Episode 60
I Did So Much Peopling My Brain is Still Wet (Or Maybe That's Just My Shower Soaked Jeans)
Life right now feels like putting on a pair of jeans immediately out of the shower. We’re gonna get through it. But it’s gonna feel sticky.
Hi friends. I'm Lauren Howard, and this is my podcast Different, Not Broken.
I did so much peopling in one single Sunday that I genuinely lost track of what week it was. A makeup class. Brunch at a place that charges $30 for an omelette and somehow recommends the cheeseburger. My mom’s birthday dinner at the Melting Pot. The balloon bouquet she hates. Venmoing at the table because I’m very Gen Z apparently. All of it, start to finish, until I got home at 6:30pm and was absolutely cooked.
If that sounds familiar—if you also left a room full of strangers and had to run a silent internal audit of whether you were being annoying—this episode is for you.
Also, Alison answers a question from Alejandro in New Mexico, who graduated with his bachelor’s at 37 and can’t stop doing the math on the years he considers “lost.”
Transcript
And so I got my phone out, and I was like, can I Venmo you
Speaker:the money for my meal? Because I gotta go.
Speaker:And that's the first time I've ever done that, probably because I'm usually always
Speaker:paying for the meal. I usually go out with a bunch of mooches, is really
Speaker:what it is. I was like, man, it's been a long time since I've been
Speaker:in a room of strangers, small enough that everybody could hear the
Speaker:stupid shit that goes on in my head. And then it sometimes accidentally comes out
Speaker:of my mouth. It's fondue, but it's all sorts of dipping of meat and
Speaker:cheese in different patterns, which is my
Speaker:happy place.
Speaker:All right, here we go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right.
Speaker:Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop. Hi,
Speaker:everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different
Speaker:Not Broken, which is our podcast on exactly that.
Speaker:That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And
Speaker:the reality is, you're just different, and that's fine.
Speaker:I have made no secret of the
Speaker:general trial and tribulation of my existence right now. There is
Speaker:so much. It is always a lot. Every morning I wake up and I'm like,
Speaker:really? Again? And every morning, the answer is yes
Speaker:again. And we get up and we do it again. But I was thinking about
Speaker:it this morning, and I realized that life right now feels like
Speaker:putting on a pair of jeans immediately out of the shower. We're gonna get
Speaker:through it, but it's gonna be difficult, and it's probably
Speaker:gonna feel sticky and like, I can't think. More apt description. And I don't think
Speaker:it's just me. I think that's a universal experience, at least in the US Right
Speaker:now. So get your pants on or don't. Don't put jeans
Speaker:on. That's awful. But I would imagine we have the same problem with leggings, Right?
Speaker:But jeans, specifically. Put your pants on or don't, but just
Speaker:know that if it feels like a struggle, it's not just
Speaker:you. And I am undoubtedly gonna get my foot
Speaker:stuck in the leg of one of them and fall over relatively soon. So
Speaker:you can come join me. It's such a universal feeling. Have you seen the
Speaker:newsroom? There's an episode where he says that the pants are cut
Speaker:wrong because he can't put them on right. And he makes a
Speaker:comment about how he's so smart, and somebody's like, really? Because you just told us
Speaker:that you can't put your pants on, and then later that episode, he
Speaker:has to rush to get the pants on, and you see him falling out from
Speaker:behind a curtain because he couldn't get his leg in. That's what it feels
Speaker:like. I was about to say, yeah, but skinny jeans are trendy now.
Speaker:And then I realized that skinny jeans were trendy literally 20 years ago.
Speaker:Last Sunday. I did so much peopling that I still
Speaker:have not recovered so much that I'm just
Speaker:realizing that it wasn't even last Sunday. It was the Sunday before.
Speaker:That's how bad I burned out my social battery. That's how much
Speaker:out of the house I did. That's how much logistics
Speaker:I did. I'm not sure if you're familiar with Orlando, but in Orlando, our, like,
Speaker:swanky area, I guess one of them, the oldest swanky area is
Speaker:Winter Park. There's an area in Winter park, it's called Park Avenue, that has
Speaker:all of the upscale stores, the restaurants
Speaker:that charge $30 for an omelette and charge you
Speaker:more to deconstruct things so that you have to put them together
Speaker:instead of just giving you a plate of food you can eat. They're like, here's
Speaker:a deconstructed gazpacho. And you're like, why did you just bring me
Speaker:tomato soup with cilantro on the side? That doesn't make sense. Anyway, they're very
Speaker:impressed with themselves, and to their credit, I have eaten at a number
Speaker:of them and all of them were very good. But I am a person
Speaker:who will happily eat a gas station hot dog. I'm not their
Speaker:target demo. I will very happily go to them. I will find something
Speaker:to eat there. I will put. Probably really enjoy it 100%. Well,
Speaker:they look at me and they're like, oh, she might have showered in the last
Speaker:week. This is interesting, but there's this. It's lovely. I really like
Speaker:the area. I like. It's well manicured.
Speaker:There's green space. The nightmare is the parking. But we went very early
Speaker:one day, so there wasn't really a parking issue. But Natasha, who's a dear friend
Speaker:of mine, got a makeup class or something in a silent auction, and so
Speaker:she asked me if I wanted to go. And I was like, you want to
Speaker:play with makeup for two hours? Yes, Absolute G. We went
Speaker:and there were a bunch of people there, and I
Speaker:forget how much of a jackass I am
Speaker:around a bunch of new people until I'm around a bunch of new
Speaker:people being a jackass. So there were all of the people who were
Speaker:there, and then there were the people who worked at the store
Speaker:because it was like a class that was held at a makeup store. And
Speaker:there was me, and we were there for several hours. And
Speaker:I could not stop making smart ass comments to
Speaker:the group, which everybody laughed at. I don't think I was actually annoying people. Now
Speaker:in hindsight, I'm like, oh, God, was I annoying people? But I don't think I
Speaker:was. I think we were cool. I was like, man, it's been a long time
Speaker:since I've been in a room of strangers small enough that everybody could
Speaker:hear the stupid shit that goes on in my head and then it sometimes
Speaker:accidentally comes out of my mouth. But they all could. They did laugh, which
Speaker:is really bad. If you want me to stop, don't laugh. I'm like a toddler
Speaker:who said the F word. I'm going to keep saying the F word now because
Speaker:you laughed. First off, being a full nerd, I think they thought that they
Speaker:were dealing with a bunch of, like, makeup novices, which most people were, which is
Speaker:totally cool. But I am not a makeup
Speaker:novice. And I have a whole chest of drawers next to my desk that
Speaker:has makeup in it that I play with every day and I try new stuff
Speaker:all the time and I spend way more money on makeup than I should, considering
Speaker:how much makeup I have, but I don't care. And
Speaker:so they were like, okay, so this is
Speaker:a primer. And you put this on your face before. And
Speaker:so the woman came over and was like, what would you say that your makeup
Speaker:understanding is? And I was like, I have 18 different foundations that I
Speaker:choose from each day. And she was like, so, some experience,
Speaker:okay. And so then they, like, wanted to bring me all the products, hoping I
Speaker:would buy all of the products. So she was like, well, I'm gonna bring you
Speaker:over this one because this is a brand you can't get anywhere else or very
Speaker:few other places. So I know you haven't tried this yet. Anyway, she was very
Speaker:cute. She was very sweet. And then I was sitting at the same table as
Speaker:Natasha's mother, who is a fucking delight, a lovely, wonderful person
Speaker:who I wanted to take home in my pocket. Her mom doesn't wear a ton
Speaker:of makeup, and so I couldn't not do my makeup like I always do.
Speaker:And so I'm sitting there and I've got, like, all the tools in front of
Speaker:me and I'm putting it on my face and I'm doing, like, all the things
Speaker:that you do for. I don't know, I feel like a full nerd. And
Speaker:she's watching me the whole time, and she keeps going, wow, you're really good at
Speaker:this. Wow. No, you really know what you're doing.
Speaker:How did you make that look like that? And I'm like, first off, I can
Speaker:show you. I'm happy to show you. But also, like, these professional makeup artists who
Speaker:actually know what they're doing will show you too. Like, that's why they're standing by.
Speaker:So anyway, I became, like, the spectacle, which pretty on brand did several
Speaker:hours there. And then we went to brunch, and I had
Speaker:a wonderful waspy brunch. I don't even know how to
Speaker:describe it, but it was supposed to be Mediterranean fusion or something.
Speaker:I don't know. I saw eggs Benedict on the menu, and I was like, that,
Speaker:please. But it's one of those places where you order food and
Speaker:you get food. The food doesn't come with a side
Speaker:because you're fancy and you have to order a separate side.
Speaker:Not that I needed the side, but it was still like, that's the kind of
Speaker:place it was. Everything's a la carte except for the cheeseburger. And
Speaker:riddle me this. They have a menu, full love,
Speaker:really expensive, really, like, the type of food you cannot get
Speaker:anywhere else. Specialized stuff, all sorts of fancy
Speaker:ingredients, stuff that even somebody like me was like, this
Speaker:feels like I'm not going to have any other opportunity to try this. So I
Speaker:want to try it, even though I'm probably going to hate it. One of the
Speaker:people who was with us looked at the server and was like,
Speaker:I'm between this and the cheeseburger. Which should I get? And he was like, oh,
Speaker:definitely the cheeseburger. Our cheeseburger's really good. And I'm like, good for you.
Speaker:I support you. But also, I don't feel like you're supposed to come here and
Speaker:get a cheeseburger. And why is your cheeseburger that good? Why would you have a
Speaker:stellar cheeseburger at this crazy, fusiony,
Speaker:very expensive place? And you're like, Nope, get the $16 cheeseburger. It's
Speaker:better. That doesn't make sense to me. That feels like there's a failure somewhere else.
Speaker:I didn't get the cheeseburger, and I was a little regretful because it did look
Speaker:really good. We did brunch, and I
Speaker:stepped into 2026 because I had to leave a little bit
Speaker:early from brunch before they had settled everything out. And so I got my
Speaker:phone out, and I was like, can I venmo you the Money for my meal
Speaker:because I gotta go. And that's the first time I've ever done that.
Speaker:Probably because I'm usually always paying for the meal. I usually go out with a
Speaker:bunch of mooches is really what it is. So I felt very like Gen Z.
Speaker:Like I was with the times, which those times are actually five years ago, I
Speaker:literally got into my car, drove the
Speaker:40ish minutes home, changed my clothes. My kids came home,
Speaker:they had been out. We jumped right back in the car. I literally
Speaker:just left a meal, just got back in the
Speaker:car, drove over to my mom's house, picked her up, took
Speaker:her out to early dinner for her birthday. For the record, not because
Speaker:she wanted to go to early dinner, but because I am
Speaker:exceptionally old and I don't want to be out past
Speaker:bedtime. So my mother, who was turning an
Speaker:age, that I will be immediately struck down
Speaker:from heaven if I say on a live microphone, I will not
Speaker:say, but on that day was turning that age and should be
Speaker:the one who cares about early bird specials, was
Speaker:like, why do you want to go eat so early? And I was like, why
Speaker:do you want to go eat so late? She's like, I want to go eat
Speaker:at 7. And I was like, no. So we went
Speaker:very early, but we took her to a very nice restaurant. We took her to
Speaker:the Melting Pot, which is a nice restaurant. It's just like meat and
Speaker:things you put on meat. It's like basically just repetitive meat and cheese, which is
Speaker:not a problem for me at all. It's all sorts of dipping. It's fondue, but
Speaker:it's all sorts of dipping of meat and cheese in different
Speaker:patterns, which is my happy place. But then we did that and then we
Speaker:were there for several hours and then we did birthday and then I finally got
Speaker:home. It was probably only like 6:30 when we got home.
Speaker:And I was like, I'm spent. I talked to so many people today.
Speaker:I did so many things. And I remembered to get the balloon
Speaker:bouquet for the table, which I should get some sort of award for.
Speaker:And by remembered I mean I checked the box when I made the reservation.
Speaker:But it did feel like I remembered to do something. And then we got to
Speaker:the table and my mom reminded me that she hates balloons. And I was
Speaker:like, oh, that is a thing that you've said for literally my entire life. I
Speaker:forgot. I forgot. Awesome. But man, I can't think of
Speaker:a day in the recent past outside of when we were
Speaker:at a conference and I knew that it was
Speaker:going to be like, morning to night peopleing. And I still
Speaker:escaped momentarily throughout the day to
Speaker:recharge and get a soda and find some
Speaker:solace and put my AirPods in and noise cancel the whole world. Like, I can't
Speaker:think of a day that I have peopled that hard in a very
Speaker:long time. There were two meals, there was a whole
Speaker:class where a bunch of people were touching me.
Speaker:I didn't karate chop anyone. There were people looking
Speaker:at me while I was doing stuff and I didn't freak
Speaker:out. And nobody said that I was being weird.
Speaker:And that is probably the biggest
Speaker:victory. So all I'm saying is, if
Speaker:you need me for anything in the next six weeks,
Speaker:know you don't.
Speaker:And now we'll go to Allison, who has this week's small
Speaker:talk. We have a small talk question from
Speaker:Alejandro in New Mexico. I got my
Speaker:Bachelor's degree at 37, finished last
Speaker:May, and everyone around me was very kind about it, saying
Speaker:it's never too late, all of that. But the ceremony was full of
Speaker:22 year olds, and I spent a lot of it in my head doing
Speaker:the math on all the years I consider lost. I
Speaker:know intellectually that comparing timelines is pointless.
Speaker:My path is my path, et cetera. But there's this voice that occasionally
Speaker:whispers that I'm permanently behind in my career,
Speaker:in my life, in some imaginary race I didn't sign up for.
Speaker:I'm curious if you have ever had to actively grieve an earlier
Speaker:version of your life, what you thought it would look like and
Speaker:how you stopped measuring yourself against a timeline that was
Speaker:never really real. Okay, so first off, the thing I want to say
Speaker:and the thing you need to get out of your brain is that there
Speaker:is no finish line. Life does not have
Speaker:a checkered line on the ground that you run through.
Speaker:Break the tape and you win at some race. There's no race.
Speaker:There's no race. You're not running against anybody else. You're not
Speaker:running against yourself. There's no finish line. There's a
Speaker:clinician who works for me. I've worked with him a long time. He's a great
Speaker:doctor. And he was a corporate, like, retail
Speaker:manager for 20 years. And then he went back to medical school
Speaker:and left his career, lived the
Speaker:medical student life like full time medical student in
Speaker:his 30s, I want to say, did residency in his late
Speaker:30s and became like an
Speaker:independent trained doctor. Like, I think he was like in his 40s by the time
Speaker:he was done. And he might be the best doctor that I work
Speaker:with. He might be the Most caring, the most compassionate, the most
Speaker:understanding. When I get to see the way he interacts with
Speaker:individuals or, you know, see his notes or things like that, he approaches
Speaker:it with a level of insight and compassion
Speaker:that I can only assume comes from the fact that he
Speaker:understood humans before he understood the human body. He
Speaker:had life experience behind him before
Speaker:putting all the science into his brain. And I
Speaker:just get a sense that he is a better doctor
Speaker:because he did life first than he would be
Speaker:if he had started fresh out of college. And that's not
Speaker:a criticism of people who start fresh out of college. Like, we need doctors to
Speaker:start whenever you start. But his career is different. I
Speaker:actually had a teacher like that in high school. He was a
Speaker:military pilot. He was Top Gun three times. He was a
Speaker:Navy pilot. And on his desk in his classroom
Speaker:was a Top Gun award, and he actually was
Speaker:Top Gun four times. But he didn't count the fourth time because it was in
Speaker:combat, and he didn't feel like that was appropriate. He taught
Speaker:the hardest subject that I ever took in school, which was calculus,
Speaker:and kicked my ass. Left, right, BA,
Speaker:select, start. It was so hard, and yet I loved
Speaker:his class every time. And it was because he
Speaker:loved what he was teaching. This was his choice. He
Speaker:chose to do this thing. He wanted to come to school
Speaker:every day. He didn't need to work. He did 30 years in the
Speaker:military. He had a sweet pension and all
Speaker:these things. I'm sure he had a great bank account and did not need to
Speaker:make $40,000 a year as a teacher in Florida. But he
Speaker:chose that. He wanted to do that. He loved his students. He loved teaching
Speaker:math. He told me once that his favorite thing was working with people
Speaker:who insisted they were bad at math because he could show them that
Speaker:they could be good at math and that they were just in their head about
Speaker:it and then also getting to work. I mean, he worked with really
Speaker:complex subjects. And he would invite students
Speaker:who had been struggling in, like, remedial math classes because
Speaker:he wanted to show them that they could do this. He just liked math.
Speaker:He just liked math. All math, including calculus, which is
Speaker:evil. Absolutely evil. So evil. But he
Speaker:probably would have been a good teacher straight out of college, but I don't know
Speaker:that he came at it with a different understanding about what
Speaker:teaching was and also what high school was to us. And
Speaker:it made him a different kind of teacher. And so there is no
Speaker:finish line. You are going to get where you're going
Speaker:when you get there. And are you allowed to grieve
Speaker:the version of life that you thought you would have. Absolutely. But I don't know
Speaker:what you're grieving because that doesn't mean you can't have it. You can have whatever
Speaker:version of life you still think is possible and it's probably
Speaker:going to be better for the things that you have behind you that are informing
Speaker:your decisions. Now you're older, your prefrontal cortex is
Speaker:developed, you're not making stupid decisions now that you would have
Speaker:made with a bachelor's degree at 22, when you still have three,
Speaker:four more years of brain development that need to happen before you're actually
Speaker:a grown adult. We treat people like they're an adult at 18 and then again
Speaker:at 21. And the reality is most men are pushing 30.
Speaker:Don't say that critically, it just is. There's no finish line. And
Speaker:then beyond that, you can't measure yourself against a
Speaker:timeline that doesn't exist. If you stop thinking that there's a path that you need
Speaker:to be on, there's no path that you need to be on. There's nothing linear
Speaker:happening in your life whatsoever. You are probably better at
Speaker:the things that you are good at now than you would have been at 20
Speaker:because you have life experience behind you. There is nothing
Speaker:about starting a career at 22 that you
Speaker:would not be better at starting that career at 42.
Speaker:You're a more confident human, you're a more experienced
Speaker:human, you're a more successful human. There's probably a lot that you would say to
Speaker:22 year old you about life and these aspirations that you had.
Speaker:And I'll give you another kind of example. My husband and I think I was
Speaker:24 when we got married, maybe around there. And to me
Speaker:we were going to turn around and we were going to have kids five minutes
Speaker:later. Now, he didn't want to have kids right away, he wanted to wait a
Speaker:little bit of time. And we did sort of wait before we started actively trying.
Speaker:I think we waited about a year. But to me any time before
Speaker:that would have been a happy, not happy accident, but
Speaker:just like we were preventing it, let's put it that way. So in the way
Speaker:that 24 year olds are, we should have been pregnant on month two, even though
Speaker:we weren't trying, that was what happened to my brain. And then we got a
Speaker:year in and I thought, well, it's because we haven't actually been trying. So now
Speaker:we'll actually start trying and I'll learn about some things and we'll figure out how
Speaker:to do this and then Another year went by, Then we went to some doctors
Speaker:and another year went by. We tried for four years. We had our first
Speaker:child just before our fifth anniversary with fertility
Speaker:treatments and a whole lot of outside intervention and a whole lot of doctors and
Speaker:a whole lot of heartbreak. It changed me molecularly. It was the
Speaker:hardest thing I ever went through. Then we had our second two years later, also
Speaker:through fertility treatments. My oldest turned one and I was like,
Speaker:I want this part of my life to be over. Let's get the second one
Speaker:done. And at that time, I would have had 100 kids if it was
Speaker:possible. And I. I didn't necessarily think we were going to stop it too.
Speaker:But not only does my reproductive system suck and make it impossible
Speaker:to get pregnant, but then I undercooked them and they kept coming out authentic.
Speaker:And so after two, we were like, if we're going to do this again, we're
Speaker:going to need to rent a uterus. And I say all that, you know, it
Speaker:was almost. My husband and I were together almost seven years by the time we
Speaker:had our second kid and technically completed our family. Which, by the way, I hate
Speaker:being pregnant. Being pregnant is the worst thing in the world, but I would do
Speaker:it. I love having kids. I want to have 50 more kids. But also, like,
Speaker:we got two kids when we really thought we would have no kids. And so
Speaker:the point of that being, I could have had the kid
Speaker:two months into our marriage. I could have gotten
Speaker:pregnant that fast and we could have an almost 15 year old now.
Speaker:But I got these two kids who are perfect. I wouldn't change anything
Speaker:about them ever. And as much as it
Speaker:destroyed me and it was the most
Speaker:difficult thing I have ever been through, it changed the way I
Speaker:relate to people forever. It was that hard. It was that
Speaker:difficult. As much as all of that, I
Speaker:like these too. They're good. They're funny, they're
Speaker:smart, they're sassy. They make me laugh
Speaker:every day, they make me smile every day. They
Speaker:have the tenderest hearts that are wrapped up in. In the
Speaker:sassiest, smartassiest bodies. And if you
Speaker:had to tell me now that I could
Speaker:undo all of the damage that did to me in every possible way,
Speaker:but I wouldn't have these kids. I would say, no, no way.
Speaker:I like these kids. I don't want any other kids. I like these kids. I
Speaker:mean, I would have more kids, but I want to keep these kids. And that
Speaker:doesn't mean that I didn't still grieve the experience.
Speaker:It doesn't mean that I didn't still struggle with the scars of
Speaker:infertility for a long time. It doesn't mean that I didn't have medical
Speaker:complications from it. It doesn't mean that I don't have
Speaker:just residual baggage from it. All of
Speaker:that's still true. But at the end of the day, I got the kids
Speaker:that I don't know if I was supposed to have them, but I'm so glad
Speaker:that I do. And I wouldn't change the journey, even though the journey
Speaker:sucked, but the outcome was kind of great. And
Speaker:so you are where you are supposed to be.
Speaker:And that doesn't mean you can't grieve and process
Speaker:through what got you here. But you can't be behind on
Speaker:a race that doesn't exist. You are doing
Speaker:the best you can with the situation that is in front of
Speaker:you. And there is nothing else that anybody could ask of
Speaker:you. So I'm proud of you. Congratulations. Big
Speaker:fucking congratulations. Getting your degree is a big deal. And you know
Speaker:what they call the person who graduates from medical school
Speaker:at 45? A fucking doctor. You did the
Speaker:thing. I'm proud of you. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love
Speaker:you. Meaning.
Speaker:One of my favorite things that floats around the Internet occasionally
Speaker:is life is short. So tell people you love them,
Speaker:but shout it in German because life is also terrifying. The German
Speaker:language, like, actually has really good words. Like, they have words
Speaker:in German that you cannot find in any other language that you have to
Speaker:explain with multiple words in any other language. And they are like,
Speaker:perfect. I tell people that my love language
Speaker:is schadenfreude.
