Asking for a friend—would it be super overdramatic for me to print my COVID vaccine selfie and frame it? I mean, it’s a pretty historic moment; a light at the end of this depressing tunnel. This past Monday, I received my first dose of the Phizer vaccine!

Firstly, let’s get some questions out of the way. No, I did not choose my vaccine. Walgreens, apparently, only offers Phizer at the moment but I did not know that until I arrived in person. The vaccine is free to all Americans even without health insurance, and the jab itself was painless.

I…

In my early and mid-twenties, the phrase “go alone” shook me to my core. I hated dining alone, going to the movies alone, even using public bathrooms alone. “Ugh, can you just come with me?” I annoyed everyone around me, especially my uber-independent husband.

In a moment of tough love, he called me codependent and needy. His independent nature did not understand why I couldn’t enjoy life’s simplest moments by myself. Like, hello, if you want to go to such and such restaurant, do it. …

Listen up, conspiracy readers, believers, and enthusiasts. You’ve been spending too much time on 4Chan and Reddit to the point where you’ve gone off the deep end, drank too much Kool-Aid, and now believe that the government is using COVID-19 vaccines to track your whereabouts.

I have news for you. The government already has everything they need to track every aspect of your life—your friends, address, spending habits, school, medical history, etc. Sit with that for a moment. Yes, it’s an uncomfortable thought but it shouldn’t be anything groundbreaking.

You gave away your freedom and anonymity the day you were…

The one place we associate with confidence—the gym, also brings up a lot of insecurities for people. I hear time and time again the reasons women, myself included for a long time, avoid the gym. These issues affect men as well but I can only speak from what I’ve heard in my inner circle of badass ladies.

• I don’t know how to use any of the machines
• I don’t have the right clothes or shoes
• I hate all the mirrors because I’m forced to look at myself
• The men nearby always stare or give me looks
• What if someone judges…

With all the journals, calendars, and planners out there, we really have no excuse for poor organization. All it takes is a little willpower to write things down, which has always been my favorite and most effective organization tip. WRITE. IT. DOWN.

I like to keep all my note-taking practices in one place: the Notes app on my iPhone. Most ideas and reminders come while scrolling on my phone, so it feels the most natural to open the Notes app to jot things down.

I write first drafts of work emails in the app; grocery lists; to-do lists. I even…

How do you know therapy’s working? It costs an arm and a leg, takes up an hour of your day, and has you pouring your heart out to a complete stranger. Of course, you want it to work—otherwise, what a waste of time and money. What a letdown.

I knew I made the right decision to start teletherapy five minutes into our first session. My therapist, we’ll call her Kelly, asked me to expand on my inner circle of family and…the dreaded word…friends.

“Um, honestly,” I said timidly, “I don’t have many friends. I don’t want friends. Is that weird?”

…

This one time, in therapy, I discovered that the root of my impending doom stems from one single cause: the ferocity of misinformation on social media. The mental task of sorting through profiles, exploring all angles of an argument, forming an opinion only to learn that it’s somehow “wrong…”

It drove me to extreme isolation. No joke, I searched Zillow for remote cabins near the Canadian border to find a way out of society. The endless stream of misinformation and opposing viewpoints sounded like a fire alarm in my head. For the first time in my life, I understood why…

How many times must we hear “you’re not alone” before we actually believe it? I never took those redundant words to heart until I listened to this one Kristen Bell interview on the Fat Mascara podcast.

Ep. 259 titled, “How To Find Your Happy-ish Place.” A must-listen for highly sensitive and empathetic individuals (and Kristen Bell fans). You may know her from Veronica Mars, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and the voice of Anna in Frozen.

Common characteristics of an empath

But what exactly constitutes a highly-sensitive or empathetic person? You may fall into the category if the following apply to your everyday behavior:

• You keep a…