The people I’ve met so far along this journey called life have taught me so many things.

I’ve learned how to sing out lout without giving a shit even though I really can’t hold a tune to save my life. I’ve heard different perspectives on the world that I previously never even briefly considered having a legitimate conversation about - looking at you people who are “open to the possibility” that the Earth is flat. I discovered that there can be a middle ground between Democrats and Republicans if you care enough to have an actual (read: non yelling) conversation about your values. And most importantly, I’ve learned a ton about myself and why I am the way that I am and who I want to be in the future.

As much as I want to learn from others, I hope to encourage others to learn from my different perspectives as well. If you know me well, you know that I am far from a “yes” person. Sure I go with the flow on a day-to-day basis, but really I want to challenge you, to see if I can get you to see things from a different perspective, to see if your idea is actually fully baked or if you’re just full of shit.

My favorite way to do that, is to challenge people’s opinions of myself.

I LOVE when people tell me I can’t do something, when people are convinced I am less than, and when people have no qualms about saying shit like that out loud to my face. I love it, because I love proving people wrong. 

More often than not, those people think I can’t do something because of their own preconceived notions about myself (that I’m “too nice” to handle a challenge), or of women (that as long as your husband makes a decent salary there’s no need for you to get a raise), or of millennials (we’re all lazy and self-entitled and commitment-phobes when it comes to a workplace), etc. Nothing makes me happier than shattering those ill-founded biases.

My whole life, I have always put myself in situations where people question if I should even be there, if I should have a voice at the table, and how the hell I got there in the first place. In all of those situations I strive to prove those naysayers wrong. Whether by beating someone in a one-on-one beer pong match where the opposition was clearly upset to be beaten by a girl, or by crushing it as a sales rep (excuse me while I brush that dirt off my shoulder) in a notoriously-difficut-for-wine-sales culturally diverse territory as a white girl from suburban Long Island, or by driving across the country by myself and living on the opposite side of the country from my spouse for a few months even though some friends thought I was batshit crazy for doing so.

I hope in some small way that by shattering their expectations of who I am, or who they thought I was, that maybe in a future situation they will think twice before assuming that another person will not succeed in that job/position/activity just because they are young, or a woman, or “not tough enough.”

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