An Open Letter to the Writers of Open Letters

To Whom it May Concern,

I see your posts floating around my Facebook Newsfeed, normally from "friends" whose relationship to me I question. Maybe we talked once or twice at best, but we've seen each other enough to acknowledge one another's social media presence. Regardless of our friendship, you are an ever-present link, usually with a moody photo of a tanned white girl with beachy waves looking out into the horizon. Your piece is titled titled "An Open Letter to my Future Husband" or "An Open Letter to the Guy who Broke my Heart", or maybe "An Open Letter to the Guy I went on Two Dates with Before slowly Distancing Myself until we were Strangers, which was kind of awkward but I guess for the Best, you know?" 

To the writer of these clickbait letters: I do not care for your writing style, and I hate you just a little bit. 

Sorry, I can't see you anymore because my eyes are rolling into the back of my head.

You always write long paragraphs that wax poetic about an enigmatic persona. Someone any person can relate to, because it's vague and uses recycled emotion from the other 2000 versions of these letters. Its pacing is lazy and predictable, because you know this sentence will end with an abrupt, empty statement.

Followed by a short sentence to show how lovesick you are. 

I'm well aware that I am not the right audience for these "letters", but when you boil it down, your writing is the equivalent of a Minion meme. But instead of spreading weird, unfunny posts that moms everywhere adore for some reason, you're a long story meant to show off how moody and deep someone is to their peers. Why is this a thing that people look at and are like "YES, PERFECT". It really loses its sentiment when your letter is written in a cookie-cutter format.

YOU'RE A LESS DIGESTIBLE VERSION OF THIS CONTENT

The "Open Letter to the One I Love" format angers me to my core, because it's such a long groan of a sad blog post. We don't need any more of them, thnx.

For the love of animals, pass it on.

xoxo,
A Girl who Wrote an Open Letter just to show how ANNOYING THIS FORMAT IS.

Things I forgot about Winter (That are terrible)

Since moving to Chicago in June, I've been trying my hardest to mentally prepare myself for winter, following nearly four years in Florida where weather is an illusion. I came to terms with the fact that I can't just wear skirts, sundresses, t-shirts, and tank tops every day, which was horrible in and of itself because long sleeves and pants are suffocating and terrible. I remembered the importance of a good boot, what it's like to purchase a jacket, and even bought a shovel to clear a path when the snow came. Everything would be fine. I always liked winter in New Jersey, and realistically I could handle it compared to my two roommates who were also coming from Florida.

It wasn't until I was taking a lyft home the other day that I suddenly remembered every little inconvenience about winter that adds up to being perhaps the most frustrating season of the year. After several years not dealing with these small annoyances, I'm realizing I'm less prepared and was blinded by Christmas for the first 18 years of my life in winter. So this is a short list of crappy things that we all forget about winter. Open your eyes, people.

1. Rock salt ruining your shoes and everything you once loved in your life.
• I don't mind salting sidewalks to melt the ice and provide traction, SURE, WHATEVER. I actually prefer it to the 300+ times I've slipped on black ice. But I do hate the sense of urgency involved in taking your shoes off before you scratch the floors of your home. Or how nice your shoes/coat/pants/everything looked before the salt stuck to it and left a cakey layer of dried out patches on you. 
2. Wearing multiple pairs of socks, and all of them are wet. 
• Who are we kidding when we layer up on socks?
3. Going into a department store to get winter clothes, and suddenly realizing you have 30 layers on. 
• It starts when you realize most buildings are heat-controlled, so you're quickly very overheated in the store. As you get more items you think to yourself, "I should probably try these on, because winter clothes are terrible and the sleeves are never long enough." You go into the dressing room and take off your coat, scarf, cardigan, sweater, and undershirt to try on like two things. Then you remember you have to put all those layers back on before you leave the changing room. You weep quietly to yourself, because the process of changing has already left you flushed and adding layers on is, in this moment, your definition of hell.
4. Checking your pocket for your cellphone.
• But, like an idiot, your phone is in the pocket of layer 2 of the five layers you're currently wearing.
5. Being responsible for scarves and hats.
• Okay I think most of my problems with winter have to do with the fact that I'm always too hot in proportion to the suggested number of layers. 
• But putting scarves and hats in overstuffed pockets or the sleeve of your coat still sucks, right? There is a 100% chance that you will lose at least one scarf and one hat this winter, according to science.
6. Gloves as a whole
• Even if they say you can use your phone with them on, you can't. Also you can't feel anything, so your guess is as good as mine whether or not my keys are in my jacket pocket.
7. Grocery stores when it's snowing
• Suddenly everyone prepares for an apocalyptic-level winter, no matter how mild the forecast. Food hoarding for four inches of snow? O-okay buddy.

In conclusion, I think I mostly hate wearing layers. But winter is still my favorite season, because I'm just sick with pollen allergies for the other 3 seasons. 

This guy gets me.

COOKING PART 2.

Oh, hey there. I didn't see you there because I haven't been on this blog in nearly half a year! You look good, did you get a haircut? You may have. Yeah...cool, cool okay well. Nice to see you again.

With that 100% accurate re-enactment of every time I bump into someone, I'm just going to segue seamlessly into the topic at hand. How to cook, written by someone who doesn't consider themselves good enough to be a food blogger. Or even a blogger really, if we're being honest with each other.

One of my favorite posts back in the day was "Tips on Being an Adult: Cooking", which wasn't really cooking advice as much as tricking people into thinking you can cook. Go look at it. Tips include great bits like "blindly believe in yourself" and "put sriracha in everything you cook." Since then, I think I've gotten better at cooking. Now I can trick people into thinking I can cook well, and with these easy tips, SO CAN YOU!

Let's do this:

• Spices are Cool
• Skip to Tip 4 to see the spices I use most often
• I'll make up a statistic and say 60% of bland meals forgot to salt their food whilst cooking. 
• I imagine you're nodding along, and just lightly laughed to yourself thinking, "Oh, Meghan!"
• Aside from salt & pepper "to taste", try buying other spices! Look at recipes that use those spices for reference of what they taste like/how to use them.
• Add these spices in gradually to whatever you're making, tasting as you go. Layering spices can make some good flavors. Think of the balance between spicy, salty, and sweet.
• Contrasting Temperatures
• At the same time, if you know you're making something sizzling hot and/or spicy, add something cool and bright for contrast. Tzatziki sauce is a good example
• I'm lazy and don't make Tzatziki sauce usually, but if you have a splash of lemon juice and a spoonfull of sour cream, it makes a nice cool dressing to brighten spicy foods.
• Contrasting Texture
• This one is easy. If you like putting chips in your sandwich or eating a Taco Bell Crunchwrap, you get what I mean. 
• Slow cooked meats + Toasty Bread. Croutons in a salad. Just stop eating only soft food or only brittle food (who does that...?) It'll make you feel fancy.
• If you're making a sandwich, adding an apple slice actually accomplishes all 3 tips I just gave.
• When in Doubt, try being Italian
• I'll go on record and say this one is my fall back, because I was raised in an Irish-Italian household which, perhaps to your great surprise, means a lot of Italian cooking. And here's what's fool proof about Italian cooking: 90% of the time, just use these ingredients:
• Garlic, Oregano, Parsley, Basil, Olive Oil+Whatever you're cooking 
• Fresh herbs make it fancy, add tomatoes and you made sauce, add cheese and you made a parmigiano. 
• I like throwing bay leaves all over the place, but that's just me.
• Probably add pasta. Done.

If you aren't instinctively Italian, follow whatever culture you ate the most growing up and it'll probably lead to similar results. Start with what you're familiar with. If you like following recipes, go for it! I prefer just kinda throwing stuff all over the place until there is food, but sometimes I go online to reference different spice combinations.

See you at your next dinner party. 

Idk why, but I usually just add the first Google Image to whatever word comes to mind. This was "Food."

I'M GRADUATING AND I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS.

During freshman orientation this year, I had the honor of welcoming the freshman class of 2019 to Ringling College of Art and Design at the Van Wezel performing arts hall. I was the last person to give a welcome speech before a Q&A Session, following our school President Dr. Thompson and many others with very official titles. For four long speeches I sat behind the stage, where I looked at a sign that said "It's WAY-ZUL, NOT Weasel!!!!!" and this exact picture that I found now by google image searching "no weasels allowed sign":

When I got on stage, I opened my speech with the following:

"So, most of you won't remember the speech I give today....and that's okay. I like to hope that, of all the events you have to look forward to these next four years, this speech will not be the highlight of your Ringling Experience."

I literally don't remember the rest of my speech, and any freshmen/rising sophomores at Ringling can probably confirm that they forget it as well. And now, as I approach graduation tomorrow, I see that this will more or less be the rest of my life...and that's also okay.

These past four years at Ringling have been, as they say in America, "like, a lot." It's hard to pinpoint specific memories or "classic college stories", which is why I don't write blog posts very often. But I do know this: When I look back at the time I spent here, I'm not going to think about how big and special my graduation ceremony was, or how eloquently spoken the speeches were that day. I won't remember what shoes I wore, although I'll probably remember what I ate for dinner because I have my priorities in check.

When I look back at the time I spent at Ringling, I'm going to think about the cool people I knew and hope that I impacted their life in some way. I'll think about my student work that seems REAL COOL right now, but I know won't be good enough a year from today. I'll think about a piece of paper in the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall that's strongly against the word "weasel".

The thing that ultimately matters upon graduation was that the four years it took to get to this point were really great. Or really terrible. Or somewhere in between. As long as they happened.

So to the Class of 2015 and all those who have mattered in our lives, thanks for being a part of it. This must be how Will Smith felt on the finale episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, only with more student loans and less comic relief.

Yo holmes, smell ya later!

I talk about my friends a lot

Are you ever going about your day to day life when you suddenly realize something about yourself. Maybe your friend points something out about you that you hadn't noticed before, and all of a sudden you're hyper aware of it. For instance, there was a time where I made a lot of How I Met Your Mother references, until my professor pointed it out in passing and from that point on I mentally tallied how many I made.

Like this one, right now, we're living it.

I realized recently that another one of the subjects I talk about a lot is my friends. "Aww, that's nice!", you think to yourself innocently. And I mean, it isn't a MEAN thing, but it's not necessarily the way to win people over either. The longer I think about it, the more I think of the kid from Magic School Bus who was always telling her classmates about how things were at her old school, despite the fact that she was on a literal Magic School Bus, and no one cared about her old school.

This isn't to say my friends aren't cool! All of my friends are cooler than me, it's basically a scientific fact that, if you're my friend, you are cooler than me on a multitude of levels. Probably the only skillset I have that trumps my friends skills is my ability to get over 40 "likes" on a cover photo of the solo jazz cup pattern, and that's not even a skill I can attribute to my own abilities so much as the millennial's inherent love of anything even slightly nostalgic. I have a friend who like, makes her own yarn by hand and then knits them into original sock patterns. Why WOULDN'T I mention that all the time? Probably because I talk about all my friends constantly, and after a while these anonymous people don't even seem real anymore.

SO AT THE END OF THE DAY, I just wanna say, talk about yourself and your life adventures more! Don't be like me, some girl whose conversations are usually about how much cooler her friends are. Because really, that's annoying and eventually my friends will catch on to the fact that I'm borrowing cool parts from the people I know instead of actually being cool. If you find yourself on a Magic School Bus, don't talk about your friends from the past. Mildly panic about the fact that you're on a Magic School Bus and question your overall sanity, because as far as I know, there is no such thing as a magic bus.

"More like a Magic School BUST!"

Fifteen Drafts

It's been over two months since I've last written a blog entry, and over those two months I've mused aloud about how I should write a new post. This is usually met with indifference, or, if you're my friends, support, because you're all too nice to tell me to stop writing. 

My biggest trouble though, is trying to figure out just what I should write. I think I started this blog wanting to tell stories about the past, but without being able to TELL the story it's a lot harder to write the tone I want it to convey. Right now, there are fifteen drafts in my queue. These are their titles:

1. School is Weird
2. Why can't my life just be a musical
3. I talk about my friends a lot
4. I live for this
5. (Untitled Post)
6. 2015 SGA President Speech
1. Maybe this doesn't count, sometimes I'll write things in my blog to trick myself into thinking it's not really work.
7. Graduation
8. Taking the Bus
9. Steak & Shake
10. Baking
11. NSAC
12. Epcot
13. Bicycles
14. Caffeine
15. Goodwill guy

Some of these drafts are from like, March, when I first started this blog, but they weren't deemed good enough so they just kind of sit in the draft queue, taunting me. Others were half-thoughts that weren't really enough to even tweet, so I'm not sure what my plan was on writing a full post about it. 

ANYWAY, maybe I'll write something about the show The Walking Dead next. I just powered through all the episodes to date and have literally no opinion on the show, so it will probably be a really bad post. 

Stay classy. 

Picture unrelated, but pretty cool.

Life Advice from Someone who doesn't have their Life Together.

Hey Party People,

I just wanted to say, if you're reading this, I really appreciate that you're reading my words!!!! Wow!!! Even when it's basically titled "THIS IS A WASTE OF EVERYONE'S TIME." 
Anyway, on with the painfully long blog post.

I've become a fan of pretending I'm an adult nowadays, and a part of this new life is being able to share words of wisdom. However, I do not have any words of wisdom whatsoever. Instead, I figured I'd list a bunch of things I think are helpful, in whatever order I happen to think of them in. I am not qualified to do this whatsoever.

1. When you're just chillin' out, maxin', relaxin' all cool, when suddenly you doubt your entire life, DON'T WORRY!! IT'S ALL GOING TO BE OKAY.
• I mean, generally speaking, this is true. 
• I can't say in every situation it'll be okay, but there have been way too many TIMESwhere I was all like, "Wow omg my life is OVER might as well live in my parents basement forever, and they don't even have a basement." Before realizing, wait nevermind it's already over, and now I'm eating cheese fries.
• Pretty much everytime I look back at something, I laugh at how silly it all was compared to how important it felt at the time. The way time works is that it's constantly moving forward (citation: the science), so in a few months whatever's bothering you will be well behind you, and you'll have had so many cool things happen in between. 
• For me it's probably eating really memorable food or getting cool outfits.
2. And if it's not going to be okay, STILL DON'T WORRY! I'll help you!!
• Or, I'll try my very hardest to help you, if you want me to.
• If you don't want me to help out, that's okay! I'm not really able to help people like a good 90% of the time, but I promise I'll give it my best shot. What's really important is that you ask for help!
• I know these sound obvious, but it's important to acknowledge asking for help is alright, and a perfectly respectable thing. I'm not saying to take advantage of it, but when you can't reach something, ask someone else to reach instead of trying to scale the shelf alone and knock everything over. I've been there, like, literally, and I broke a huge thing of pickles. It wasn't the best look.
3. Always have a "Power Dress" (or Power Outfit)
• But actually, a Power Dress. I don't care who you are, having a really awesome dress/outfit that makes you feel like you could PUNCH THE SUN is a necessary ensemble for your closet. 
• You're pretty much a superhero with a secret weapon if you have the right outfit, and people will notice.
4. Hard work generally pays off
• I think I'm kind of a workaholic. I like to have a lot on my plate, because it lets me know I'm doing SOMETHING to enrich my life. 
• The past 3 years of college has taught me that challenging yourself to be better usually results in being better. So go to the library and take books out, or watch tutorial videos, and work in the labs so much people inherently assume you'll be there. After a while it gets easier, and people will think you're pretty impressive with all your know-how in whatever it might be you've been doing.
5. But don't work so hard, that's like, not cool either.
• By this I mean remember to eat and sleep, and devote at least a couple FULL days to just watch Batman movies or the first Scooby Doo live-action movie on VHS on repeat. Like a respectable adult.
6. Practice cooking.
• I already wrote a blog post about how I normally cook, but look up recipes online or in cookbooks! Mainly because my method is more how to trick people into thinking you can cook, not a real method to practice cooking.
• One day, you'll be in a situation where you'll have to cook something (probably). Be prepared to BLOW EVERYONE AWAY with your competence in cooking. It's also a good way to show off via instagram.
7. Drink lots of water.
• I mean according to science you should drink water to stay alive.
• I also just really like ice water when it's in one of those tumbler cups with the straws.

This was a really long post, and most of it contradicts itself or is incredibly generic advice. But I think we overlook obvious answers sometimes. That's just my two cents.

Advice according to google images.