Existential Angst

Loneliness Hack: Make Festive Party Foods for Just You!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

If you’re like me, you know that cooking for one can be a bummer. All the work that goes into lovingly preparing a meal only serves as a reminder that you are all alone in the world. (Not even successful lifestyle bloggers are immune to this. It’s lonely at the top.)

But does a lifestyle blogger give up? No, I found a solution! This one simple trick will breathe new life into your lonely habits:

Make fun dishes that are meant for groups, and eat them alone.

 


These veggie stuffed mushrooms are a healthy, decadent party snack. They’re challenging to prepare (hollowing out those mushrooms is harder than it looks!), and the slicing, chopping, and baking process builds anticipation for what is sure to be a warm dinner party in the company of good friends. Or, a semi-satisfying dinner for one! I put them on a plate and washed them down with some wine, but feel free to hold the hot cookie sheet over the sink and go to town.


Cauliflower fritters are a healthy twist on hash browns, and they’re great for a homemade brunch with someone you love. Or, for creating an entire sink full of dishes that you, yourself will have to wash! But hovering over a hot stove and trying to flip these beauties before they crumbled? It was so worth it when I saw the look on my own face as I took the first bite, my reflection in the living room window betraying a mix of satisfaction an existential doom. Yum!


Queso dip is, technically, not food. But it is great for parties! And any event can be a party with the right snacks – even sitting on the couch and admitting that you, truly, have given up. And when you’re eating alone, nobody will ever know that you finished the entire jar yourself. I didn’t even give this picture a border, because it doesn’t deserve it.

I might be a lonely lifestyle blogger, but with this fun life hack, I’m also full of appetizers at all times! And that, my friends, is what I call a success 🙂

I Got All Dressed Up and Didn’t Take Any Pictures!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

 

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I know that dressing up involves a meltdown of epic proportions. From anxiety over what dress to wear, to trepidation that my hair isn’t cooperating, to being fully convinced that I’ll be under and/or over-dressed, looking nice is an all-day ordeal.

When my friends Maggie and Charlie got married at a beautiful, elegant ceremony in Chicago, it was no exception. My dress and hair felt wrong, I couldn’t tell how formal the wedding was, and I don’t know how to put on lipstick. But finally, after a few tears, a small existential meltdown, and a lot of reassurance from patient pals, I thought, “Hey, I actually look pretty good!”

Once I looked nice, I had to make sure my effort was worth it by it by taking zero photos. The fun peacock-print dress I was wearing didn’t need to be shown off, even though the (A-line? maybe?) cut of the dress was so perfectly offset by the understated low stilettos I was wearing, and I felt downright semi-confident wearing it.

After all, I only put genuine effort into dressing up twice, maybe three times a year, so it’s best if it happens quietly for only a few to see, to be immediately forgotten by the sands of time 🙂

How to Be Effortlessly Beautiful Also That’s a Lie I’m Sorry

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I take a lot of photos of myself. It’s important to show you, my loyal readers, what I look like so you view me as a favorable lifestyle personality. But actually it’s all a ruse to take a lot of selfies. I’m sorry.

I could make a whole post about how this look is a part of some new beauty routine or something, but really I just like this picture and I wanted to post it. I’m sorry. I went to film something and there was a makeup artist on set. I can’t even pass this off as my beauty hack because I have no idea how she did it I’m sorry. If I were to come up with a beauty hack from this, it would be “hire a makeup artist.” But nobody can do that. I’m sorry, please indulge this post that is completely about me.

When I got back to my car I took a quick picture to see what the makeup looked like. The lighting was pretty good, and all in all I thought it was a really good picture. I’m sorry. This is a totally narcissistic post where I pretend I’m telling you a beauty hack but it’s just to validate me and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll even make the picture really small so you don’t have to look at my face too much. I don’t want to waste too much of your time loading a big picture of my professionally altered but totally natural face.

This blog is supposed to tell you how to live an adequate life, and I’m only showing you an adequate illusion. Would it help if I pointed out that my glasses are crooked and my bangs dried kind of weird? No? Sorry. This was unnecessary. I’ll be back with a recipe or a cleaning tip next time I’m sorry. Again, so sorry.

Do I look okay though?

A Fun New Haircut, or a Cry for Help?

Posted on by Julie Pearson

Old Life/New Life

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I know that your look is the most important reflection of who you are. That leaves me to wonder: if I change my look, who am I exactly? I cut off 6 inches of my hair to find out!

A drastic haircut is an exciting way to update your look and make the world seem fresh and new. Or is it a desperate plea to inject a little big of excitement into your draining, monotonous life? Who knows! Either way, I love my new haircut.

I knew it was time to cut my hair because it was getting hard to wash, but I could just sense that it was time to cut off so much of my hair that I feel like I’m living in someone else’s body. Was it because I wanted a fun look for fall? Or because my soul was desperately crying out, “Someone, save me from my rote daily existence that stretches on into infinity with no end in sight?” Ray at Atomic Hair Lab did such a great job that it doesn’t even matter!

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Everything is great now.

The feeling of watching giant chunks of my own hair fall to the floor and collect at my feet was liberating and exciting. Piles of hair fanned out before me, like dismantling all the dreams and plans I made for my life and combing through them, wondering if they will ever pan out and if the journey is really worth it at all, at the end of the day. Wondering: how does one ever really know if they are taking the right steps forward, or even if they are taking steps forward, when the journey only makes sense in hindsight looking back. It’s an endless puzzle, but then, isn’t the puzzle the most important part of the journey? Will it ever become easy to live with uncertainty? Anyway, the haircut’s great.

 

(Photo Credit: Jen Aubrecht)

My Excruciating Morning Routine

Posted on by Julie Pearson

 

Start every morning with a smile!

I’ll admit it: I have a tough time with mornings! That sinking feeling when I remember that I have to face another day? It’s nearly unbearable.

I think we all know that getting out the door in the morning can be tough. Until the first cup of coffee, my worst enemy is conscious thought. I find that having a little structure is the key to an easy, painful morning. Here’s mine:

6:45 – First alarm goes off. I try to remember who I am.

6:52 – Second alarm goes off. I try to remember where I am.

7:00 – Third alarm goes off. I reset this alarm for 7:05.

7:05 – Fourth alarm goes off. The last alarm. This is a terrible moment.

7:07 – I think about getting out of bed.

7:08 – I actually get out of bed.

7:09 – I brush my teeth and curse the world.

7:12 – I gather my clothes out of a pile of work-wear that lives on a table in the corner. I get back into bed and curl into a little ball.

7:15 – I think, “I should really put on these clothes.”

7:16 – I debate calling in sick, changing my identity, and starting a new life on an island.

7:17 – I put on those clothes.

7:19 – I look for my purse and curse the world.

7:20 – I stumble to the bus stop.

It’s that simple – just those exact steps every day, and I’m out the door in 35 minutes flat. Easy! Breezy! Miserable! If I divert by even one minute, I will never go to work again and my bed will swallow me up forever.

Now it’s your turn! What helps you get going in the morning? 🙂

4 Things I Love: Mental Fog Edition

Posted on by Julie Pearson

 

Downtown. Glamour.

 

I spent roughly two days of this week being a tour guide for a visiting college friend. It was delightful! But that was enough to make the whole week feel exhausting. But don’t worry, I can still love things while in an inexplicable mental fog! Just watch me!

  1. Frasier. Sometimes, when everything feels like too much and my brain refuses to function in any way, I reach a point where the only acceptable activity is watching an episode of Frasier. I don’t love Frasier more than any other 90’s sitcom. In fact, I never ever watched much of it until recently, and maybe that’s why it’s so comforting: it feels familiar while still retaining some sort of newness. At any rate, I reached a point this week where even watching Frasier seemed like too much mental effort. And if that doesn’t provide a lovable amount of perspective on where my life’s at, I don’t know what does!
  2. The End of Migraine Visions. On Saturday afternoon I found myself with one of those lethargic, weird headaches. I lost track of time, space, and any accountability I had to the day. Suddenly it was time to meet aforementioned college friend to go to a poetry reading at the Ace Hotel. I poured myself onto the bus, and found myself in a strangely lit room listening to a long series of poems, read haltingly by nervous writers. The uneven lamplight danced off my retinas and I was forced to breathe through a weird series of optical tricks. I wasn’t “seeing things” exactly, but my vision wasn’t normal. Every once in a while the pain was almost blinding, but in between, I just knew something wasn’t right. The reading stretched on for hours (less than two of them). By the end, my headache was finally breaking and the visions went away. I have to find something to LOVE about this because I typed it all out, so let’s just pretend that it was nice to experience poetry in a surreal way.
  3. Downtown at Night. After the poetry reading, I missed the bus I was trying to take home. It was 10:30 at night, and there wasn’t another bus for an hour. Unsure what to do, I started walking. Walking downtown at night is oddly peaceful – I miss living in a city where that’s more common occurrence, and it’s nice to do it when I can. I like it even more because it’s clearly a bad idea. It was a crisp night, and I felt truly alive as I walked by groups of drunk people walking into leather bars and dodged cat callers. Everything in my world made sense, if only within the tiny microcosm of my quiet stride. I debated walking all the way home. Then I turned a corner and instantly felt legitimately unsafe. I called a Lyft in ten seconds flat and waited for it, terrified. The walk was nice while it lasted.
  4. Finishing Stuff. It’s 1:30 on Wednesday night (Thursday morning) and I am determined to finish this post on time. If you’re in Hawaii, it’s still Wednesday. So I did it, and I love that.

Bedtime Routine: Sit in Front of as Many Screens as Possible

Posted on by Julie Pearson

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This is what it looks like when I sleep.

For most people, the night is reserved for sleeping, and that’s a terrible waste of time. Whether you go to bed late or really late, make the most of that last hour of awakeness so you can rest easy/never.

When it’s time to wind down for the night, get in bed and boot up all your screens at once. No matter how unproductive you were during the day, there’s plenty of time to get things done in the last hour before you grudgingly turn out the lights.

There are lots of ways to do this. I like to play cell phone games while I watch TV on my laptop, but I think you can do better than that. If you have a gaming system and a 47″ plasma screen, now’s the time to fire it up. If not, maybe you have an iPad? A Surface?An Apple Watch? The key here is quantity.

I like to get in bed with my screens, letting the cool blue light hypnotize me until I’m stuck in a state between waking and sleep. It helps if I haven’t brushed my teeth yet, because the dread of getting up to do that will keep me in front of the screens at least 30% longer. You might find that something else works better for you. The key here is general discomfort.

When I finally do turn out the lights, I find myself feeling wired for no reason. Immediately, all the thoughts flood back into my head as soon as I’m not completely numb anymore. You might fall asleep immediately, but studies show that’s unlikely. You do you, though. They key here is regretting it all in the morning.

What screens do you like to use before bed? Tell me in the comments! 🙂

4 Things I Love (Even Though I Don’t Feel Like It)

Posted on by Julie Pearson

I’m having a terrible week! But that doesn’t absolve me from loving stuff. Because I am a lifestyle blogger, and thus, I am obligated to influence the masses.

  1. Cold Brew Coffee. I usually like my coffee like I don’t like my weather: hot. But my friend Will started a cold brew coffee company, and I’m pretty into this whole Cold Bruja Coffee thing. I normally think of iced coffee as a thing to drink in the sunshine on a patio, but I drank this one in bed on Saturday morning while trying to physically meld with my comforter. Is getting out of bed even worth it oops I mean necessary anymore? Also there’s a fun blurb about a witch on the bottle!
  2. Working Behind a Big Desk. My job requires so much sitting that most of my coworkers don’t even know I have legs. Usually this is frustrating and I know it dooms me to die an early death. But yesterday, I was eating the remains of a cold breakfast sandwich and I spilled some chipotle mayo on my sweater. The horror! But with a big desk hiding my whole body and personage, nobody could tell.
  3. Using a Machete. There’s a drought in California, which absolves us of all responsibility for taking care of our lawn we’ve decided. Eventually though, the grass gets too tall to walk through, and my roommate thought a machete was the best way to handle that. I took a turn at lawn macheteing this weekend, and it was a great way to exorcise some demons before I got too tired and collapsed into a crying puddle on the couch. Cathartic!
  4. Night French Toast. On Sunday night I felt so dissatisfied with everything around me and within me, that the only thing that could possibly fix it was to make French toast at 10pm. I don’t know why. I don’t make the rules, I just crack eggs for them. But something about watching maple syrup congeal on a spongey piece of bread really calmed me, and as the one piece of toast cooled too fast while the other one was still cooking, making it impossible to eat both pieces in a neat stack, the chaotic nature of life made sense in a new way. Yum 🙂

Kitchen Hack: Garlic Salt

Posted on by Julie Pearson

If you’re like me, you often look around two weeks after a grocery trip and see that you still have weird odds and ends left in the fridge. None of them are appetizing, but they do exist. I found myself in that situation tonight, and let me fill you in on a little secret. I want to stress that no company is paying me to tell you this. The secret is:

Throw everything in a skillet and douse it in garlic salt.

Easy, right? Beyond the existential hurdle of making it into the kitchen in the first place, despite knowing that no matter how much you eat, you’ll soon be hungry again…YES! It’s so easy. Tonight I used chopped onions, the tail end of a bag of spinach, and leftover quinoa. I threw them in a skillet, and doused it in garlic salt.

Was it good? No. Did it have flavor? Yes, a few of them in fact. Was it dinner? Technically, yes. I’m still hungry, but aren’t we all kind of hungry, really?IMG_0940