Be Kind. No Exceptions. (and other greeting card impossibilities)

Like many Americans, I now do much of my shopping online because unlike many women I know, I hate shopping.

I can only think of a few stores I actually enjoy walking into…and into these only if I’m buying. I am not a window shopper. If you want to test my love for you…invite me to go shopping…my answer will tell you everything you need to know.

There is, however, one exception to my “I hate shopping” rule and it is bookstores. No surprise there, right?

But sometimes, given my mood, even a bookstore isn’t comforting, it’s depressing.

Read an excerpt from Shauna Niequist’s book, Cold Tangerines, on one of her visits to her local bookstore.

I can so relate.

Last year, I was at my favorite bookstore. I went there because I was feeling sort of fragile and overwhelmed, and one of the things that usually makes me feel better is a bookstore. I was looking through the cards, the ones that have quotes on the front, and they’re all big, inspirational, “seize the day” – type quotes, from people like Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein. If you read them on a good day, you’re like, “I will, Eleanor Roosevelt, I will change this world one tiny moment at a time!” But on kind of a cranky, bad day, you read them and you think, “Well, that’s why you people are famous, because you do wonderful inspirational things, and all I do is try to get through the day without crying or losing my mind.” So I looked at this whole big wall of cards, and each one was making me feel more broken down and scraped away inside, so far from inspiration and hope. Then I saw one in the corner, in black and white, and it said, “You, too? I thought I was the only one.”

Ever felt that way?

Me too.

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