The Beauty of An Orlando Parking Lot Run



















  • Spending less time staring at my phone in public places
  • Writing EVERY DAY to push my career forward


How Would You Answer This Question?









What Are You Waiting For In Your Thirties?



FullSizeRender (2)






First night in Portland!



Blue Star Donuts!




Portland Love!

The Bowling Ball Leaning Dilemma, or Trying to Control the Uncontrollable









A Beautiful Frustum In Your Thirties

Seth Godin, one of my favorite business bloggers, recently wrote a blog about pyramids without a top. In geometry, these types of shapes are called frustums.

We spend our career lives trying to get to the top of our pyramid- we want to be the career elite, the famous, the special, the 1%. And why not? Fantastic career success is a big and beautiful possibility.

However, with the advent of the digital age, more and more of us will find it easier than ever to get our work out there in some form, but harder and harder to gain the fame and well-known 1% type of success (because everyone else is getting their work out too). For example, it’s easier than ever for anyone to publish a book all by themselves, but now there are more books available than ever before. Instead of waiting to get a book published, you can publish your book and sell it on Amazon or multiple other internet sources completely free. You can do the same with music and web tv (webisodes)- you can quickly and easily get your music or webseries online and direct to users all by yourself and for almost no cost.

Will you be the next Taylor Swift or Lady Gaga? The next Stephen King or Tina Fey? Maybe. Maybe not. But can you be a success and make good money and have a powerful, impactful, positive life without being a headliner like the above names? Absolutely.

The hard part isn’t in being in a frustum of an industry- where there’s no real peak, just more and more opportunity for entry- the hard part is in accepting the frustum and knowing you can still make a great life. There’s lots of room in frustums for lots of people to be successes- it’s just a different kind of success.

Even when you’re not well-known or at what you think is the peak of your career pyramid, you can still be a pretty damn good school teacher or time-share seller or yoga instructor or animal shelter manager. You can write amazingly good books or make insanely gorgeous music and get it all out into the world easier than ever because the base of the frustum is wider than ever. If you can accept this shapeshifted new world change, you may just realize that you’re more successful (and happier) than you ever dreamed you could be.


Happy With Less (Emotionally)


-Robert Rodriguez




“She turned to the sunlight And shook her

Are You At Your Income Happiness Cap?

I’ve known for awhile that there’ve been scientific studies showing that your income correlates with your level of happiness only up to a certain amount and then caps off.  This is an interesting tidbit to remember in your thirties, as your income possibly grows more than it has when you were younger.

A study in 2010 found the income level happiness cap to be $75,000. So according to this research, you’d get progressively happier up to $75,000 in income and then your happiness level would remain consistent. Let’s adjust this for 2015 inflation and then adjust it once again for a major city like New York, San Francisco, or LA, plus let’s be generous, so we’ll make the number $120,000.

Now, $120,000 a year is a good chunk of money for someone in their thirties, and nothing to scoff about even in New York, especially for one person and not a household. If you made $120,000, do you think you’d be significantly happier making $140,000?

I guess it depends on who you are, and how well you know yourself. I believe happiness  definitely caps at a certain income level… that level might just be different for different people, but it’ll still work the same way.

I believe there’s a Maslow’s pyramid of needs associated with income. If you don’t know about this pyramid, click the link above…Maslow’s pyramid is a very clear way to view how our goals are naturally set up in life.

Ok, here’s a stab what I think the income pyramid of needs is:

1. Providing basic security items such as paying rent and buying food.

This is the basic bottom level of what money needs to provide- food and shelter.

2. Adding personal touches to our basic needs

At this level, you don’t only eat and pay rent, you can also buy a specific soap you like for your home, and buy a nicer can of beans than Goya.

3. Some disposable income

Once you get to this level, you can move beyond simple food and shelter and possibly go see a movie, or have dinner with friends

4. A good amount of disposable income

Here’s where you can purchase bigger items such as higher education, a vehicle, and a big screen tv. Of course, this is where a lot of people get into trouble and get stuck. Debt occurs the most at this level.

4. Money for the future and savings

This is a major jump that some people never get to.  At this level, you’re mostly out of debt or on a good payment plan, and are setting aside money in a savings account and a retirement fund.

5. Money to give away

At this level, you have all the money you need, and your future accounts are funded. Now you can really help others. This is a nice, happy level to be at.

Beyond the last level, I guess you can give even MORE to others, or sock even more money away or buy a ranch and a bunch of ponies or something, but it’s all extra from there.

So maybe it’s actually not a yearly income thing- maybe people simply need to make enough money to climb to the top of the pyramid, and then more money doesn’t really bring more joy.

What do you think?


Where’s Your Happy Place?

Firstly, thank you Laura for your honest post yesterday. When you’re bombarded with happy Facebook posts and people’s gorgeous Instagram pictures that look like they’ve been professionally creatively directed, it’s refreshing to hear someone talk about their struggles.

I’ve been in a kind of crappy mood this last week. Mainly, it’s because I graduated from my MFA program and have no set path going forward. I also feel alone in my city, LA, which still feels new after almost two years. But on the bright side, today I went to Santa Barbara to accompany my boyfriend to his doctor’s appointment. Since my schedule is pretty flexible – um, completely flexible now – I thought I’d take advantage of my ability to be free and take spontaneous road trips.


One of the Santa Barbara court rooms

It was pretty glorious. Santa Barbara is a city (town?) that always makes me feel connected to myself. While I can’t articulate exactly why or how, it feels like me.  The three times I’ve been there, I feel like I’m glowing and happy. Do you have places like that? I can’t say I have many, so when I find them, I’m always intrigued and grateful.

When I’m in Santa Barbara, I love wandering the main stretch on State Street, having a very affordable and amazing massage at the Relaxation Station, eating delicious things (deep dish pizza today), and wandering the Santa Barbara Courthouse (which is gorgeous and also a working courthouse during the weekdays).

Here are some pictures from the adventure today.


Me at the Santa Barbara Courthouse. Not on trial (thankfully).


View from SB to the Mountains


How Harmonious Does Your Life Feel?


– Albert Camus




Are There New Feelings In Your Thirties?







I’d Give Up Being Happy To Be Happy

Tonight a friend of mine drunkenly called me after hitting up a bar too many (or maybe it was the perfect number of bars).

We were having a pretty funny and awesome one-sided drunk conversation for awhile (I was unfortunately just sitting soberly at my desk), when the tone turned slightly negative. It was a still pretty awesome conversation, the way one sided drunk and negative conversations can often be (admit it), and things were said such as ‘sometimes people can just suck! Why?? Why do they suck??’ Rambling rants commenced.

Then my friend suddenly said “I just want to be happy. I’d give up being happy to be happy.”

I laughed and asked what in the world that meant.

“I don’t know,” was the reply, “I’m drunk. I’m rambling.”

“Haha, I see.”

“But I just want to be happy now. Not just later.”

My friend made an offhand drunk comment, but it got me thinking about long term happiness vs short term happiness- or long term happiness vs short term pleasure.  Right now, I’m kind of down and I just want everything to be okay. When I’m feeling upset,  sometimes I just want the shortest road to feeling better. Even though I know what will lead to happiness in the long term, there are times I just want things to satisfy me now.

Wanting pleasurable experience after pleasurable experience without sacrificing for the long term is called the hedonistic treadmill. Some people spend their whole lives on it. That short term patchwork feel-better “happiness” is actually just pleasure, whereas deeper and true lasting happiness is something far different. A good example is eating platters of nachos on the couch instead of exercising, when your goal is to get fit. The platters of nachos may be delicious and give you short term “happiness” (pleasure), but seeing results from your workout regime would give you way more long term happiness.

Right now I find myself grappling with this a lot, in much less obvious ways than the nacho example. I see the hedonistic treadmill issue pop up when I’d rather stay in a non-ideal situation rather than go through the discomfort of demanding better things in my life. Or when I want to feel peaceful all the time and can’t face occasionally upsetting but natural feelings in order to work through them.

Do you recognize a pleasure-addiction syndrome in your life- even a subtle one? What can you do to better face occasional unpleasantness and sometimes very scary feelings in order to have greater happiness in the long run?


The Occasional Inspiration of Social Media










And thanks, Tiffanay!







That Time You Hated Positivity In Your Thirties





























And the list goes on. It’s fascinating.




2013-12-31 23.49.25


When I See A Starbucks Red Cup, I Go There

I was thinking the other day of what Jane said about beverages. She was writing about ways to save money in your thirties and she mentioned that her major indulgences were beverages of all kinds. A glass of wine or fancy coffee here or there can add up, but they truly brought moments of happiness, so it was difficult to reconcile stopping them to save money.

As we sat sipping margaritas one day, another good friend of mine who follows the blog brought up that same beverage conundrum Jane wrote about. “I love my nice coffees or glasses of wine or margaritas. These little things make me so happy… I like saving money but I’d lose so much happiness now if I deprived myself of occasional nice drinks.”

And random acts of drinkable kindness do indeed bring me joy as well. Here we are in winter, and the need for cheer runs strong. Whenever it’s cold outside and I see a red Starbucks cup, my Pavlovian-trained mind snaps into action, and I feel the strongest urge for the happiest latte. I not only want to go into Starbucks, but I want to buy the sweetest, warmest, most holiday cheer themed beverage that I can hold in my chilled fingers. Better yet, if that drink was bottomless and refilled automatically, I could hold it all day as a warm fixture of my waking hours.


Starbucks does a great job with their red winter cups- they’re a signal to my psyche that something nice is in the air. I mean, it’s definitely really good branding, and I won’t deny that they’ve trained people well…but I just let myself fall for it. The advent of the holiday cups invites time for ease, comfort, and celebration during a cold and occasionally stressful time of year. Getting myself an occasional holiday red cup coffee from Starbucks transports me to a cozy state of mind.


I fight so many habits in my life, and I’m always trying to make the “right” food, money, and job decisions. Having a coffee or a glass of wine or even a smoothie or sparkling water with a friend is an indulgence I’m willing to embrace. A happy red cup of coffee can leave me transported. As long as they’re not in total excess, small indulgences can be bonds shared with others or with yourself. As much as I talk about how I love to save money, certain sweet moments of now I don’t want to save for later.

Also, this article was not sponsored by Starbucks. I wish.

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