30 for 30

Last year, I brought drafted 29 for 29 – lessons learned for each year on Earth.  This year, I’m in ESPN range.  Without further ado, my 30 for 30.

1. The only food items I need to survive are the following: milk, tea, apples, trail mix, cookies, and PB&J on wheat.
2. My haunches belong on a horse or a tailback.  It’s OK to look.  I have big ass legs.  
   
3. It’s really difficult to watch people you care about fall apart.
4. Time is not elastic.
5. Strong beats pretty, seven days a week.
6. Honest work is important, compelling, and almost always undercompensated.
7. If everyone is sooooo busy, then shouldn’t we all get on this scale and hit the tare button?  Being busy is a cop out.  It’s the easy thing to say instead of articulating your priorities.
8. Mexican food.
9. I should have made out with more people in college.
10. I don’t ever want it to be less than 75 degrees.
11. My writing succeeds most when it has cadence, curses, and energy.  In other words, I need to write like who I am.
12. Wearing shorts to work is a revelation.  Fancy clothes don’t make you any more competent.  They are a conspiracy of the dry cleaning industry.
13. I have a sick obsession and love for editing.  If you ever have something you want edited or want to keep me up at night, send it to me.  But don’t come crying for mercy when it returns to you mutilated and unrecognizable, oozing with red.
14. If you are generally likable, you can be a little gross and people will think it’s endearing.
15. Don’t get it twisted: everyone prefers a DJ to a band.  You may think you prefer a band but that’s just because you’ve been socially conditioned to say so.  As the only sober person at your wedding, I promise you — more asses are on the dance floor to actual Usher than to Robbie Hart as Usher.
16. The same friendliness that results in kindness from strangers and fast friends also results in the guys at the Car Wash calling you Colleen and asking for your number every day when you walk past on the way to work.
17. Can we all agree that dudes should wear cologne?
18. I am profoundly fascinated by the minority experience.  I can never and will never fully understand what it’s like to be anything other than a white, middle class female.  I hate that I don’t know misfortune.  I hate that I don’t know hopelessness.  I resent that I am privileged and lucky because it makes me consequently ignorant.  How fucked up is that?
19. There is nothing more difficult than writing honestly about yourself.  The kind of words that burn when they come out.  The words you can’t erase.
20. My favorite people in the world are rude, offensive, caustic assholes who, at the end of the day, would do anything to make my life better.
21. I don’t wear makeup.  Because this is what I look like.
22. Closure makes me very uncomfortable.  I don’t like it.  I don’t want it.
23. More: milk, running.  Less: sleep, fried food.
24. The following things must stop immediately:
    • Use of the annoying and unoriginal punchline of “said no one, ever.”
    • Genuine use of the word “fabulous.”
    • Use of the Seth Meyers “Really?!”
    • Genocide.
25. Yo, these contact lenses are AMAZING.
26. There’s a special place in hell for the unthinking.
27. I want everything to be fair, all the time, for everyone.
28. If I’m not the toughest female you know, I’m not working hard enough.
29. If I’m not the best writer you know, I’m not working hard enough.
30. I’m not working hard enough.