I may be writing a few blogs in the coming months with this theme, but right now I need to express specifically what is happening in my fireplace. I took a gigantic pile of junk mail and chucked it into the fire. Advertisements, catalogs, coupons, credit card applications and every other type of solicitation I can imagine is now heating my living room and, therefore, being of some use to me. Watching the faces of grotesquely unnatural and/or photoshopped models go up in smoke is a much needed cleansing of the soul. My heart, mind and soul have been polluted for too long by this idea that I’m not smart enough, pretty enough, woman enough, cool enough or adventurous enough. Modern media exists to deliver audiences to advertisers, and advertisers exist to make me feel I suck as a human being (but for a limited time only here’s a product that can make you suck less.)

I’m staging a full-on revolt against the shady money-changers who have taken up shop in the temple of my self-esteem. I may not be the smartest person in the world, or the most beautiful, or the most anything else, but I am who I am and I can either love myself or not. As a human being, I am too wonderful to let my perception of myself and my worth be controlled by a corporation whose idea of worth is completely different from my own.