Where's the keg? Where's the dancing? Where are the drunk people making out?!

There’s nothing like an exclusive party in Manhattan to make you feel cool. Likewise there’s nothing like a six story walk up to make you feel out-of-breath as well as out-of-shape.

This past weekend I was invited to a friend’s brother’s uncle’s neighbor’s housewarming party at a West Village penthouse. I went not only because I liked casually slipping it into conversation that I was going to a roof party, but also because I’m constantly trying to figure out the secret to going from a post-grad intern to a real employee who can afford to pay rent on an apartment. It’s a mind boggling mystery to me but I’m determined to solve it.

However, mingling with all these employed-and-insured people made me realize that I shouldn’t be so worried about finding a job. These people were only twenty-five and yet they had more complaints than my grandparents after they forget to take their diuretics. They’re overtired, they’re overworked, and they’re over having fun. Read More »

Though we’ve all heard that there are future employers, spouses, and murderers who are going to look us up on Facebook to stalk our past indiscretions, how many of us can truly say that our Facebooks are rated PG? While I remember myself painstakingly deleting every picture with the slightest reference of alcohol before I entered college, once I arrived at Michigan, it seemed that every person I knew was tagged in some sort of waterfall or beer pong picture. Slowly, I stopped being so anxious about what went up in my albums; a shot glass here, a beer bottle there, etc. Sure, I still de-tagged pictures of myself chugging bottles or double-fisting shots, but it never occurred to me that the mere mention of alcohol in an album would hurt my good name.

However, a couple of weeks ago I was presented with a problem when the advisor of my sorority came to me with pictures of me and my fellow sisters drinking in the house. While it is pretty easy to deny that you break the rules, it is hard to do so when you are presented with a picture of yourself mid-Smirnoff shot in your own room.

Though none of the pictures came from my own albums, I still found myself staring at my own face. These were pictures that were DE-TAGGED. Pictures that I had known were inappropriate, and had clicked the little button next to my name, the one that makes everything bad go away. I suppose when we all look at the pictures tagged of us and don’t see one, we forget that, despite not having our name, it still exists. Albums from August with pictures that I had forgotten existed were shown to me. While my first thought was, “Wow, this person needs a life if she is stalking pictures of me from 6 months ago,” my second one was “Well. This isn’t pretty.” Read More »

I know I’m lucky. Five of my best friends from childhood live within 5 minutes of me in the city. Most of us have been friends for 17 years (wow, that number scares me). I’m not going to lie and say it’s been easy for all of us to remain friends.

We all split up for 4 years of college, sometimes had sporadic contact, and occasionally went months without talking to each other.

Even now, living so close, sometimes a month or two will go by and we’ll realize we haven’t hung out. We’ve all grown into much different people than we were as kids, and if we met today, we wouldn’t necessarily all be the best of friends. But we grew up together and have enough in common that we’ve chosen to remain friends.

Key phrase: We grew up together.

In addition to my close childhood friends, I’ve collected friends from college and from post-college as well. These people didn’t know me as I was learning my multiplication tables, but they got to know me as a person much more like the one I am today. They chose to be friends with me, and not the childhood version of me.

I sometimes think about those friends from my past that I didn’t keep in touch with. Those girls I once referred to as my best friends. One in particular, I was best friends with from kindergarten all the way to 10th grade, when we slowly started drifting apart. We had sporadic contact in college, as in, “Oh my God, we so totally need to hang out!!” but of course we never did. Sometimes I get seriously sad thinking that someone who once knew me better than anyone else has no idea about what I’m like now. Sometimes I wonder why we let our friendship go when we had so much history together. Read More »