This is why moving sucks.

About a month ago I moved into my 4th apartment since moving out of my parents house. One thing about moving. It sucks.

But it sucks in levels. First you’re all excited about finding a new place. You see it and immediately envision your new life there. You sign a lease and your content. Then come the fees. Everyone seems to forget about the fees. Application fee, security deposit, pet fee, cable setup fee, parking, first months rent..etc etc etc. You basically drain your entire bank account before you even get the keys.

Then there’s packing. There’s levels to packing as well. You look around at all your crap and estimate that you’ll need a certain number of boxes. Take that number and multiply by two because you WILL need them. Every time I move I tell myself I’m going to minimize. HA.

Pro tip: down a bottle of wine and throw away everything that reminds of you things you don’t want to remember. Like that shirt you wore the night you got rejected and can now never wear again. 

If you’re moving into your first place or just want new stuff, you have the pleasure of getting to quickly realize how unnecessarily expensive furnishing an apartment is. Now I know what every one is going to say. “just go to Ikea, they have everything and it’s cheap.”

Umm yeah. Ikea sucks. You may think its like mecca for interior decorating but you’re wrong. Unless you have a boyfriend willing to asseble everything from a couch to some storage bins (EVEN THE BINS DONT COME ASSEMBLED). THEN if you ever decide to move again…RIP to all the things you built yourself without really reading the instructions. Notice all the broken dressers in front of houses on your block? Those all belong to Ikea enthusiasts who thought their $100 MALM dresser would last through their twenties.

 

Here’s what I can say about moving around a lot. If you need to stay in the same city, and you’re young, move as much as you can. Explore new neighborhoods. But move for yourself. Don’t move to leave your problems behind or to potentially be closer to someone. That never works. Your problems will follow you wherever you go so at least make sure you like where you’re coming home to.

7 Texts That Sum Up The Modern 20-Something Experience

This is pretty accurate IMO. I’m guilty of preferring to talk about doing things than doing actual things. Texting ruined everything. I don’t want to tell people where I’m going or what I’m doing. Tracking me down and forcing me to do things is the only way.

The social media struggle

I just started my last semester of graduate school. (yay..kind of)

My first class of the semester is a graduate-level social media research class. I like research, and I’m fascinated by how social media affects people. (Notice I didn’t say I ‘like’ social media…See previous post). But now I am torn.

I had previously been operating two personal twitter accounts. Being a mass comm major, a lot of professors thought they would “challenge” the class by having us tweet throughout the semester. Knowing that the account would be monitored by people controlling my grade made me extremely uncomfortable so I created a “professional” twitter account. On this account I would tweet PR and classroom related things…then, subsequently, would go on my “personal” twitter account and complain about how stupid the assignment is.

Now being in grad school, I care much less about the perception of my tweets from my peers but the thought of a professor reading all of my stupid twenty-something, related tweets still makes me uncomfortable. Even though my personal twitter shows my true personality…do I want professionals to see that? In a way I do, because this is who I am. Another part of me is like “Sarah grow up. If you don’t want professionals seeing those tweets than maybe you shouldn’t tweet them?” but then again I think..well..it is MY account and I’m free to say whatever i want, right!?

This is my social media struggle. HELP!

UPDATE: This article “5 Questions to Ask Before Posting to Social Media” is great! 

From a man’s perspective

Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.
– Bill Cosby 

I stumbled upon this YouTube channel called “Guy Moments“. Even though it is aimed towards men and the annoying things women do, I was laughing the whole time. This video in particular, “Just Come Over” was super relateable and really shows the difference between men and women.

 

A couple things to learn from this video:

• Women over analyze everything. Men over simplify everything. 
• Women are stubborn. Men don’t realize that they’re just as stubborn as we are. 
• Women just want men to say what they want to hear. Even if men don’t really mean it, it’s still comforting. 

This video is hilarious and I can definitely see where the guy is coming from. ALTHOUGH in her defense if a guy said “I ain’t trippin” I would have reacted in the same way. A simple “yeah come through” or a “nah I’m good” would have sufficed. 

Also, the word “female” is oddly degrading. Just say “bitch” if that’s what you really mean. 

Regardless, this is relateable for both men and women. Let’s just face it, we’re both always going to think that we’re right. Women will always be stubborn and men will never quite understand how to deal with it. 

“…but then you print some sh*t that makes me wanna scream”

I recently distanced myself from social media. Mostly Twitter. I’ve come to hate most social media sites in the past year or so, with the exception of a few niche sites like Pinterest and LinkedIn.

I decided to get off of Twitter because I realized that I really don’t care about what any of my followers have to say. That mostly speaks to the quality of the people that I follow. Everyone on social media has an opinion, which duh, that’s what social media is for. Giving people the opportunity to express themselves and yes, everyone is entitled to say and think whatever they want.

Lately, every time I log on to Twitter it’s all the same stuff. Complaining when you’re bored, complaining when you’re busy, men slut shaming, women slut shaming, everyone calling everyone out for the way they live their lives all while boasting these meaningless quotes and prophecies about what you need to do to be successful or how to be a better person. No one really lets anyone live their life without having some conflicting opinion about what’s cool and what’s not.

I live by the philosophy that if someone is doing something that makes them happy, and they’re not hurting themselves or anyone else, then just let them do the damn thing. Who cares? People care so much about how other people live their lives and spend so much time telling others how to live via social media. Twitter and Facebook especially have made people think that just because they have an opinion on a subject then that makes them an expert, and they can pass off their knowledge as some kind of supreme law.

I know that me telling people to shut up on Twitter is hypocritical and doing exactly what I said I hate, which is telling people what to do, so that’s why I just logged off. The only downside is that now I feel so out of the loop. I mean I didn’t even know about Beyonce’s new album until like 12 hours later (a long time in the world of social media).

I think in the near future I will be doing a cleanse of my followers and only keeping the ones who’s posts I enjoy reading. For now it’s actually been nice not knowing what people are saying or doing. It’s also been nice not being glued to my phone which is a habit that I hated myself for acquiring.

Sorry this is a bit of a rant but I just had to get it off  my chest.

Dress code: There is none.

I’ve never had a job that required a strict dress code. I’ve worked at in an IT department and in a gym, and while both were professional environments, it was a pretty casual setting. Starting my first full-time job, we have the same kind of dress code I was used to. “Business casual”..but….not really.

A lot of people would be stoked to not have to dress up for work everyday, but I’m somewhat indifferent. Being the youngest person in the office it becomes a struggle between dressing for the culture of the job versus dressing to be taken seriously. It would be impractical for me to go into work wearing a power suit, yet I don’t want to be the girl who wears hoodies everyday.

Anyways, I’ve come up with some creative ways to keep it super casual, yet professional, that seem to work for my work environment. I don’t consider myself a fashionista by ANY MEANS, but here are a few of my go-to outfits for a typical day at work.

Side note: I practically live in leggings and the majority of my wardrobe is black, but I’m trying to mix it up!