When you have three weeks’ notice to pack up your things and leave behind the life you spent two and a half years building from scratch, a lot of emotions bubble to the surface.

I’ve been in DC for thirteen days and I feel like I have a bit of perspective on said emotions. Mostly it’s been relief. Relief that I found a new adventure, relief that I landed in a city that I love, relief that it was relatively painless and inexpensive to fulfill my desire for change.

The sadness and regret trickle in too, of course. Sadness at leaving behind some amazing people in Atlanta. Regret that I didn’t have more time with others.

Uncertainty and insecurity about finding my place in a new environment and proving myself in this office.

Eagerness to experience it all and jump right in and find my new routines and grooves.

These thirteen days have been full of brunches and new yoga studios and logistical challenges and figuring out the best route to work and unpacking and settling in and a surprisingly minimal amount of tears.

(And the tears can mostly be blamed on a certain 8-pound ball of meowing fur who decided it would be a good idea to find an impossibly secret hiding spot to camp out in for an entire weekend, thereby inducing an off-the-charts meltdown on my behalf and resulting in at least a week shaved off my life expectancy.)

(Cats are assholes.)

I miss my people down south, but I know I have people up here too and I am indescribably thrilled to throw out my recent hermit-like ways and absorb everything this city has to offer me. It’s springtime and the cherry blossoms have bloomed and the sun keeps shining and everyone is emerging from their winter hibernation and I couldn’t have planned a better time to replant my roots than now.

It’s going to be fun. You should come visit.

You guys. I did something really crazy the other day. Something I haven’t done in years and that took some serious convincing to do, but I took the plunge.

I bought a new kind of toothpaste.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been using the same brand and type of toothpaste, and I finally switched it up. It’s exciting stuff right?

Not really, but this $4 purchase made me realize something. I’ve used the same type of deodorant for the last ten years. The hairbrush I use? I bought it when I was 18 and it’s all I’ve used since. I have a pair of brown flats that I bought my freshman year of college and I still wear them on a regular basis. I know what I like and I keep using it with little thought for change. Why mess with it if it works?

This attitude towards objects is counterintuitive to the way I try to live my life – embracing change and not allowing myself to get too stagnant. When it comes to investing in a product, whether it’s $4 or $400 I want to know what I’m getting and I want to know I’ll like it.

IBM recently invited me to participate in a new campaign that they’re calling “My Smarter Commerce” – a movement around how technology and social media influence our lives and how we use them in new ways. (IBM isn’t sponsoring this post or requiring that I write it; I just think it’s a really interesting concept and I’m impressed that a major company like IBM is branching out like this.)

I don’t know the last time I bought something online without reading the reviews on Amazon, or crowd-sourcing product favorites from Twitter, or googling around to find a coupon code. I check-in to restaurants on Foursquare and scroll through the tips on what to order, and I use Yelp’s Neighborhood filter to find new restaurants to try nearby.

I usually think of social media and my ever-growing attachment to my iPhone in the sense of constantly being connected to friends & family & strangers; I haven’t spent much time thinking about how it impacts my role as a consumer. It certainly makes it easier to consume, with mobile shopping and apps at my fingertips and PayPal more than ready to steal my money at the click of a button. But it also impacts the things I choose to buy and the companies I choose to support.

To me, smarter commerce means being a curious customer, rewarding companies and small businesses who live and breathe their passion, and most importantly sharing my opinions through my internet megaphone.

If you’re interested in following along with IBM as the venture into this new frontier and listen to us as customers, feel free to check out the #MySmarterCommerce hashtag on Twitter. I would love to have you participate by sharing your story and what smarter commerce means to you. IBM will be using these stories and feedback in presentations across the country, including SXSW and their annual conference in Nashville, so keep an eye out. Let’s see what happens…

Have you ever believed something to be true about yourself for a long time, only to find out that maybe it wasn’t true at all but you’d spent so much time telling yourself it was true that you began to believe it?

I’ve spent the past year or so living the life I thought I wanted – stable, quiet, cozy, full of Lululemon pants and good books and tv marathons and plenty of me time and kitty cuddles. After years of one change after another, it’s what I needed and what I thought I wanted.

Alas, the pendulum of change has swung too far in the other direction and I am now resting comfortably in the arms of stagnation.

But then those moments come along when you remember your old self and remember that you like her, and you wonder where she went and why she doesn’t come around much anymore. Sometimes those moments are strung together in the form of a long weekend spent in Nashville with your best friend from college, the one who lived across the hall from you freshman year and across campus from you sophomore year and across the street from you junior year and then two floors above you for the last two semesters of an incredible four years.

Friends like that have a way of reminding you that you deserve the best, and that you like dancing with strangers in bars, and that running towards a new adventure doesn’t mean you have to run away from where you came from.

Between a hockey game and a bar crawl and a plantation tour and a Dairy Queen pitstop and pedicures and shopping sprees and eight hours in the car together, I came to realize that just because I’m extremely well-versed in relocating my life across the country and starting from scratch doesn’t mean I should.

It turns out the life that I want includes stability and adventure, coziness and  trying new things, time to myself and quality time with my people and dammit, I’m going to get it.

//

I found this post in my drafts, having written it two months ago and promptly forgetting to hit publush. I’m backdating it to the date it was written, but I can’t help being amused that sometimes, things work out in crazy ways.

I just counted and I wrote 17 blog posts in 2012.

That is not very many, and I assure you that I thought about writing more of them and then I didn’t, for various reasons, which can mostly be chalked up to I forgot. Other times I can attribute the lack of posting to feeling like after nearly five yeras, this has become a place where I write when I want to and when I have something important to say, and apparently that only happened 17 times last year.

But something important is very subjective, and it is entirely possible that you did not deem a single one of the 17 posts I wrote last year to be important and that the prerequisite that my writing be important is just a symptom of being self-absorbed and extremely arrogant.

You might be correct.

Perhaps 2013 is going to be the year I can actually call myself a blogger again. Though perhaps not, and I suppose we will see in a year from now whether that holds true. In the meantime though, here are some mundane life updates to make you feel better about not having your life together. Let’s commiserate together, shall we?

// I cut 6 or 8 inches off my hair this weekend, and one of the perks of working with a bunch of dudes is that no one at work noticed at all, thus saving me from the repeated “Did you cut your hair?” conversation that I was dreading this morning. I gave them too much credit.

// My Christmas tree is still up, though I have not plugged it in since before the holidays. This is not because I worry that my neighbors will wonder why someone still has a Christmas tree on display but rather because the outlet to plug the tree into is behind a piece of furniture and I need an extension cord and then I have to move a bunch of things and the obstacles are many. I’m also going to have to throw away said Christmas tree because the monkey cat has used is as her own personal gym for the past two months and this 8-pound monster has taken it upon herself to irreversibly bend the branches, making it appear to be the saddest and droopiest $50 Target Christmas tree in existence.

// While we’re on the topic of Christmas… I spent months and months ogling this white coral bowl from afar, never quite being able to justify spending $100 on a bowl with holes in it. If it looks familiar, it might be because you are as obsessed with True Blood as I am and it appeared in numerous episodes this summer, gallantly displaying itself on the conference table at The Authority offices. And now, after months of cyber drooling, I own this beautiful hole-y ceramic bowl. It turns out the one store in the world that sells this piece is within walking distance of my family’s condo in Naples, so… Merry Christmas to me.

// I’ve rejoined the ranks of OkCupid users and let me just say, I am a masochist. Don’t ever believe otherwise, because my insistence that maybe this time it won’t be so bad! and it’s a nice distraction  is bordering on insane. I’m convinced that I could write zero words on my profile and still end up with dudes messaging me asinine questions. Which is to say nothing to the quality of my photos, and everything to their lack of appropriate standards when contacting women. And yet here I am, beating my head against a wall and wondering why dudes feel the need to send me a message asking me why I never responded to the other message they sent. Note: I’m not sure what it means about your dating life when your ex-boyfriend texts you to tell you he wishes you still blogged about dating, but I’m guessing it can’t be good.

// My one and only goal for 2013 is to become a Morning Person, in the sense that I can stop hitting snooze 7 times and instead wake up and go for a run. There are countless excuses for me to not go for a run after work, but only one to overcome in the morning, so I’m hoping I can pull this off at least once in the next twelve months.

// The new Tegan and Sara album is the sexiest music out there and you should go download it. I don’t think any album has made me want to make out as much as this one does.

// Work is the same except also really different all of a sudden. We announced this month that we are acquiring another company in the area and while we have 17 offices across the country, this acquisition will only affect my office and it will affect us a lot. I also got a sort-of promotion today, which is thrilling in that I’m being recognized for my work and abilities but also won’t change my day-to-day activities very much. Regardless, different is good and change is good and I’m looking forward to it.

// I went skeet shooting recently (see above note about dating again) and I can cross it off a list of Things I’ve Never Done and add it to the list of Things I Never Want To Do Again because that shit was terrifying. Had I been with someone I knew better, I probably would have had a total meltdown but the thought of collapsing to the ground in the fetal position and sobbing my eyes out in front of a stranger was more humiliating than I could bear so I pushed through and shot 25 rounds at innocent clay pigeons. I even managed to hit one, which was nothing short of miraculous given that my eyes were closed the entire time.

// Something I’ve discovered about myself recently that I should have known all along: I cannot keep saltine crackers / cheez-its / wheat thins / goldfish / crackers of any kind in my house for any extended amount of time because I will eat them all. In one sitting. It is not pretty. I should probably do a 12 Steps thing and abstain from crackery deliciousness altogether but y’all… that does not sound very fun.

// I’ve done a lot of yoga this month and it has truly saved my sanity. The studio I go to has a tolerable amount of the yogini-zen-namaste-earthiness to it, and my cynical self has even grown to enjoy the hippie spirit of it all. I will also embrace any excuse to wear my new Lululemon wunder unders because they are the most delicious pants I own.

// I’m traveling to Nashville in February to meet up with my best friend from college, and then to DC in March to brunch with my favorites and cheer on my dad + so many others in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Half Marathon, and then to Savannah for the first time in April for a friend’s bachelorette weekend. All of these trips are a bright spot and I’m so glad I have them to look forward to.

I have now written 1200+ words about my life and my narcissism is starting to show, so let’s balance things out by having you tell me what you’ve been up to lately. Tell me a secret or a trip you’re taking or the guy/gal you’re crushing on. I am ferociously nosey so please indulge me, if not in the comments then by email. I love email.

Who wants to read another New Year’s resolutions post? How about a post where someone claims they don’t do resolutions but they do goals instead? (I’d like to teach those people about synonyms.) This time of year is always a confusing time for me because I respect the hell out of people who can reflect upon the past year and plan for the coming year, but I don’t desire to do such things myself. In fact, I’d like to move on from the last year as quickly as possible.

You know those days when you come home from work and and someone asks you how your day was and your only response is “UGHHHHHHHHH” followed by a heavy sigh, because nothing bad really happened but nothing good happened either and the most positive thing that can be said about that day is that you’re still alive at the end of it?

That was my day every day for an entire year.

The nicest thing I can say about 2012 was fine and that I am still alive at the end of it. Nothing bad happened, but nothing all that good happened either. I grew a little, but no major life changes transpired.

If my 2012 could be summed up in a movie quote, it would be this conversation between Alex Mack Bianca and the Clovers Captain Chastity in 10 Things I Hate About You.

Chastity: I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?

Bianca: I think you can in Europe…

2012 was just whelmed.

I remember back to a conversation I had with my mom a year or so ago while in the middle of an emotional breakdown triggered by the stress of a cross-town move that I was woefully unprepared for. I told her I just wanted to be still, to settle down, that for the last 6 years of my life I had been making big changes on the regular. Going to college, studying abroad, falling in love, moving across the country, living on my own, starting my career, falling out of love, making new friends… I craved stability.

And I got it. I’ve been living in the same city for two and a half years and in the same apartment for the last year and a half. I have been at the same job for two years, I’ve been single for two years, and I’ve had Lola for two years. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the easiness that accompanies The Known and The Certain. I have a local bar. I have a standing game night with friends. I have familiarity with my surroundings.

And I am antsy as hell.

I have no idea what changes this year will bring, and I can’t even begin to guess what my life will look like a year from now. I have no plans as to how I’m going to fill the next twelve months and no expectations of things to come other than 2013 will be different. 

So if you need me, I’ll be over here in my comfort and routine, plotting my escape.

I’m semi-obsessed with holiday cards. Sending them, receiving them, designing them, browsing them, everything about them. And I want to send one to you!(Plus I ordered 100 of them so umm… let’s pretend I have that many friends.)

If you’d like a holiday card from the good ol’ state of Georgia, email me your address or fill out this sexy google docs form below. I promise I won’t share your information with anyone and I’m probably too broke to show up on your doorstep unannounced, so take comfort in knowing your information is secure.

Oh, and last year I failed miserably at international cards (OOPS) but I’m going to try again this year, so don’t let that discourage you! (I am definitely too broke to show up on your doorstep.)

Happy holidays!

I’ve been having a lot of feelings lately, which is a huge change of pace for someone who is frighteningly skilled at pushing those aside. Emotions are not my friend, you guys.

Do people get more feelings-y in the winter? Is there some weird mercury-in-retrograde thing that I can blame this on? Am I preemptively preparing myself for the Mayans to be correct and subconsciously mourning the end of the world next month?

I don’t know. I think the most plausible (though least exciting) answer is that a general malaise towards everything has washed over me. Social activities don’t interest me as much, my patience runs out more quickly, and I am increasingly hermit-like. The good news in all of this is that I recognize that it’s happening and I’m attempting to head this off before it gets worse. Do you know how boring it is to be melancholy all the time? REALLY BORING.

I recently discovered that my health insurance includes acupuncture coverage and I’m thinking of testing out its effectiveness on stress reduction. Somehow having a bunch of tiny needles stuck in my body seems like it will put things into perspective for me.

But in the meantime, look! A cat picture! She’s all tucked in and ready for bed! Doesn’t that make you feel better?

Now tell me your plans for Thanksgiving! I’m heading home to Chicago for the first time since February and I am scared that I am going to freeze. Apparently it only takes 2 years of warm southern living to wash away 23 years of dominating frigid and snowy northern winters. Send me your mittens!

As a proud liberal and passionately progressive person, Tuesday night was a good night for me. I cried actual tears of joy and even more of relief. Relief that I wouldn’t have to spend the next four years worrying about my rights over my own body and the definition of rape and the fact that SCOTUS could potentially overturn some very important decisions.

Looking at my president and all of the newly elected female senators and representatives, I feel hopeful for the next four years and all of the progress that can be achieved. I have a renewed sense of faith in the rest of my country that others feel as passionately about LGBT rights and the separation of church and state and universal health care and lending a helping hand for those who have fallen on hard times. I’m proud that my generation voted in record numbers and I am looking forward to the day when I can cast a ballot for my peers.

As a political science major and former math team nerd (until I hit calculus and it got way too effing hard for me), I am irrationally excited that Nate Silver’s predictions were 100% accurate.

And although she is preaching to the choir, this clip from Wednesday’s Rachel Maddow Show summarizes everything that I want to say. So watch it and fall in love and repeat this mantra with me: There are real, knowable facts in the world.  

So cheers to real, knowable facts and cheers to science and cheers to our president and cheers to the next four years. I’m confident they’ll be great.

If you can’t see the video, the transcript is below.

Ohio really did go to President Obama last night, and he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is, legitimately, President of the United States – again.

And the Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy.

And the polls were not skewed to oversample democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to try to make conservatives feel bad; Nate Silver was doing MATH.

And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy, sometimes. And evolution is a thing. And Benghazi was an attack ON us, it was not a scandal BY us.

And nobody’s taking away anyone’s guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.

And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industries in this country are not the same as communism.

Listen. Last night was a good night for liberals and for democrats, for very obvious reasons. But it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole.

Because in this country, we have a two party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas, from both sides, about real problems in the real country, should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff.

And if the Republican party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed, door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate between competing feasible ideas about real problems.

Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had NO idea it was coming. And we saw them in real time – in real, humiliating time – not believe it even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again.

And that will be a painful process for them, I’m sure, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right and center. You guys, we’re counting on you. Wake up. There’s real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let’s accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let’s move on from there. If the Republican party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation.

And in that spirit, congratulations everybody. Big night.

Tonight I waited in line for two hours at my local early voting location and cast my ballot for president of the United States of America.

I stood in line with roughly 300 other people who thought voting was important enough to stand in line for hours with me.

And we voted.

I voted because I can. Because I live in a country where no matter how slow and bureaucratic and polarizing and hypocritical our politics can get, the system only works when individual citizens value their opinions enough to participate in the electoral college.

I voted because if I had been born a century ago, my opinions wouldn’t be heard because I’m a woman. Because if I had been born in a different country, I might face discrimination and harassment and physical danger when attempting to vote. I voted because so many can’t.

Even though I wasn’t expecting it take up two hours of my evening, it was reassuring to look around at the other hundreds of people giving up hours of their evening for something they believe. I often get discouraged by the overwhelming apathy I see in the world, but today I feel really patriotic and hopeful. In the entire two hours, not one single person got out of line. Not one baby cried or child misbehaved. We all stood there, and I like to think we were all quietly marveling at the power we all have in our collective voice.

This election has been heated. There have been debates about the economy and the size of our armed forces and healthcare and social services and jobs and recovery and the role of government. This election has borne countless Internet memes and auto tunes and embarrassing gaffes but beyond all of that, there are real issues that will affect our every day lives.

So go vote.

Vote because you have an opinion, because you care about at least one thing that’s been said in the last year. Vote because even though the divisiveness of it all is infuriating and the baby missing and hand shaking is enough to make anyone vomit, your voice still counts.

Vote because you care about equal rights for all human beings. Because you believe everyone should have access to basic healthcare. Vote because you want the right to complain about Washington for the next four years and because you want to change it today. Vote because you want to take an hour off work on Tuesday and skip that awful meeting.

I don’t care why you vote. I don’t even care who you vote for (though I do have a strong suggestion if you care to hear it.)

Just. Vote.

25. As of 4:00 am EST today, I am 25 years old.

24. I am proud to be a crazy cat lady.

23. I could be a better friend sometimes, and I am working on that.

22. I am crazy smart. Not always in a “remember facts and history and recite the bill of rights” kind of way, but in a way that makes me know I am competent and flexible and accommodating and I will be successful in this world.

21. Patience is a virtue that I do not have.

20. I am a very different person than I was ten years ago. I both love that and hate that.

19. I don’t know how I feel about having children.

18. I am bad at internal motivation, but getting better. I am driven for things I enjoy but lack the ability to fuel the same fire with mandatory tasks.

17. I am a feminist.

16. I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

15. I want to live all over the world.

14. I wish my family lived closer.

13. I always laugh too loudly.

12. I listen to terrible music. If there is a cringeworthy music video for a godawful song, I probably love it. Also, I will never tire of Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. Ever.

11. I wish I remembered more Spanish. I pretty much forgot everything I learned during my semester in Madrid immediately upon touching down on American soil.

10. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and I will vote for him again in 2012.

9. I’m a Mac.

8. I think we should all be nicer to each other.

7. Experiences are more valuable than possessions.

6. I lack a nostalgic or sentimental view of the past but I hold so much hope and optimism for the future.

5. I love my friends a lot.

4. I owe my parents a tremendous debt for all they’ve ever done for me, even if I didn’t see the value of it at the time.

3. I’ve been to 3/7 continents and I hope I’m fortunate enough to go to more.

2. The beach is better than the mountains.

1. I like who I am today.