Jessica Blankenship

I really cannot deal with another “insider’s guide to Atlanta” that tells you to go to the Varsity. Sit down, amateurs. Whoever wrote that sh*t probably lives in Cobb County. Here’s a small sampling of what is truly up.

We are the best versions of ourselves when we are doing what we love, not when we are trying to deliberately convince someone to love us.

I hate to break it to all the Rachels of the world, but Ross was totally fine when he boned the girl at the copy place.

Broad declaration: there is no feeling more fantastic than those first few days at the end of summer when you walk outside in the morning to unexpectedly crisp air and blue skies and your brain instantly wakes up from its hazy, humidity-drunk slumber and is all, “LIFE!” It’s like an orgasm for your soul.

In a perfect world of fat bank accounts and a line of friends with magically empty bedrooms, you would be able to retreat to friendlier real estate as soon as your relationship crumbled.

It seems like everything that could be created or built has already been done. Finding new creative real estate in NYC feels like an insurmountable challenge.

Since there’s no definite benchmark to look forward to, 26 often just easily walks in one night while you’re out with friends at your usual bar, half celebrating, half just having a normal night. You’re 26. No big deal. Thanks for buying me a drink. No, I’m gonna go home early.

I’m inclined to think it’s a coincidence that in that year, everything I believed, every relationship I held dear, every truth I thought I could rest on, the very filters through which I viewed the world shifted: painfully, awkwardly, awesomely, and so on. But then I observe every other goddamn 25-year-old ever­ —and hey, look! It happens to everyone.