Confessions of a Pedestrian Mind.

Once upon a time, I believed I had more refined tastes than most of the unwashed masses. I didn’t read pop fiction; I read literature. I listened to NPR when most of my contemporaries were listening to grunge (did I just totally date myself or what?). I watched minimal TV and, when I did, I chose programs for their educational merit.

But now? Look up ‘mainstream’ in the dictionary and you’ll see my picture. I’ll be smiling and probably wearing a trucker hat. Well, maybe not the hat.

I watch reality TV. Not a little reality TV. Like, a lot. Survivor. Amazing Race. Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I confess to even watching The Swan on one ill-fated night. I make very few respectable television choices, save Mythbusters and Arrested Development.

I read grocery-store-purchased novels. Enough said.

I really like cheese-flavored foods. It’s not necessary that they contain actual cheese. Merely tasting of cheese and being orange is sufficient for my sophisticated palate.

I want very much to like wine, but I don’t. I try it and try it and try it and I cannot develop a taste for it. But I’ll happily suck down a wine cooler like a sorority pledge.

I mostly shop at Old Navy and, as a result, I mostly look like everyone else.

I purchase and read magazines that have no substance whatsoever, and then I hide them beneath the newest copy of National Geographic.

I go to Wal-Mart weekly.

The downside of being this average is feeling like there’s nothing about you that makes you special. Like you’re just one cow in the herd.

One of my new year’s goals is to try to embrace all the things that make me who I am, not just the things I’m proud of.

Loving myself means all of me, even the goofy bits.