A compilation of freshly brewed reads curated for twenty + thirty somethings.

This is My Life Lately (We Can Do Hard Things) These days are hard and wonderful and true. I am more scattered than I have ever been and I’m exposed in more ways than I ever imagined. I cry. Everyday. Tears of joy and fear and effort. All the things I thought I couldn’t do have indeed proven difficult. But not impossible.

Just Go For It! i am convinced that ‘shy girls’ don’t go too far and only those bold enough will get what they want in life. for me, it’s about putting on your big girl panties and going for what you want. last weekend, while chatting to one of my closet friends from high school, we shared a few experiences and lessons learned since our career life (and i must admit that conversations with a friend who is always so open and honest can be quite refreshing). from sharing some of our career-gal foibles to lessons learned – we chatted hours on end on fearful we were of MAKING MISTAKES, the best advice we have received and how past experiences have built our character. and most importantly, we encouraged and motivated each other to keep going up the ladder.

Gotta Work On You First It was one of those affairs in high school where you etched you and your boyfriend’s full names in wooden desks and stayed on the phone for hours on end, way before cell services offered unlimited talk. Your only arguments would consist of who would hang up the phone first and the first thing you’d hear in the morning was of hard breathing on the other line. You’d finally hang up and rush off to school to see the same face you spent hours swooning over and dreaming of. As adolescents, you’d still make pinky promises and if you were lucky, you’d get a promise ring because his minimum wage job couldn’t buy you an engagement ring at the moment. You held on to every word as a naïve 16 or 17-year old and when things ended because he found the cheerleader prettier, your mother didn’t approve of him or you both got in trouble for running the phone bill up to $300, your tiny little teenage world collapsed.

It’s Okay to Cry, Mom. This morning I cried in a corner. I walked my biggest minion into his school building, up two sets of stairs and into his very first elementary school classroom. I hugged him hard, gave him a kiss and whispered in his ear, “You’re a rock star. You will have a good day.” Then, I turned towards the teacher with tear filled eyes, smiled and waved goodbye. I walked out the room, heading straight to the nearest corner I could find. I cried. My big boy is really a big boy today.

What I Learned About Myself While Traveling Abroad I’m Fully Capable. This may seem like an obvious sentiment, but for me, it was a revelation. This was my first trip abroad, and I traveled alone for the first 24 hours. It was inspirational, if even a little scary. But I only proved to myself what my heart screamed all along: I’m capable of whatever I put my mind to.

Scattered and Unfocused? Me Too. We Can Still Be Great. We should talk about this. Because many of us conjure up ideas about entrepreneurs being oh so business savvy and organized and no nonsense and I am oh so none of those things. I am one of those people who never thought she could have her own business because I could barely manage my own checkbook. My checkbook has more notes and ideas scribbled in it than numbers.

Lies I Told My Daughter You see this little girl, twirling in a pretty summer dress as innocent and as happy as can be? That’s one thing that keeps me from going off the deep end in this crazy ass world. As much as I love her the way she is now, I would love for her to have stayed like this. 8, innocent and thinking boys are gross.

The Kardashianification Of America: Our Obsession With Consuming Other People’s Lives I’ve cultivated this love-hate relationship with television these days. Yesterday morning I bummed around with my sister and we watched a few hours of various TV shows including Don’t Be Tardy, some 15-minute previews of The Real Housewives of Orange County and The Real Housewives of New York City (reunion) and an insanely long episode complete with “bonus scenes” of Four Weddings. Let me just tell you that a show like Four Weddings barely merits 60 minutes, let alone 90. It terrorized us to watch it for that long, but once we started, we couldn’t stop. We just had to figure out whose wedding would “win” the competition. I have never cared so much about centerpieces and chair covers over the course of an hour and a half in my life.

“This Is Your Life Now.” I just returned home from what I like to call a “blog date”. Blog dates are get-togethers with other women, sometimes bloggers and other times non-bloggers, who just want to talk and hang out after having read my blog. I’ve had a few of these now and they are exciting and surreal experiences. I don’t know if I consider them networking or just dinner or a chance to meet a new friend. Perhaps they’re a combination of all three.

Married To The Writing: Past The Honeymoon Phase I’ve always vehemently boycotted social media management tools, the kind of things that send a phantom Internet robot to automate your status updates and tweets. Up until now, I’ve been known for my signature “NEW POST, FOOL” tweet every night, Monday through Thursday, followed by a stream of tweets from that night’s blog post. That signature promotion has always been manual–me finding some sort of device, whether it was a laptop or iPhone, to litter Twitter with bits of that day’s post. There is something I love about the immediacy of hopping fresh off the adrenaline rush of a newly-published post, promoting it and interacting with people right then and there.

“Love In My Language” x Alex Elle Last week, I posted a photo of this novel on my Instagram and mentioned how touching I found one of her pieces, namely because I was able to see parts of myself that needed healing through that sort of awareness and honesty. After finishing it, I figured it only right to make note of it here in this space because as many of you may know, I document memories that mean the world to me here and also take note of things that bring meaning to me and my life. “Love in My Language” has made a home in my heart, thus I must take note.

Not Quite A Break Up Post: We Started Out Strong But Couldn’t Finish That Way We started out strong but couldn’t finish strong. A little over a month and it’s kind of like we are random social network friends who double tap on photos. I know he’s amazing, and he knows he’s amazing but being scared ain’t for me. He expressed it, I pulled back and now it’s like he never existed. Funny ain’t it??

Yes, I Am Your Competition I wasn’t sure I wanted to write about this a few weeks ago, but after this week’s events, I think it’s something every ambitious woman should ponder on. This week Forbes decided to open up their nominations for their Top 100 Best Websites For Women. I was completely caught off guard by this, I was planning on working towards being on this list for 2015. But it’s 2014, all I have is the present day, and the opportunity presented itself.

The Pursuit Of Fulfillment One day, I jokingly asked my co-workers if it was time to go (one, I was getting over a summer cold and two, I really was ready to go). Then out of the blue, my co-worker hit me with, “It’s starting to sound like you don’t like your job.” Just because I say I’m tired and I’m ready to go home doesn’t mean I don’t like my job. I already dedicate 40 hours a week of my life to that place. I don’t eat, sleep and breathe for my company or paycheck. I’m grateful for gainful employment and benefits, but I enjoy my free time more.

Better Than All Those Likes On Social Media! Random acts of kindness…people find this very surprising these days! What would you do if someone ahead of you in line at the coffee shop decided to pay for your coffee as well. They didn’t announce it, they got their coffee and left, you ordered your oh so complicated hot beverage only to have the barista say.. ‘Oh its already been paid for.’ You look around in disbelief for the person, you vaguely remember them, was she wearing a brown coat? You gush with thankfulness, you smile. Well…that was nice.

Trying to Live Outside the Comfort Zone stepping outside the comfort zone never kill anyone right? well, it has not killed me, but i seemingly can’t get used to living and giving much of life entirely to living outside the comforts of my zone. i have been nervous once too many times as a result of being ‘thrown in the sea’ – which leaves me with nothing but weak knees, dry mouth and a blank mind. all of which, i have happened to experienced mostly during my career life. but this morning, during one of my random PINNING moments, i saw this quote ‘unless you try something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow’ rukayat. deep right?

The Importance of Starting Somewhere usually, when i visit my hairdresser, my mind roams at a million miles per hour (i guess the fact that i don’t talk too much unless i know you well – i suppose it’s attributed to my being an introvert). whenever i am in my zone or my element, i am usually thinking about a million things at once, from aspirations to goals i would like to achieve, or i usually use those moments in between washing and styling my hair to reflect.

I Don’t Like My Mother. I love my mother but I don’t like her. Well, let me try to clarify that. Its not that I don’t like her. But if she were a regular person that I may know from work or something, she would be just that. I wouldn’t hang out with her or text her and have conversation. She’d just be Joyce: a woman that I work with. Last night we had a conversation (more like a debate) that only proved to me that for every thing we have in common, there are 100 things that we don’t. We’re like wearing timbs in the summer time. It might have been trendy in 1999 but in 2013 it’s forceful and sweaty.

Image Source: Beverly by Gilles Bensimon, 1993