How To: Survive a Boston Winter

I think people tend to exaggerate how horrible New England winters are, but then you have those days where you wake up, check the weather, and learn that it is possible to have a high of 29 F that feels more like 15 F from the wind. So what are you supposed to do on days like these? 

The first and ideal response is to hibernate. Seriously. Just don’t leave your room for anything. Curl up in bed all day with blankets and movies and maybe some tea or hot chocolate. But unfortunately, some days you have those pesky things like classes, or the need to feed yourself, and you are forced to leave your toasty cocoon of a dorm room and venture into the harsh outdoors. 

Now that you are forced to brace the tundra of the city, how do you cope? Preparation is crucial. 

1) Layer. You actually need to wear every warm article of clothing you own at once. If you are not wearing two to three layers of clothes on every square inch of your body, you will regret it. 

2) Function over fashion. This is no time to get picky about what you will and will not wear. Nobody’s gonna be looking at you anyway because everyone’s keeping their heads down to avoid the wind from actually ripping their faces off. If you want to wear footy pajamas under a snuggie with Uggs, the only comments you’ll hear from strangers is that they wish they’d thought of that first. 

3) Protect your ears and neck. Besides a ski mask, which is not super culturally acceptable, there’s virtually no way to protect your face from the wind, so you’ll have to do the next best thing.  Scarves and hats are not optional. They are the key to survival. 

4) Comfortable and warm shoes. I will never understand those people who can wear cute flats or heels in December. You better believe that if it is under 40 degrees, I’ll be wearing my Uggs. I don’t even care that they’re ugly, because it’s like having kittens hugging your feet everywhere you go. 

5) Heads down and just dive in. You will hate every second of fighting the wind and losing while trying to walk to class. You’ll think about your friends in schools in Florida and California and curse yourself for thinking that Boston would be fun. But sometimes you just need to keep your head down and dive straight in. You may find yourself making absurd faces attempting to regain feeling in your cheeks and lips. Also, look out for ice. Today I discovered that if it’s cold enough, beer will freeze on the sidewalk. And death by slippery frozen beer was not on my To Do list for today. 

Even after all this pain, I keep coming back to this city. Because there’s no place I’d rather be knocked down by gusts of wind or freeze my face off. Plus, it’s really beautiful in the snow.

Stay warm, friends!

❤ Lizzy

 

Simple Pleasures

This past week has been pretty long and stressful, and my procrastination has gotten the better of me more than a few times. But even through this all, in the past two days there are 5 things that I’m incredibly grateful for. 

1) Going to sleep before midnight and not setting an alarm for the next day.

2) Geeking out with good friends over comic book movies.

3) Oversized worn t-shirts and thick sweatpants.

4) Unexpected hugs from dear friends in the middle of the sidewalk.

5) Hot apple cider.

I hope you week was better than mine, but even if it wasn’t, I hope you experienced some simple pleasures to keep you grounded in thankfulness!

❤ Lizzy 

You’re killing me, Pinterest.

I was never really that into Pinterest. It was usually kind of a last resort way to distract myself during boring lectures after I’d cycled through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and clicked refresh for the 100th time. There’s two main sections of Pinterest I tend to gravitate towards, and recently they have been extremely unhealthy for me: Weddings and Travel.  

Pretty much every girl who has a Pinterest has gone through their Wedding phase at least once. I was never one of those people who had planned or thought about their wedding too much, but suddenly I got a Pinterest and became an expert on Mason Jar centerpieces and open air receptions. I try not to spend too much time in this section, because there’s nothing worse for a single person in their 20s than planning out their future wedding. My Facebook feed has been increasingly filled with engagements and weddings and baby announcements, which is pretty overwhelming at this point in my life. I am by no means ready for all of that, but man those twinkle lights would be so pretty at my wedding reception. 

Now, the fact that I’m drawn to the Travel section shouldn’t surprise anyone, since at this point I’m made up of about 85% Wanderlust and 15% coffee. Usually sometime between the hours of 12:30 and 3 am I find myself wistfully scrolling through pictures of exotic, beautiful, far away places I long to roam. Some of them remind me of this past semester and my European adventures. I repin them to my “Oh Sweet Nostalgia” board and bask in that warm gooey nostalgia as the memories wash over me. Memories of trekking through snow in Venice or hiking mountains in Granada flood over me and no matter what I had been feeling at the time, now I look back at those places and smile. Or sometimes I look through pictures of places I’ve never been, never even heard of until this moment and get filled with the unwavering desire to pick up and leave. To leave behind everything that I’m doing and run off into the great unknown, because there’s so much world and so little time, and I just want to experience it all. But eventually I force myself to shut my computer, climb into bed, and dream of majestic mountains and peaceful lakes and bustling cities filled with incomprehensible languages. 

Scrolling through these sections on Pinterest leave me so full of yearning for the future. My restless heart jumps out of my chest as I picture the great adventures that will come just a little ways down the road. But for now, I’m here, in a city I love, surrounded by some of the greatest people I’ve ever met. And I need to just close out of Pinterest, turn off my computer, and enjoy this time. Because eventually, all of this will be just another pin on that Nostalgia board. 

❤ Lizzy

10 Years

“Next time we meet, I want you to tell me where you want to be professionally in 10 years, and how you’re going to get there.”

A few weeks ago, my faculty mentor said those 26 terrifying words to me. I think I actually started laughing right there in his office, until I realized he was serious. He wanted me to have an actual idea of where I want to be in 10 years and what steps I need to take to get there. Unsurprisingly, this threw me into a two week long whirlwind panic about my future. Over those two weeks, I didn’t go to sleep before 2am, even when I had no homework, because I would lay awake staring at the glow in the dark splatter paint on my ceiling trying to figure out how to even begin deciding what I wanted to do with my life. 

I know I’m growing up, but thinking about what I want to be doing half my lifetime from now is absurd. 10 years? I don’t even know where I want to be 10 weeks from now. I know my advisor doesn’t really care what I come up with, as long as it gives me a framework to think about what I should do immediately after graduation and how that will contribute to my long-term life goals. But still. 10 years. What. The. Heck.

I would sit down to try to think about my future and suddenly an overwhelming fog would fill up my brain and prevent any and all cognitive functions. Because where do I want to be in 10 years? The much simpler question would be, where don’t I want to be? There’s so much I want to do with my life that I can’t possibly make any kind of decision on something like that. Once I have some kind of plan, I often feel trapped in it. There’s too much I have left that I want to do to try to force myself into any kind of plan. I wanna spend a summer working for a vineyard in Tuscany, or learn to bartend at a pub in Dublin, or backpack through Malaysia, or visit Machu Picchu.  I don’t want to be settled down with a “career”. I’m old enough to know that I won’t get to experience everything I want to or go everywhere I want to, but I’m too young not to at least try. 

So, where do I want to be in 10 years? God only knows. And when He clues me in, I’ll let you know too. 

❤ Lizzy