No idea why I chose Frank Sinatra lyrics to name my last post on this here site, but here we are, ending as weirdly as we began. For the last few years, I’d been trying to fit a square peg into a round hole here on ye olde blog. I loved having this space of my own to write, and I cherish how this is a scrapbook of most of my life from 2009-2019. I often will google something like “banana phone picture site:preppyrunner.com” to find a picture that I know I posted here but have no idea where else it would be. This site has given me so much: friendships in IRL and friendships that will only ever ..read more

(tw for diet culture talk—mostly how it’s BS, but how it’s affected me, too) This blog is like a goonie, it never says die. I keep it around when I have something I really want to say that I don’t want to pitch and is too long for Instagram. (2021 is weird.) Last time we spoke, I wrote about realizing my role in being complicit in diet culture. My therapist and I work on food/diet/body issues when I can stand it—it’s really hard to talk about, which then feels so silly because it’s “just food.” “Oh, it’s just food?” she says. “It’s not like we need to think about food several times a day t ..read more

I posted some Small Business Saturday stuff on Instagram yesterday and my friend Kat suggested turning it into a blog post like in the olden days, so why not? Here’s some Small Business Saturday and Black Friday/Cyber Monday/shopping season deals too. And if you’re not already using the Honey browser extension, what are you doing?! I swear this thing has saved me hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars over the year. You install it, and almost any time you go to check out of an online store, it automatically checks for and applies coupon codes for you. You can sign up here—and for many of th ..read more

I woke up this morning already feeling anxious. (Yay!) My standard iPhone alarm is set for 6:45, but I prefer to get up a little before it and get some shit done. I am most productive in the mornings, and I like to ride that wave. It also means I can be at my coffee shop right when it opens. A positive of the pandemic is that most of the coffee shops on Main Street in Santa Monica are walk-up service right now (with a table at the doorway), so I can make walking Lucy in the morning a little less boring when it involves coffee. But today I woke up right at 6:45, and it was well after 7 before ..read more

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve really been going through it with headaches. They’re largely tension headaches, which means that while I don’t usually deal with nausea or light sensitivity, they’re not quite as straightforward to treat—there’s a lot more options for treating migraines than there are tension headaches. I am getting closer to figuring out some treatment options after exhausting A LOT, but one of the causes of tensions headaches is—you guessed it—tension. Some helpful doctors have said “just reduce stress!” like it’s that easy. As someone who is in grad school/interni ..read more

I read The Midnight Library over the weekend, and I need to talk about it. With everyone. (Trigger/content warnings of suicide attempt/suicidal ideation/mom loss.) I’ve heard so much buzz about this book, but because of said trigger warnings was really nervous to read it…since those are personal triggers for me, too. But Grace said that it was actually incredibly uplifting, so I decided to give it a try and let myself stop if it became too triggering. (Though, when I started to describe the book to my therapist this morning, before I got to the uplifting part, she asked me “where the fuck do ..read more

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Theodora Blanchfield (@theodorable) Yeah, just another year with a dog as my valentine. (Though she’s a pretty damn good one, I must say.) Because everything seems to hit differently in a pandemic, it’s hitting me extra hard today that I’m single…still. Taylor Swift gave me a 13 year gap to find someone to date when she re released Love Story and I failed ? — Fernanda ?? (@heythereswiftie) February 12, 2021 I like to *say* I’m not one to regret things, but I’ve certainly recently uncovered some things in therapy that have me feeling like I wish ..read more

I have been thinking about this post for a while—on why diet culture is unhealthy and my role in it. (tw for weight loss/diet culture talk) If you’re new here, this blog started as a weight loss blog. (LOL that that about page says “crap, I’m 30.” Reader, I am now 38. I wanted to lose 50 pounds before a friend’s wedding in Aruba. I lost 35 before the wedding and the last 15 in about six months after that. I thought I looked great, and I was happy*, and my mom took me shopping to “celebrate” my weight loss. I got lots of great comments here. I started getting interviewed all over the place a ..read more

I have a LOT going on this quarter in grad school*—and, ya know, there’s a ton going on in the world that can make it hard to focus. I spent a long time my first week this quarter looking for a project management software system that would help me stay on top of things. (*And I saw my first client last week!!! I’m happy to report we both survived.) This may be a random post, but I love productivity hacks and seeing other people’s systems of how they get shit done, so here’s how I’m doing it right now. Rocketbook I’m a writer. I LOVE me a good notebook. I also live in a one-bedroom apartment ..read more

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that I started writing Taylor Swift fanfic. I haven’t written another word of it since, but that’s fine. Because this one little exercise—inspired by this prompt—made me think a lot about writing and life in general. As a journalism major and someone who has written professionally for more than 15 years, I am accustomed to writing in a very structured way. There’s a “right” way to write, and I stick to it. Working in social media, I knew how to write to best game the algorithm. I love structure, and I hate structure. (Hi, yes, I am an Aquarius.) Structu ..read more