Dear Expectations,

Yesterday I was running after work and I saw someone with a yoga mat over her shoulder wearing a perfectly tailored suit and suddenly I felt like I should have gone to yoga instead of running and I should maybe also be working somewhere that forces me to wear a suit and also where did she get those shoes? This got me to thinking: why do I pressure myself to be these things? Why am I not well pleased with my gross sweaty running self?

It’s you, Expectations. You are impossible to meet.

You are like a helicopter mom x 1,000,000,000! I’ve had enough, dear Expectations. According to you, I am supposed to be a combination of Heidi Klum, Stephen Hawking, Tom Brandy, Gandhi and Barack Obama.

I finally wrote down a list of all your demands, and you are totally irrational, my friend.

You say I’m supposed to have:

• The most perfect job ever that promotes at the speed of a neutrino, pays us like Donald Trump, and allows for a magical personal life. Double extra bonus points if this job saves the world in some way or has access to a super powerful person.
• The most amazing fit body ever of all time in the world. Like those blue people from Avatar.
• Social lives that are a combination of every Budweiser commercial.
• A sense of fashion that prompts street bloggers to stop, gawk, photograph and ask what we’re wearing.
• A perfect relationship that results in a perfectly planned, but appropriately quirky and of course intensely personal, cheap, DIY (I’m looking at you, Pinterest)wedding that will be announced in the Times and profiled in Vanity Fair (if that’s still in print).
• -Amazing thoughts and insights on every topic all the time because we’re reading every book that’s important ever and definitely not watching Wipeout, Top Chef or Storage Wars.

You know what, Expectations? I’m coming up with aother list, a list of New Expectations. It will be reasonable and it will be way more fun than you.

Thanks!
Katie