The word “meal” is stupid too, but for the sake of this post, I’ll overlook it.

Breakfast. You wake up. It’s been several hours since you last ate. Sure. Have something. Have a few somethings.

Dinner. A way to wrap up the day, sometimes socially. Usually, it’s been a long day. Sure. Have something. Have lots of somethings.

Lunch, though. Annoying. A task. Very little pleasure. Smack dab middle of the day. So when you’re supposed to be handling life—work, kids, school, whatever—you have to drop everything and…eat. Seems wrong. Rushed. Unceremonious.

Also, who wants to sit down to steak at noon? Pasta? A giant burger? Stir fry? The only acceptable lunch options are sandwiches, wraps and salads. Lunch is boring. Stupid.

There are lots of young people at work now. (They can get ’em for cheap.) To use the phrase “young people” is quite funny, not to mention an indicator that one is no longer young. In any case, the cool clothes that the current crop of “young female people” adhere to is a uniform:

• high-waisted button-up jeans, straight leg or slightly flared, cropped and frayed, in true black, faded black or light-wash blue
• fairly loose v-neck sweater tucked into front, but not back of high-waisted button-up jeans
• alternatively, “rock band t-shirt” from decades that young people were not alive, paired with oversized ankle-length cardigan sweater
• leather belt deliberately left out of one loop so as to appear floppy
• big chunky white sneakers, namely Nike or Fila
• hoop earrings

It’s unclear whether they believe they appear as distinct individuals who differentiate themselves with groundbreaking personal style. It’s unclear whether they wear the rock band t-shirts ironically. It’s unclear whether they realize high-waisted pants are not the most flattering choice.

What is clear is that they believe they are blessing an Instagram-able world with their exquisite presence.

Indie singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett said it best. Nobody cares except you. Everyone else is too busy worrying about whether they’ll be at the party to ever give a shit about you.

Yes I like hearing your stories
But I’ve heard them all before
I’d rather stay in bed with the rain over my head
Than have to pick my brain up off the floor
I wanna go out but I wanna stay home
I wanna go out but I wanna stay home

Everyone has their story. Mine is about an apartment. The subterranean level (which sounds better than “basement level”) of a grand Victorian painted Pepto-Bismol pink in the heart of Alameda, California.

I moved to Alameda—near Oakland in the East Bay—for a few reasons, one being that San Francisco didn’t want me anymore. The money, the tech bros, the gross high-rise studio apartments springing up everywhere, marketing “luxury loft living” to the tune of $4000 a month.

Alameda was quaint. Charming. Cozy. Quirky. It felt how San Francisco used to, with independent shops, boutiques, cafes dotting the main drag. Alameda was far more suburban than the city though, all lawns, driveways, single-family homes.

My landlord, Debbie, owned the pink house. She occupied the first and second floors with her husband, teenage daughter and two large dogs. Debbie loved that house. She spent her days and nights attending to it, repairing things, replacing parts and babying a verdant vegetable garden out back.

My apartment was humble, as most Bay Area apartments are. And it wasn’t perfect. The living room had carpet. The bathroom had pink counters. The view from my bedroom was my neighbor’s trash and recycling bins.

But it was nice. Those “not perfect” things never made me think, “Ugh, I have to live with this.” More like, “Ah! At last, I’m home.” And it really did feel like home, which I can’t say as truth for every place I’ve lived. This apartment loved me back, welcoming me in after long days at work and late nights out.

The day the movers came to pack me up for Chicago, I sat on the kitchen counter with my knees tucked in, an iced Peet’s mocha by my side. It happened so fast, as major life changes do. I wasn’t sad to leave behind a whole lot in San Francisco, but leaving that apartment sucked. Even despite that I was moving to a lovely two-story Colonial in a beautiful neighborhood where trees tower, kids bike and people walk home from the ice cream shop.

Every now and then, my Alameda apartment pops up in my dreams. That’s how I know I miss it. In my dreams, someone else is living there. Debbie remodeled it. The carpet is gone. The bathroom is modern. There are plants everywhere. It’s someone else’s home, and in a weird way, it feels like they’re living the life that was meant for me.

I’m a filer. I file many things away in white plastic three-ring binders with shiny laminate covers. I love the sound—that self-assured click-CLICK—of the rings opening and closing before and after something’s been filed away. Sssssatisfying.

I’m an over-filer. I have shit dating back to 2004, when I got in my blue Toyota Corolla with my parents behind me in a U-Haul, careening down Interstate 25 on our way to a teensy-tiny California town for my first real job. We weaved through and out of small western populations, drying up and decaying. Towns with little life other than gas stations, where we’d stop to fill up but only so we could leave.

I’m an over-filer of mostly boring stuff. Car insurance renewal policies in manila envelopes that I never bothered to open. Pay stubs. (Pay stubs.) Newspaper clippings, yellowed and musty from my journalism days. Magazine articles my dad mailed over the years about things like health, fitness, nutrition.

I’m an over-filer of mostly boring stuff, but also stuff that matters. My son’s careful crayon drawings from his preschool days. Mother’s Day artwork of tissue-paper flowers and a pipe-cleaner sun. Birthday cards from my grandparents, decades ago. Letters I’ve typed, printed, signed, never sent.

I plan to burn the boring stuff in a glorious backyard fire pit blaze this weekend. I refuse to continue allowing useless paper to take up space in the back of a closet, untouched and dead. I’ll watch the pages curl and blacken, remembering the bosses, friends, fears, victories from all that life.

Some things never change. And some things do.

“It’s wedding season,” said Maria, the lovely older woman who does my facial chemical peels every few months. Aside from making me nauseous, the phrase got me thinking: why does anyone go through the ordeal of planning a wedding?

Which isn’t the same as inquiring why anyone would get married. I mean, that befuddles me too, but every now and then, I get it. It’s the wedding planning that’s thoroughly perplexing.

Months and months of deciding this, trying on that. Fluffy white dresses. Multi-tiered cakes. Venue tours. Save-the-dates with a phony, staged photo. Invitations with a slightly different phony, staged photo. Tablecloths. Flower arrangements. Gift registries. Not to mention spending obscene amounts of money on a day that comes and goes, just like any other day.

It all feels so fake and self-involved, self-celebratory. It doesn’t feel real. Why all that? What’s the point? Go to the courthouse. Sign some papers. Party with your peeps.

I don’t know whether I’ll ever get married, but I can confidently proclaim: I will never plan a wedding.

When I was in grade school, damn, I could spell. I was the top speller in my class every year. I went to spelling bees. I won ribbons. I won medals. Despite being a very shy girl, I somehow mustered the courage to awkwardly step to the microphone at each contest as the rounds progressed and competitors dwindled.

Until my downfall. Fifth grade. Agriculture was the word. I remember repeating it, as you’re instructed to do, before attempting to spell.

“Agriculture. A, G, R…” Fuck. Fuck! It could be any vowel except “O.” It really could. I went with “A.” I was eliminated.

Pretty sure I cried. On the car ride home, my dad launched into his woeful childhood spelling bee tale of yore, in which he spelled “city” with an “s.” Sity was way worse than my multisyllabic-word mistake, so I felt a little better.

I’m writing about this today because I’ve been thinking about what it means to embrace the fall. To embrace failure. To recognize that without it, you’ll never get where you want to go.

I record dance videos because it makes me happy. It usually takes a few tries, sometimes several. I fall, I mess up, I don’t do it right. Until I do, and those are proud moments. They’re little and silly and I’m the only one who cares, but still, they’re proud. Each is a reminder that failure isn’t even that. It’s a reason to keep trying.

For people who didn’t grow up with social media, like me, it’s still a weird thing. Probably always will be. It invites you to know someone without knowing them, to grab glimpses of fleeting moments in their lives but never the whole thing.

Social media also has the ability to make things awkward. There are no rules. Without rules, proper etiquette becomes vague and elusive. The girl I pass in the hall at work every few days, I mean, we don’t say hi. We might smile, maybe. Yet we follow each other on social. Her cat died a couple weeks ago. She posted about it. It was sad. I love cats. I know what it’s like to be friends with a cat. I’m sorry her cat died. It felt weird to “like” a post that was created singularly to communicate that her cat died, but ok, in a show of support and sympathy, I liked it. (??)

This morning, I saw her in the kitchen. Just the two of us. I’m filling my water bottle, she’s washing her breakfast bowl. Water rushing, our lone soundtrack. Is it weird to say, “I’m really sorry about your cat”? I guess it’s even weirder to refer to the cat by name. Is it necessary to preface with, “I saw your post…”? Are those wasted words that make the whole thing even more awkward?

I didn’t say anything. It’s possible that someday I’ll regret the moments I didn’t say anything, when I knew someone was experiencing pain, and all I could worry about was whether I was being weird.

New. Favorite. Phrase.

I would like to compete in a physique show. Not because I have something to prove to the world, but because I operate more effectively and joyfully in my daily life with a concrete goal. The work keeps me focused, my head down.

I also just want to see: could I do it? Could I maintain a strict level of discipline for 12 weeks straight, no slips? Could I learn how to function with compromised energy while still performing at work, at home, in the gym? Am I capable? That’s what I want to know.

I won’t do it, though. Here’s why. In male physique shows, men get on stage in plain black Speedos and spray tans. They pose, they’re done. That’s it. In female physique shows, women don spray tans, bejeweled bikinis, loads of makeup, hair extensions, and perhaps the worst of it, clear acrylic high heels. They parade around stage in a set “routine.” They’re encouraged to exhibit “sass” and “attitude” for the judges. Hair flips, winks and other gestures of showmanship.

Why? Why do women’s shows devolve into a collegiate-grade beauty pageant? Why can’t I get on stage in a plain black bikini, barefoot? Why all the makeup? Why the fake hair? For the record, I’m fine with a spray tan because it serves a purpose, to play up muscle definition. But everything else—why? Why can’t I just be me, regular ol’ me?