where she will spend the next five years getting her Ph. D. (She’s a pretty big deal.)

It has been a pretty solid three weeks that has kept me busy so I can’t think about what I’m missing in LA: I’ve missed my school, which I helped open three years ago, have the first day of school in its existence that I haven’t been apart of. I’ve missed watching my students walk through the door for their senior year of high school. I’ve missed my friends. I’ve missed the sun, and I’ve missed my apartment. I’ve even missed the freeways.

But again, I’m trying to focus on what I’ve gotten. I got a week with my entire family in New Hampshire on a beautiful lake, very close to a ridiculously delicious smelling bakery. I got watching my little cousins tube and excitedly fly into the water, only to board the boat with a smile and a super enthusiastic, “That was AWESOME!” I got to hear all about the high school drama from my older cousin, Grace, who also provided my sister and I with an 12-hour rainy day Gilmore Girls Marathon.

Part of the Family Sittin' on the Dock

I got to participate in a family open mic night that included cousins singing songs from Wicked, playing some sweet guitar riffs, and telling jokes. It included my grandparents doing a mime act of their marriage, and my dad and his three brothers performing an amazing song and dance called the Farkle singers than cannot be describes other than the fact that no one in the room could breathe from laughing. I got to run with my whole family in a celebratory 5K dubbed the Wedding Dash: Race to the Alter, in which we all got to take first place in our (sometimes, very specific) age groups.

Mom, Sister, me and Dad after the race!

I got to sit on a cliff, overlooking a beautiful lake, while two people I love exchanged some of the most beautifully written and heartfelt vows surrounded by my incredibly loving, crazy, and supportive family. I don’t know if I could’ve so easily handled leaving LA if it weren’t for the fact that I got to bask in the fact that I have a pretty amazing family, that at least for the next year, I get to be a whole lot closer to.

Ridiculously beautiful view from family's house

For the next week, I’ll be chilling with my parents in Delaware, while being forced to go through all of my childhood things my mom has grown sick of having in the basement. I’ve already had some huge flashes of nostalgia and “Oh my god! I feel so old” moments this past week, having driven through not one but two towns I used to live in on our drive to Illinois with my sister. I even got the chance to have dinner with one of my best friends from high school (HI KAITLIN!) who I hadn’t seen in way way too long. Perhaps I’ll post some amusing gems I find in the process later this week.

Until then, I will be trying to stay focused on all the things I’m doing instead of what I’m missing.

Oh hey, there. Long time no see…

I just got done with another truly inspiring, exhilarating, hilarious, amazing, and exhausting summer working at Teach for America’s summer institute. I am physically and mentally exhausted, but so truly proud and thankful of the work my teams and I did this summer for the kids in Los Angeles. People often ask me why I keep going back to spend my summer working 16 to 18 hours a day, living in a dorm, eating nothing but plain turkey sandwiches, diet coke, and coffee for weeks on end, and its because there is nothing more rewarding than working alongside some of the smartest, funniest, most dedicated and talented people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting to do something of importance, to help kids and try in our own way to make our country a better and fairer place.

I’m so sad its over, and I know I probably can’t go back next summer, but I really really wish I could.

Four (oh my god…*insert 10 minute rant about the passage of time and the quickness of life and the frightening almount of general oldness I feel*) years ago, I went on a very weird whim to the very first Bloggers in Sin City, and I’m not exagerating when I say that in some ways, deciding to have a three-day layover in Vegas on my way out to LA changed my life. I met some of my favorite people ever – Nicole, Drea, Doni, Rachel, Kerri, Kaitlin – who I am still friends with today and some of whom have made LA even more of a home than it would’ve been, by inviting me to awesome events, brunches, and hang-outs, and even by finding me apartments. I also learned to take crazy ridiculous risks like staying in hotel rooms with strangers and jumping into fountains, to always dance down the strip, to eat all the cheese, and to spend ample amounts of time in pretty bathrooms. Three years later, I think I’m still in a weird way living by those rules.

The next year, I obviously went back, met even more amazing people, jumped in another fountain (that was apparnelty full of homeless people pee) and had another ridiculous time. Last year was a dark period, where in I didn’t have enough money or sick days to go to BISC, and it was much more upsetting than I had anticipated. I couldn’t go on twitter at all, because I was so bummed I couldn’t join in on the fun, so when Nicole told me last fal how ridiculous this year was going ot be and also that I wasn’t allowed to not go anymore, I started saving money and sick days so that dark period would never be repeated.

And it wasn’t.

This weekend, I was lucky enough to take one of the 60 spots at BISC, and it again did not disappoint.

And this is where things get hard. I want to write a recap of the event, but I really can’t.

I mean, how exactly do you recap a conversation that starts with stories of African rape traps and ends with this photo?

How do you recap Drea’s slighty drunken turtle dancing face and actual mean tutrles pushing eachother off of rocks during brunch? (I hope I told Drea she was making Nick from New Girl‘s turtle face while dancing when I was a little drunk, or else this just sounds bitchy when I’m sober. HI DREA! YOU ARE SO PRETTY AND NOT TURTLE LIKE!)

How do you explain the magic and weirdness and epicness and foot pain that is Vegas with 60 equally magic, weird, and epic people?

I could show you pictures of my blacker than space feet afer walking the strip barefoot to find a fountain for a picture at 3AM or talk about tiny vodka bottles coming out of dresses and dance walking and car dancing (dance walking’s close cousin). I could try to explain how Marcus the audience participant won Zumanity or how I never don’t want to be greeted at the door by this or how Taquito was upset with his 4G service. I could attempt to describe the “metaphysical PAIN” of getting pulled pork waffle fry nachos without the pulled pork or the utter joy of finding a cigarette for my cigarette holder to make my Mad Men costume complete. I could maybe explain to you why I decided to speak in a British accent for 5 hours or dance like a muppet robot with Amber, or I could transcribe the 25 ridiculous 50 Shades of Grey quotes I could barely get through without laughing by the pool, but really, there is no recapping or explaining. There is only living #BISC.

I write this post, then, mainly to remember for myself, to remind others who were there, and to remind myself to look up NYU’s 2013 academic calendar so I can somehow, someway find myself back here next year getting a bear claw tattooed on my lower front with Brandy while singing One Direction with Ameena, while Katelin reads me tweets from the other room about all the hangovers and Kerri Shrug.

I hope all of you will get to join in on the fun one day, because it is the actual best. Thanks, Nicole, for another Best Weekend Ever.

WHO CARES! TATER TOTS!