oprah knows what’s up.

Sierra said she read you’re supposed to let your toes breathe between pedicures and I had a perpetual pedicure from 1998 until this past December, so I decided to take a break. Turns out I hate not having a pedicure, though, and recently it really started to make me feel like Meryl Streep in Into the Woods, so yesterday I took the day off from my office job– to do a lot of things, ostensibly, but really go to the nail place. I broke out my spring jacket. I brought the home decor magazines Marissa sent me in the mail.

It was the best day!

A couple of weeks ago I fell down an internet wormhole and ended up at a blog about being fabulous and manifesting your best life that I’m not going to link to because it’s embarrassing and I don’t want you to click on it and judge me. You know how you’re hate-reading something and then all of a sudden you find yourself nodding along and you realize it’s been like four hours and you’re not hate-reading it anymore, you’re just regular-reading it? That was my experience with this website. I told my sister about it and she laughed at me. Then she said: “Okay so what are we supposed to do to make it work?”

I think self-care is a gross phrase, honestly. It reminds me of “lovemaking” and is just generally a little too Joshua Tree for me. But the older I get the more important the idea of it feels to me–doing the kinds of things for myself I’d do for the people I love and want to make happy. Taking the steps I can take to give myself the life I want to have. I’m not about to hire someone to pick up my laundry or sort my mail or write my next book from a suite at the Liberty (although God bless you if you can make it happen), but I can damn well make a kale salad and put fresh sheets on the bed. A doughnut on a Sunday morning. A nap on a Saturday afternoon. A new pair of soft, pretty pajamas instead of the t-shirt with the name of my freshman dorm on it.

It’s easy to feel like the small things don’t matter–like they’re silly or frivolous or selfish somehow, like it’s wrong or somehow stupid to take the time to be nice to yourself. But it’s worth it, I’m learning slowly but surely. I can tell when I look down at my toes.