Celebrate Yourself!

Unit: Celebrations!

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, I’m Taylor Vogel and this is Now That I’m Not Your Teacher. Each week we’ll explore an aspect of adulting that you might have missed in school. Since I used to be a teacher, I’ll structure it in ways that are proven to help you retain information. But since I’m not your teacher anymore, I can approach it in a way that’s honest and sometimes inappropriate for a classroom.

In this week’s unit, we’ll be exploring celebrations! First up? We’re celebrating ourselves!

Listen, last year was rough for many of us. And it’s easy to get caught up in all of the downer memes and negative talk that goes along with it. I sure as hell have, too. But I wanted to stop and take a moment to think of the things that did happen for me in 2020 that nobody else was celebrating. I paid off some hefty credit card debt and all of my private university student loans after some intense financial planning. I launched my other podcast, SHELTERED: the Podcast, with three of my closest friends. We adopted our kitten, Minette, and thereby lost the ability to ever sleep in again. I also moved to Fort Worth and started a job with a title and salary that I didn’t see happening in my near future.

I honestly let some of these things just roll by, because often, the only way that we see others celebrating is by going out to large group dinners! And we couldn’t do a lot of that for most of this year.

So instead, for one particular celebration, I thought about what would make it feel more fun and special than it was. What made made me happy when I was a kid? Cake, with words written on it. Dancing to pop music in the kitchen with a best friend. THAT was possible. And yes, now that we’re adults, we threw champagne into the mix.

I also loved making art when I was young. So for my 27th birthday, I took the day off of work and spent the entire day at the Denver Art Museum walking around looking at art, sketching, and discovering printmaking for the first time. It is my favorite birthday to date, and it’s because I celebrated by spending time on the things that have always brought me joy.

So, what do you need to celebrate this week? What can you do to celebrate that accomplishment by tapping into your inner child?

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