On average, I read 100 books a year.

Romance is my main genre, and I eat it up like a fresh bag of Salt and Vinegar potato chips. But some tropes just hit harder than others — not because they make me kick my feet and giggle, though they do that too. The hits are to my real life, because no one actually exists like this. I both love a romance novel for its emotional arcs and accept it for how deep it wounds my pragmatic soul.

Herewith: a completely objective ranking on the damage scale. Lowest to highest. You have been warned.

Friends to Lovers

Damage level: Papercut. It stings, but a little kiss makes it better.

Friends to Lovers ranks low on the damage scale not because this trope isn’t brutal in its own way, but because it seems to say: I have seen you in all your awkward, weird, misaligned phases, and still my heart calls to you. It feels grounded in reality. I actually know couples whose stories are like this.

Earl’s Trip by Jenny Holiday has one of the best Friends to Lovers arcs I’ve encountered. The yearning on both sides is swoon-worthy, but what elevates it is the presence of both inner monologues — two people deeply attracted to each other who share a profound respect forged by witnessing several iterations of one another. That specificity is what makes it feel possible rather than aspirational.

Second Chance

Damage level: Brain freeze. The first sip hurt you, but surely this time will be different.

Authors sometimes reach for this trope to avoid doing the hard work of establishing a fresh connection between their leads. It lands higher on the damage scale because in the real world, most second-chance relationships involve neither person having changed. We want to believe people when they say I won’t hurt you like that again. History, however, has opinions.

This trope only works when both characters have grown enough that the mistakes of the past feel genuinely unrepeatable. Promise Me by Sara Cate earns the award here — the real-time character development on both sides is nuanced and honest, making the case that sometimes one significant push is enough to actually change a person. Sometimes.

Forced Proximity

Damage level: Pinkie toe taken out by the sofa. I see it coming and I’m still not prepared.

Snowed-in cabins. Double-booked villas. Scottish castles that somehow shrink to the size of a postage stamp the moment two people need to avoid each other. This trope announces itself on the back cover, and yet when it plays the tension correctly, I am on the edge of my seat watching two people repeatedly end up in the same room against all spatial logic.

Christmas Fling by Lindsey Kelk does this beautifully.

The damage? This simply does not happen. If a hotel got your reservation wrong and you were in a high-end suite, they would move mountains to accommodate you. People do not offer to share rooms with near-strangers. Mortal enemies would never be put upon to cohabitate regardless of how lovely the vacation. I can suspend my disbelief, but this trope is starting to test its limits.

Grumpy / Sunshine

Damage level: Car door to the funny bone. It hurts, but I can’t stop giggling.

He is just so grumpy. She is always so full of joy, even though life has handed her a certified disaster, and she is joyfully thanking it for the pleasure of its company. I love this trope. I also have questions.

You cannot spend your entire career being off-putting to everyone around you and still make it that far professionally. At some point, you have to make a golf buddy. And the sunshine half — bless her — is often completely divorced from any external pressure. No political injustice. No real bills unless they serve the plot. The stakes are so localized to these two people that when nothing else is wrong, their emotional tension can feel a little... myopic.

And yet. The silent, brooding one slowly revealing a depth of feeling for someone who has rarely been shown the same kindness they extend to the world? I cannot stop crying. I cannot stop reading.

If you’re new to it: Power Play by Chelsea Curto. If you want the gender-flipped version — often called the Black Cat / Golden Retriever — start with Face Off, the first book in the same series.

Slow Burn

Damage level: Day three period cramps. Awful, but soothed with heat.

The prolonged intensity is what does you in. One can only tolerate the tension for so long before reaching for the painkillers and the heating pad.

Here is what makes this trope genuinely unreplicable in real life: you would never know if you were in one. You are going at a pace that feels right to you. There is nothing slow about it — your comfort is the only timeline that exists. No one is watching from the outside, waiting breathlessly for the first romantic moment to happen. If they are, you need new friends and possibly a restraining order.

This trope works exceptionally well in Fantasy Romance, where external chaos — wars, prophecies, general world-ending events — makes every quiet intimate moment feel earned in a way that a contemporary slow burn sometimes can’t. Andrea Andersen’s Fantasy Romance debut Hymn of Ashes burned it so low and so slow that I, personally, am falling off the bone in anticipation of the second book in the duology.

The Grand Gesture

Damage level: Watermelon margarita hangover. It was so good until reality hit.

A great Grand Gesture in a romance novel sneaks up on you like exactly that. You are having a wonderful time — the book is a vibe, some laughs, some heartfelt moments, some plot twists. Then the author hits you square in the temple, and you spend the next three days thinking about it and wanting to discuss it with everyone while also refusing to spoil it for anyone. Some lessons must be learned by doing.

Lovelight Farms by B.K. Borison. “I want all your trees.” I sob every single time. It is so small and so sinister that when you arrive, it feels like the delivery truck Luka gets his recurring order from is taking you out to make that expedited shipping deadline.

Men like this exist in real life, I’m told. I have not yet encountered one this dedicated.

Enemies to Lovers

Damage level: A migraine. All this tension with nowhere to go.

It’s a romance novel — I know they are getting together by the end. And yet a well-executed Enemies to Lovers arc is still a form of catharsis I return to repeatedly. When done right — and this trope is frequently done wrong — the longing, the visceral friction slowly curdling into respect and understanding, is genuinely delicious.

In real life, this dynamic would be a red flag tour. Between the power imbalances and the systems we actually inhabit, if someone told you this was their love story, your first question would be whether they were in therapy.

What redeems it in fiction is that respect leads the charge. In a well-done Enemies to Lovers, the characters are forced to actually see each other before they want to be serious with each other. That’s rarer than it should be, in books and in life.

I hesitate to recommend a fourth book in a series as a first entry, but Call of the Fathoms by Emma Hamm executes this trope in the best possible way. I am not responsible for your emotional breakdown in the third act or your newly complicated feelings about mermen. This is not a warning. It is simply a statement of fact.

“I Hate That I Want You”

Damage level: EMOTIONAL DAMAGE. What do you mean this man has too much honor to let himself have what he wants?

This trope occasionally overlaps with Enemies to Lovers but lives in its own specific territory — the family best friend, the person who knows they shouldn’t be developing these feelings but cannot stop the romantic tension from building anyway. It is one of the rare romance plots where honor and restraint are the obstacles rather than hatred or circumstance.

Finding a person who would genuinely put respect and integrity before their own desires is, in 2026, a unicorn. Romance novels have made me require it.

The recommendation: Earl Crush by Alexandra Vasti. That’s it. That’s the whole entry. Go read it.

The One That Should Be Retired: Marriage of Convenience

Damage level: Eye strain from excessive rolling.

Someone needs to be married to claim their inheritance. I have dated exactly one lawyer — one lawyer too many — to accept this premise without comment. A piece of paper cannot legally force you into a marriage, and once contested in court, most such provisions get thrown out entirely. The only clean workaround is leaving the inheritance to the grandchildren. And yet here we are, watching characters treat legally binding matrimony as an obvious solution to a minor estate problem.

Do real people look at their problems and think: yes, marriage is the easy fix here? No. Those of us living in the actual world — even those of us who have never been married — understand that betting half your assets for a shot at a deceased stranger’s money is not the obvious play.

Do I still read this trope with tremendous enthusiasm? Yes. Terms and Conditions by Lauren Asher is the star of this category, and I will take zero comments on the matter. Iris is the GOAT.

Retiring it anyway.

Knowing what you want from love isn’t delusion. It is taste. The damage these tropes have done to my expectations is not a problem to be solved. It is data.

What’s a trope in your own life — book, film, or real — that you keep returning to even though you know exactly what it’s doing to you?

The Composed Connoisseur is a newsletter about living deliberately, spending wisely, and having opinions about all of it. If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to subscribe, you can do that right here.

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My sister and I are driving up to Santa Barbara for a weekend getaway. The car is the most sacred space for private thoughts, and apparently for the most socially taboo behavior: discussing money, specifically, that no one taught us how to manage it.

Both of us had to learn on our own. She laments not checking her credit score until her thirties, out of fear of what that number might mean for her life. I didn’t have a credit card of my own until I was 23, and I was so scared of it that I set an alert for any transaction over $50. I look back at that now with equal parts shock and sympathy. I often feel I can’t walk out of the house these days without spending $200 just to exist. Twenty-three-year-old Laura, with her $50 spend alert, would be huddled in a corner.

The good news is that I have healthier views on credit cards now, and my sister looked at her credit score, built a beautiful life, and passed her hard-won knowledge on to her kids. But the conversations we keep having — in cars, in kitchens, in the margins of otherwise ordinary days — are in service of understanding what made us both start from scratch. No one taught us how to handle money. And that silence didn’t come from nowhere.

The Women Who Knew and Didn’t Say

My money education, or lack thereof, lives largely with my mom, who is still here and who I ask detailed, curious, sometimes slightly invasive questions about money regularly. Getting her to answer is a coin flip — I receive as many demures as I do answers. She comes from the generation that believed talking about money was gauche, and her of all people still standing on that belief is, frankly, wild to me.

My mom was an accountant. My Excel skills are padawan-level compared to her expertise at wrangling numbers into their place. Every line audited, every charge confirmed, every check accounted for. My mom can manage money. I just wish she had sat me down at some point to teach me her masterful ways.

I have never balanced a checkbook in my life. I was 28 before I started going through my bills line by line to check for inaccuracies.

I don’t blame my mom for never sitting me down to explain how money works. Because I don’t think anyone did it for her either.

Note to self: ask mom who taught her how to balance her checkbook, and when.

Her generation didn’t talk about money. If you needed help, or weren’t doing as well as the people around you, it was a point of shame. Not malice — shame. There’s a difference, and it matters when you’re trying to hold space for someone you love while also keeping a door open that was always meant to stay closed. I try to do both. It sometimes takes using Mjolnir as a doorstop.

The One Belief I Never Questioned

Not talking about money was something I never questioned growing up. It just was. The sky is blue. Don’t put your hand on a hot stove. Don’t talk about money.

It wasn’t until I found The Financial Diet — two women discussing money unapologetically, out loud, on the internet — that I thought: I want to talk about it too. It made it less scary. It helped me work through my fear and eventually turned me into the friend people feel most at ease approaching when beginning a financial journey. One questioned belief, and here we are.

I changed the pattern. I tell friends when something isn’t in my budget. When coworkers ask what I make, I tell them. I tell my mom how much is in my accounts, where that money lives, and how much help she could count on from me if she ever needed it.

A quick caveat, because this matters: talking about money is time-, situation-, and person-specific. I’m not advocating for telling everyone everything. My emphasis is that embarrassment and shame shouldn’t keep you from having honest, necessary conversations with the people who need to know.

Here is the key takeaway: don’t talk about money with everybody — but do talk about money with everyone who matters.

What Actually Helped — Two Things, Not Ten

The Financial Diet gave me one solid skill and one mindset shift. That’s it. Two things. And they’ve done more for my financial confidence than any budgeting spreadsheet or savings calculator I’ve ever tried.

I’m sharing them here not as a prescription but as a proof of concept. These worked for me. If they resonate, take them. If they don’t, that’s fine too — you’ll find your version. The goal isn’t to do it my way. The goal is to start looking.

The skill: just look at your money.

You don’t have to change anything. You don’t have to have a plan. You only need to look at it and see what’s going on — what’s coming in, what’s going out — without judgment. That’s all your first step needs to be. Simple advice, but affirming in ways I still can’t fully explain and remain grateful for every day.

When I was just starting out, anyone who told me to open a specific account or invest a specific amount went straight to the trash. I was so scared of money that moving it from the one checking account my parents opened for me in high school felt terrifying. “Just look at it” was the break in all the noise I needed, at exactly the right time.

The mindset shift: money is a tool, and a tool unused is just a tchotchke from TJ Maxx collecting dust.

Most people understand intellectually that money is a tool to be used. But the lived experience of that idea can be buried under scarcity programming, or overwhelm, or the quiet despair of not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel. All of that is real, and when it was my reality, I used a grading scale.

When I looked at my spending, nothing was “bad” or “good.” It got a grade. Internet bill that kept me connected while I finished college? A+, money well spent. Same with rent. The trick with bills is to grade them on whether the end product is doing its job. For discretionary spending — groceries, mostly — I asked harder questions. Did I eat all my bananas before they went bad? Did my well-intentioned bagged salad rot in the back of the fridge again? The answers informed the grade, and the grade informed the next grocery list. Not the list the person I wished I could be would write. The list for the person I actually am.

Now I look at my money every day and grade it once a week, though the rubric has evolved as my habits have. I’m not watching numbers go up or down. I’m staying accountable. Knowing what’s in my account and which bills are coming lets me spend with confidence, without worrying about every dollar. The weekly check-in still lets me go line by line: to see how my money is working and whether that work is earning an A+ or quietly failing the class.

Doing It Differently, Quietly

My sister checks her credit score now. I ask my mom invasive questions, and she answers more of them than she used to. We are all, slowly, changing what got handed down.

It isn’t a clean break. It’s more like holding a door open with whatever you have available — Mjolnir if necessary — and hoping the person behind you walks through it a little easier than you did.

That’s what I’m choosing. Not perfection. Not a complete rewrite of everything I inherited. Just the quiet, ongoing decision to look at the thing, talk about the thing, and pass something better forward when I can.

What’s a money belief you inherited that you’ve never actually decided if you agree with?

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The Composed Connoisseur is a newsletter about living deliberately, spending wisely, and having opinions about all of it. If someone forwarded this to you and you'd like to subscribe, you can do that right here.

I know August is technically still summer. But the second Trader Joe’s puts pumpkin puree on an end cap, it’s fall to me. Salted caramel mocha, I am on my way.

Here is what got me through.

The Romance Novel

Scandal of the Summer — Alexandra Vasti

Full disclosure: if Vasti writes it, I will read it. This historical romance follows the daughter of an Earl and a former privateer captain, and just when you think you know where it’s going, the winds change and set the ship on an entirely new course. I was completely taken with it and could not wait to see what happened next.

If your whole summer vibe has been ‘bring back men who yearn’ — get thee to the bookstore.

[Scandal of the Summer on Bookshop.org] ← Not an affiliate link, I just need someone to gush with.

The Drink or Food Find

White wine + Trader Joe’s ice pops. Stay with me.

It has been so hot that putting a bottle in the fridge for two hours isn’t enough anymore. My solution: the pineapple-and-coconut ice pops from Trader Joe’s, dropped directly into a glass of your white wine of choice. Fruity and sweet with a crisp bite from the wine. A completely perfect porch pounder experience.

You’re welcome.

The Class or Experience

Candle Making 101 at Heartbound Bookshop

I was back at Heartbound for this one. Briarwick hosted the class in collaboration with author Melissa Whitney. I made both candles on offer, had an absolute blast, and came home with something I actually made with my hands. Learning the candle-making process, spending time with other romance readers, and crafting something unique: a Solo Saturday wild-card that delivered on every level.

The Finance Find

I finally opened my 401(k).

I have been planning to do this with my current employer for longer than I’m comfortable sharing in print. This month — a three-paycheck month, which felt like a sign — I did it. Did I wait until the last week of July, meaning it won’t take effect until August? Yes. Am I counting the follow-through anyway? Absolutely. The decision is made. The paperwork is submitted. Future Laura is already grateful.

The Embarrassing One

I am in a perfume phase, and it has gotten out of hand.

It started when a friend gave me Cloudland by Fulton & Roark, which led me down a rabbit hole of independent perfumers I had no business discovering at this stage of my budget.

The culprit: Fueguia 1833, found while wandering a mall with entirely too much time and curiosity. Their store is set up with round-bottom glass flasks above every bottle — you go around smelling them based on the listed scent notes, which is either a delightful experience or a trap, depending on your self-control. I became obsessed with Land of Champions. It smells like an oncoming rainstorm and freshly cut grass. The second they notified me it was back in stock, I went and bought a bottle.

I regret nothing. I also regret everything. This is the perfume phase.

The Anti-Rec

PowerApps. Spare yourself.

This low-code development platform promises you can build apps without traditional programming. The promise is a generous exaggeration. The templates give you almost no freedom to make the minor visual adjustments that would make the thing actually work for your needs. You cannot access the underlying code — which would be fine if the templates weren’t so rigid that wanting a text input container to be 140 by 70 becomes a twenty-minute argument you lose. And when your data set grows from one CSV to six? It simply cannot handle it. Does not want to. Refuses.

If you want to build something functional, find another platform. PowerApps is not it.

That’s the summer in a Dispatch. One good book, one very cold drink, one candle that smells like sunshine and satisfaction, one financial decision I am retroactively proud of, one perfume I cannot justify, and one piece of software I hope to never think about again.

Pumpkin spice is coming for us all. I, for one, am ready.

What’s one thing from your summer you’re genuinely glad you tried — and one you’d like to quietly leave behind as the seasons change?

The Composed Connoisseur is a newsletter about living deliberately, spending wisely, and having opinions about all of it. If someone forwarded this to you and you'd like to subscribe, you can do that right here.

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I send this update to my family and friends on the first of every month. I log every book in a notebook, tally the stats, and post. I have been doing it for about a year. This particular morning, I hit post, put my phone down, and turned my attention back to my nine-to-five. Five minutes into my task, I found myself reaching for my phone, itching to check whether anyone had liked the update.

I checked. No one had responded yet.

Did I post too early? Maybe the fact that the first fell on a Wednesday has something to do with it? Wait — why do I care?

Posting was about tracking my reading in an accountable way. Wasn’t it?

But it was also about being seen in something I was proud of. That part is true too.

Can it be both?

The Question, Stated Plainly

Is “doing it for you” still true when you’re also doing it for the reaction?

I want to sit with this honestly, because I think most of us skip past it too quickly — straight to the self-affirming conclusion without doing the uncomfortable work of actually looking. This isn’t a callout. It’s an invitation to get curious about something most of us do every single day without examining it.

Case A: Wanting a Reaction Changes Everything

When I started tracking my reading, it was simple. I wanted to remember the titles, the authors, the ones worth returning to. The satisfaction was in the list itself — watching it grow, comparing this June to last June. The record was the point.

But wanting a reaction fundamentally changes how we approach an action. We look for the best visuals to support our text. We push to finish one extra book so the numbers look more impressive. We hold off on a photo because a friend swears it will perform better at 7 PM on a Thursday. Is the joy of that picture lessened if it doesn’t become a hit?

Building your life around how it looks to other people means you become only what others tell you has value. There is no personal pride in an accomplishment if that pride can only be felt once a certain number of likes is reached. If getting dressed in the morning becomes a monologue of this is more comfortable, but the other outfit will photograph better, something has quietly been eroded. Not all at once, but in increments — your self-expression traded, slowly, for the approval of a screen.

Having this practice marred by waiting for likes brings into question whether the original purpose of posting is still in the room with us at all.

Case B: Wanting to Be Seen Is Just Being Human

And yet.

We are pack animals. We thrive on community and belonging. The desire to be accepted, to be liked, to have someone witness your life — that is not a character flaw. That is the human condition, and it always has been. If you are likable, you get to eat part of the hunt. You have a safe place to sleep. You have someone to share your joy with.

I love when people bring me their joy. A friend recently told me she was excited that the Tartan Army — Scottish soccer fans, full regalia — were coming to her town. Later, when she posted a few photos of celebrating with them, I was overjoyed for her. I felt closer to her because she had shared this moment. She was going to enjoy people in kilts and traffic cones on statues regardless of whether anyone saw it. She was doing it for herself and bringing her people along for a small part of the ride.

That is the distinction worth making: the difference between performing for approval and inviting someone into your joy.

The Thing Nobody Mentions

The either-or framing is the problem.

When we try new things or start sharing more publicly, we get pushed into a binary: either you are doing this to hold yourself accountable, or you are doing it for attention. This argument — often waged entirely inside our own heads — leads many of us to second-guess our joy and edit who we share it with. That’s a loss, and it’s an unnecessary one.

The wanting of a reaction is not the problem. The desperation of it is. There is a meaningful difference between enjoying recognition and requiring it, between sharing your life and curating it entirely for an audience that may not even be paying attention. If you’re holding your breath waiting for a specific person to validate a specific thing — that’s the signal worth examining, not the sharing itself.

Ask yourself: if no one else attended the class, would you still go? If the photo never got a single like, would the moment it captured matter less? For most of us, the honest answer is no. The thing had value before anyone saw it. The reaction was a bonus, not the point.

That’s the line. And most of us are on the right side of it more often than we give ourselves credit for.

Where I Actually Land

I live in the gray, and I’m comfortable there.

I want people to share what brings them joy, what supports their mission, what gives them confidence. When a friend pulls me into her world — the Tartan Army, the new job, the Saturday that surprised her — my delight in it is completely genuine. That’s not performance. That’s connection.

The performance piece is something different and something I know well from the inside. My solo class adventures are entirely about stepping into a more confident version of myself. Am I projecting that confidence into a room full of strangers, hoping they’ll like me? Yes. Am I also trying on this persona to see if it brings me more joy and satisfaction? Also yes. Neither cancels the other out. Doing it for yourself can be its own kind of performance — and that is not automatically a bad thing.

It becomes a problem only when the desire to perform grows so specific that it severs your actual connection to the people you’re in the room with. There is a difference between an audience and an inner circle, and the feedback from each should carry different weight. A stranger on the internet saying you’ve changed shouldn’t register. Your mom or your best friend saying it? That warrants a pause.

So: share the books. Post the photo. Sign up for the class and tell people about it after. Do all of it for yourself — and let yourself also enjoy that someone noticed.

That’s not a contradiction. That’s just being a person.

Think of the last thing you did that you called “just for you.” Now ask honestly: who were you hoping would notice? And does your answer change anything about why you did it?

The Composed Connoisseur is a newsletter about living deliberately, spending wisely, and having opinions about all of it. If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to subscribe, you can do that right here.

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Maybe I should just bail. Get some takeout as a consolation prize. Hide at home.

Introduction to Junk Journaling starts in fifteen minutes. It’s my solo adventure for June, and I am sitting in my car feeling like a complete fraud.

I create, organize, and transform Excel spreadsheets for a living. My planner is spick-and-span, assembled with whimsical but useful stickers, boxes, and stencils. Junk is not a positive word in my lexicon. I do not save trash for the memories. I always tell myself I should keep the birthday cards my mom sends me — and then I’m cleaning off my desk and the card is lost to the clutter purge. I am not the target audience for this.

Yet here I am. Signed up, fee paid, in the parking lot.

Sigh.

It takes four deep breaths to get from my car to the door. Well. Here goes nothing.

I Am Still Nervous Every Single Time

You would think I’d be an old pro at this by now. I’ve been taking solo classes since 2019. Alas, still nervous at the start of every single one.

My journey into solo class-taking started when I noticed I simply couldn’t begin things. It crept in the way these things often do — as an innocuous, almost playful quirk. I struggled to set up a plan to improve my cooking. Hundreds of recipes saved in folders, never to be seen again. I lived in fear of restarting Pilates. I hadn’t been in a class since college, and we didn’t use the fancy machines then. What if I embarrassed myself and fell off the reformer?

I didn’t know why I couldn’t just make it happen. Read the recipe and write the grocery list. Call the studio. Set up a free introductory class. The simplest things felt insurmountable. Blank Word documents where the cursor’s silent staccato mocked me. The inability to pick anything to start on. I was stagnant, stressed, and had nothing to show for all my worrying. The executive dysfunction was real: if I wasn’t already overwhelmed by the size of a task, I was frozen by the fear of not showing up perfect.

Booking and attending a class forced me to complete something, start to finish, often with people watching. I was terrified. Still am, sometimes. But I go. And by going, I’ve done something. That’s the whole trick.

What Actually Happened Inside

The class is softer than I expected. I am greeted by a warm chorus of welcomes from the staff and teacher.

We didn’t have to bring anything. Thank god, because trash day was Wednesday and junk I was a-lackin’. We each got our own box with a curated selection of materials and a brand-new journal. I settle into the end seat at the first table I see, fidgeting with my fingers. It’s all women here. A local romance bookstore hosts the event, so no surprises there.

I recognize a few faces. We exchange polite hellos. Some of the women start talking about books, and I listen as the tension begins to leave me. By the time we’ve moved on to the new Brynne Weaver dark romance, the teacher signals that we’re starting.

I feel my nerves kick back up.

I open my box and start pulling things out, making a small pile of items that feel like my vibe. It isn’t much — most of the materials are bright pastels, and I am more of a rich, moody girl — but I can work with this. I start slow, decide I don’t like it, and sweep everything off the page. Start again. Still not feeling it. Woosh. I have not even torn the packaging on my glue stick. Nothing has been permanently set. I am the only one with a blank page, and I can feel the imposter syndrome knocking. The you don’t belong here‘s. A whispered this isn’t your thing.

The teacher has been talking this whole time, but I haven’t been listening. Until this:

“You should crumple some paper. It makes it feel more lived-in. Real. It doesn’t need to be immaculate.”

That line gets through.

I stop. I take the paper I keep wanting to use as a background, crumple it, unmash it, and glue it to the page without second-guessing myself. That texture on my previously blank void settles something in me. Character caused by crinkling, then flattening, somehow makes everything better. I am no longer staring at the barrenness, asking it to give me something. I have added the first life to the page.

One small change. An uneven surface. And all of a sudden, it works.

A reminder of something I often forget: I don’t have to be perfect. I need only show up. Trying before you are ready is exactly what builds your confidence.

The Version of Myself I Keep Meeting in These Rooms

Solo classes have become a trust exercise: letting myself do something without judgment, and allowing myself to discover new parts of who I am.

I get lost, sometimes, in the ideas other people hold of me. I need to show up as the rigorous data analyst. The understanding friend. The helpful daughter. These are real parts of me. But I spend so much time in those roles that I forget to step out of them and just be Laura for a while. The muscles of my personality atrophying from neglect, I look in the mirror and see myself but don’t quite feel myself.

The push into solo adventures came from a book: How to Be Yourself by Ellen Hendriksen. I read it in 2019, in the middle of a relationship that had quietly emptied me. I would go to sleep thinking I was never going to move forward because I couldn’t accomplish even one thing, including leaving a relationship with someone who made me feel less interesting than beige paint.

Hendriksen has a chapter called Get Started and Your Confidence Will Catch Up. The premise: most of us wait to feel like doing something before we do it, when in reality the opposite is true. If you do the thing, you show yourself you can, and that’s how trust in yourself builds, slowly, over time.

When I read that, I knew I had to take a leap. One single step in the right direction, no matter how small, even if I was shaking the entire time. I just needed one. And if it was awful, I promised myself I would never do it again.

So, armed with my Groupon app — it was 2019; Groupon was still good! — I scrolled through available experiences and bought a two-class ballroom dance package. To stop myself from chickening out, I called the second the confirmation hit my inbox. I was learning the cha-cha two days later, having the time of my life dancing to Danza Kuduro.

It worked. It keeps working.

The me who arrives at the beginning of a class is completely different from the me who leaves. The Laura from two hours ago? Don’t know her. Personable ballroom dance beginner? Check. Encouraging cozy craft lady? She is me.

Each class, I get to learn something new about myself while proving to myself I can do hard things. I’ve learned I love to chiffonade my herbs and ask people what their favorite meal of all time was. That the bachata is the best ballroom dance, and I was put on this earth to do as many cha-cha walks as a dance floor allows. I contain multitudes, and they all deserve some time in the spotlight.

Going alone lets me be fully in the moment, and fully in the challenge. There’s no friend to lean on, no one to hide behind. My learning and enjoyment are just mine to hold. It has become a sacred ritual: allowing myself the space to see who I am when I am standing alone. No life vest. Sink or swim.

More often than not, I get to float on a cloud of joy.

You Have My Permission

Being open to being bad at something often means you end up being halfway decent at it, because at the end of the class, the page isn’t blank. You’ve cooked something new. You’ve existed in a new space. And that is genuinely incredible.

So go forth. Sign up for the class you’ve been thinking about for months. Or do a quick search right now and pick the first one that sounds interesting. You don’t have to be ready. You just have to get from your car to the door.

You can come back and tell me everything.

But first — what’s one thing you’ve almost talked yourself out of, and what happened when you didn’t?

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The question is: what do you actually do with it?

I call these Solo Saturdays. They are not an every-weekend occurrence — that’s exactly what makes them worth protecting. And I have a recipe. By the end of it, you will have learned something new, accomplished something real, and feel completely like yourself again.

The perfect Solo Saturday is never accidental. We curate it. And here’s exactly how you build one.

Wake Up Before the Masses

The rule here is simple: wake up about 90 minutes later than you normally would. Long enough that it feels like a genuine treat, not so long that half the day has quietly slipped away while you were unconscious.

The silence of an early Saturday is something you cannot buy and should not waste. Make yourself a special morning coffee: add a pinch of cinnamon and the tiniest pinch of salt. You will thank me later. Sit in that quiet for as long as it lasts.

Then: we have places to be.

The Solo Saturday Wild-Card

This is the non-negotiable centerpiece of the whole day, and the rules are simple: it must spark joy, it must give you the “damn, I did that” feeling, and — critically — you must leave the house.

The trick is to schedule it early enough that you don’t have time to talk yourself out of it, but not so early that you snooze your alarm and miss the entire point. A workout class, a new hobby, a skill you’ve been quietly curious about. Anything that makes you feel like the most interesting person in the Monday meeting counts.

I once took a French Bakery Classics class at 9 AM and oui, oui, baguette’d my way all the way to lunch. No notes.

How to book it: Schedule in advance and start with something that feels familiar but expands what you already know. Paid or free depending on your budget: cooking classes run $25–$99, craft classes can be as low as $10, a different run club than your usual is free, an author talk at your local library is free. The goal is a personal win, not a production.

Lunch: The Cozy Girl Grocery Run

Take the post-excursion high and go to the grocery store. I know. Stay with me.

Do the week’s shopping, and then — this is important — grab something fun just for yourself. I am a Trader Joe’s evangelist. My current go-to: the Peanut Udon Noodle Salad and a Lemon Ginger sparkling beverage. Pick up whatever your version of that is. You have earned a treat that comes in a bag with a receipt.

The Afternoon: Eye Mask, Book, Silence

Once home, you are home. Groceries away, a quick kitchen reset, eye mask on, favorite book open.

You are not checking email. You are not doing a quick scroll. You have handled two real things: the shopping and the kitchen. Now you are reading your book in the quiet of a Saturday afternoon, which is one of the great luxuries that costs nothing. This is not laziness. This is the point.

What I’m reading: I do not gatekeep good books here. I am currently in the throes of a workplace forbidden romance — non-billionaire-owned tech company with morals, enemies-to-lovers energy, the works. Written by a Woman by Andrea Andersen. Incredible indie author. Consider this your rec.

If you have a mountainous TBR, randomly pluck from the top. This is me too. You are among friends.

Sunset: The Walk, The Order, The Close

As the sun begins to set, open your food delivery app and order your heart’s desire. You got up, you did something interesting, you checked off your shopping, and you read your book. You have absolutely earned this. And besides, you just cleaned the kitchen. Why dirty it again?

While you wait, get outside for a short walk — to the mailbox, up the street, far enough to covertly identify who is already putting up their Halloween decorations. You decide.

Then: cozy up with your dinner, your drink of choice (wine, cocktail, mocktail — no judgment, full support), and the rest of your book or a show you’ve been saving. Bask in the fact that you built this day entirely for yourself.

What to Wear

Don’t overthink it, but feel like yourself. My current uniform: the Old Navy Bounce Fleece Wide-Leg Sweatpants and the matching quarter-zip, both bought on sale for $60 total. I jazz up the outfit with my necklace stack, my grandmother’s vintage earrings, and suede sneakers.

The goal is: comfortable enough to actually relax, put-together enough that you feel like a person who made choices. You’ll know it when you put it on.

The One Thing That Does Not Belong on a Perfect Solo Saturday

Chaotic, constant short-form noise.

Lock yourself out of TikTok, Instagram, and anywhere else designed to time-suck you into a scroll spiral. It is not relaxing. It does not count as resting. You look up and Saturday is gone, and you have nothing to show for it except a vague sense of having watched someone else live their life.

We do not waste the Solo Saturday. That is a crime. (Straight to jail. Do not pass go.)

Now Tell Me Everything

So what are we having for Solo Saturday dinner? No, really — I want ideas for my next one. Drop your go-to delivery order in the comments. Bonus points if it arrives fast and photographs beautifully on a couch tray.