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Thank you to Marina Crouse Writes for sponsoring this episode! Learn more about Marina Crouse Writes here and follow her on Instagram here.This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Nicole Booz: Welcome back to the GenTwenty podcast I’m Nicole… Marina Crouse: And I’m Marina! And today we’re talking with Michelle Douglas, author of Don’t Wear Shoes You Can’t Walk In: A Field Guide For Your Twenties. Michelle, it’s so nice to meet you and have you on the pod. We’re really excited to talk to you about this book. What is the background of this project like how did you get started writing it? Michelle Douglas: Hi guys! First, thank you so much for having me, I’m just really excited to be here and I feel like anytime I listen to you guys I’m always thinking that we have such similar thoughts or like I find myself nodding along. So I’m just happy to be here and I hope that maybe some listener finds themselves nodding along ah but thanks for asking about the background of the the book project, that feels like a really good place to start. Ah, so the origin of Don’t Wear Shoes You Can’t Walk In dates all the way back to 2010 and I think maybe I’m going to age myself immediately. Ah, that I’m out of my twenties. In 2010 I had just moved to Atlanta, Georgia for my first job out of college and it was just a time in my life where I was learning so many new things and experiencing so many firsts and I I know you guys can both relate to this but I was in a new city and was at my first career/job. It was my first apartment on my own, my first time navigating work relationships and even my first time buying a mattress and a couch really big new experiences. And it was just a really exciting and memorable time in my life and I constantly found myself feeling these two really big things. The first was that this was a time of my life that I was really going to want to remember and the second was that I kept wishing that I had a guide somewhere, someone who had been where I was you know I mentioned the mattress buying a first mattress and it would have been nice to share the experience with someone of actually going to a furniture store and trying to figure out what kind of mattress you like while so awkwardly talking to a salesperson while you lay on mattresses. Or you know finding someone who could help me relate to this constant need I had to achieve or feel fulfilled by my work. So really I wished that there was someone who could understand what I was experiencing or maybe even tell me what might come next and so that year I started journaling and it was in part to record but I was learning so I could remember it but it was also in part that hopefully I could be that guide for someone else and so that year I challenged myself to write down one new thing that I learned every day and that’s actually a practice that I’ve kept up every year since. And I was always writing you know, for someone else, but really just with this idea that maybe one day I would have a child who would benefit from my journals or maybe someone else would pick them up and it wasn’t until more recently that it occurred to me, why wait until I have a grown adult child to share this information when there’s actually so many other people who could benefit from it now and so in I think 2018 or 2019 I had actually I had left my corporate job and was starting my own business and starting my own business had also made some space for me to work on this book project. It was just something that had been on my heart for a little while and and so I started working more seriously towards organizing the content of these journals around similar things. You know I realized that there were a lot of lessons about work and a lot of lessons about personal growth and. You know, practical adult life and that I could actually make this into a compartmentalized book and so I think that’s where you know a couple years ago is where it really started to become more of a book project and less of a a hobby or journaling practice of mine and you know, I think when I started it I I thought it would just be this kind of small gift book of quotes or lessons that I had learned and as I worked on it. It really evolved into this tool and companion for twenty-somethings that it shares the learnings from my life. But It really is a field guide as I’ve called it and it you know, kind of allows the reader to take note of their own life experiences. Nicole Booz: Yeah, even just reading through the book I loved it, like how you said you were nodding along when you listened to us, I was nodding along as I was reading the book because I feel like it’s kind of like a big sister kind of situation, right? You’re walking people who are kind of following right? behind you in through these things like what you were looking for. Yeah. Michelle Douglas: Yeah, and I love that.Thank you. I am a youngest child, so I would love to be everyone’s big sister but I just love that. I was kind of always writing for someone else and it’s It’s just really great to now. Think of it as being in service of others and kind of being able to show somewhere else someone else where I’ve been. Nicole Booz: Yeah I Love that especially because like when you like start your twenties it really is so confusing because you kind of go from being a baby to being an adult. Really, you know you have to start taking control of everything that is in your life and just navigating all of these really difficult situations all at once, basically. Michelle Douglas: Yeah, it’s so much life changed so fast and I think about that period of my life all the time and and I think in part because there’s so many new and memorable experiences but also because so many really important things happened to me and like you said you you take on a lot of responsibility and it kind of starts to shape who you really are from there I think but I think before the 20s we don’t really have a whole lot of idea or we have some idea but we just don’t know it yet. Nicole Booz: yeah I think especially in your early 20s you go through this it’s a really condensed period of growth right? Like because I don’t know about you guys, but when I was a teenager I felt just more confident of myself I guess probably because I’m ending the baby phase of my life right? So I was like yeah I know how to do all these things that I know how to do and then I went to college and I was like maybe I don’t know how to do all these things. Then you’re pushed through all these different career path options and told to do this, do that you know and I mean going to college graduating from college, all that stuff. And then you’re like it’s this a very confusing time I’m like waving my hands through the air. It’s confusing. Marina Crouse: It is and I feel like now the twenty-somethings who are in their early twenties have a lot more visual access with social media and tiktok and all of the things that maybe we didn’t have. I was just looking at my friends who were doing similar things and I was like well have they figured it out… are they doing it and my older I have older brothers and they were in such a different realm of their careers and lives that the comparison was just like oh I must be really behind because I was trying to be in a creative field. They were engineers and I’m just like well they’re doing these things and so your field guide is so helpful I was also nodding along as I read because I was just like yeah I’ve had similar experiences. And your title chapter, Don’t Wear Shoes You Can’t Walk In, made me laugh out loud because I had a personal experience like that where I was probably a junior in college going to an interview for a summer internship and I wore a little business suit. Very appropriate for the corporate office, and nude heels and they were slightly too big and I walked out of one of the shoes as I was trailing behind my interviewer to walk to his office for the interview and I just kind of stumbled and was like “oops.” And I remember feeling so cringy in that moment like oh my gosh, you’re a 21 year old who can’t even walk in heels and they’re gonna thank you look ridiculous and it’s really good advice. Make sure you can walk in those shoes, make sure you can like carry yourself. Michelle Douglas: Um, well you just made me laugh so much because what’s really beautiful about that is that means that we all have some version of that exact same story right? And you think in that moment that you feel cringy that it’s just you. But it’s not like we each have that experience whether the shoes were the exact same shoes if they were too high or too big or too small like in some way shape or form. Everyone has that story and I think you know when I started writing this I question myself a lot of like who am I? You know why do people care what I’ve learned and I think what you know I worked with an editor who who really challenged me to include how I learned the lessons I think I said this before at first I just kind of imagined sharing these quotes or sharing these lessons and you know this editor said to me if if you really want people to learn, if your goal is to teach them how to pay attention and teach them to learn then you have to tell them how you learned these lessons and so I think it’s just it feels a little bit more vulnerable sometimes to share the the personal story behind it. But I think it’s so important and it makes it so relatable. I’m not some famous person but I’m someone who most likely has an experience just like you or something that you could relate to and so I hope that that makes it all the more. More meaningful and impactful.
Nicole Booz: Yeah I think so I think it like really helps to normalize the things people are going through because it’s kind of like a light bulb moment almost where you’re like oh yeah, that was not just me that was probably everyone my age. Yeah.
Michelle Douglas: Marina, I think I wrote this in the book that I’ve actually learned the don’t wear shoes you can’t walk in lesson more than one time. But what’s really funny to me is that experience you described was also something I like in addition to my own experience I watched. Someone on a college campus going to like a career fair or an interview that sounded exactly like what you just outlined.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, the best part is that I wore those shoes many more times and had similar experiences. I wore them to the first wedding I was ever in. I wore them and had to run around in the July heat and it was so hot and we had tea length like knee length bridesmaid dresses and in all the photos my ankle and feet and like up like shin are so red because my feet were in so much pain, they were so swollen and irritated just like why did I wear these shoes again.
Nicole Booz: Some lessons you just gotta learn more than once.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, you yeah, you totally have to learn it more than once I even I we’re gonna end up talking too much about shoes. But I there’s something about ah, an interview or a first day that totally leads us to believe we need to like dress up or ah, you know pun intended put a best foot forward and I had another job in my late twenties but I still wore these shoes that gave me blisters and then the second day I had to wear sandals like second day of my job and like I hope these sandals are appropriate because they got really bad blisters on my first day.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, that first impression fear is yup I feel like I’ve done that too. I used to put like a full face of makeup on for the first week of a new job. And then gradually take one element of the makeup off because I realized I don’t have that much time or energy in the morning to do a full face of makeup and um now I just don’t wear makeup unless I’m taking photos for really fun things because I work from home with myself.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, yes, and lucky for us like so many so many people work from home and also shoes have gotten more comfortable and also I think ah we have learned or the listener will learn that. If you are yourself like in an interview or in a first impression that that’s the best thing you can do because you know you need to be comfortable and be you for the rest of your time in that job too.
Marina Crouse: Yes, because otherwise you’re putting on this persona that you then have to subtly introduce parts of yourself. So that people know who you really are and aren’t surprised when you just do something that’s normal to you but they didn’t…
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, yeah, give your whole self up front.
Marina Crouse: Have that impression of you. Oh yeah, exactly so we Nicole and I are also no longer in our twenties and for for better for worse and I was thinking about this as I read through all of the lessons you’ve shared. Is there a part of your twenties that you feel like you’ll miss? For example I used to be able to eat whatever I wanted and I cannot do that now because I have sensitivity to dairy and too much caffeine and things like that. But in my in my youthful days I could just eat like a garbage truck.
Michelle Douglas: Um, I think that’s a really fun question. You guys are gonna laugh at me also because I’ll probably say this a bunch of times and my family laughs at me. But I I’m always saying oh there’s a lesson in the book about and so I feel like that’s my my lead into a lot of things but ah there there’s a lesson in the book specifically that reads um now and then you will miss being 21 and ah I think for me, it’s actually, like a more serious response I also now that I’m thinking about this have a a funny one totally in line with what you just asked. But the more serious one for me is that I actually like didn’t miss this wild and busy social life that I had at 21 but I missed how everything was unknown to me at that age.
Like I was this young businesswoman in my early 20s and I was eager and naive and like at the beginning of my career I would often like imagine what work life might look like when I was 29 ah and now I’ve been 29 and I know what that looks like and I guess it feels like there’s still a lot of unknowns but somehow the unknowns feel more more focused or more narrow like the world just isn’t quite so broad and wide open.
Um, and I think the second thing which might be more of like the example you mentioned is that I miss the spontaneity of schedule.
Um, like the opportunity and ability to stay out until 1 am on a Monday night if you want to? Um, no I know and Nicole knows this? Um I’m a mom now and I’m in my thirties and there’s so much joy in that. But ah, it’s a much more predictable and routine schedule. And ah, you know when I was in my twenties if my roommate said like hey, let’s go out and it was a Monday night I could and I would and it’s like in your 20s you master how to have a great time and still be great at your job and the other parts of your life and I think you know now it’s like a big deal and some seasons of my life if I’m like simply out after the sun has set.
Nicole Booz: Yes.
Marina Crouse: It’s it’s brutal to realize that. I think back to when I used to live in New York in my early 20s and I would leave the office at five thirty and bop around the city and be home by 10 and be up until midnight and then go to work. And I like to be in bed with the lights out at 9:45 now and if I stray from that it takes me weeks to catch up. It’s terrible.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, yes, yeah, it’s just funny I mean I’ve I’ve always loved I’ve always loved to sleep and I’ve always prioritized sleep but I really also like I said would would try to you know, be a good roommate or a good co-worker and also just you know try to act my age and have fun. Now Really I’m like oh what a fun night. We were out in this dark outside.
Nicole Booz: I know I know whenever I have to drive at night I’m like oh what a treat. So never I can never leave after like six o’clock anymore um yeah I think that’s definitely like just so.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, yeah, what a treat.
Nicole Booz: True that like when you’re in your young twenties especially there’s like you have your whole twenty-something decade in front of you and like yes like there’s nothing wrong with being 30 or older you know like it’s great, but it’s just like having that like that youth and like not knowing what’s going to happen yet. There’s just something like really fun and special about that.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, yeah.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, there’s a lot of possibility where I kind of see it as our twenties are for figuring things out in our thirties are for doing the things we figured out. That’s how it feels at least for me, That’s how it has felt in my. First year of my 30s.
Michelle Douglas: No, That’s a that’s a really good way to say that and I think maybe that’s that was a more eloquent way of saying what I was saying when I feel like things are still unknown but they’re a little more focused or a little more narrow like to your point you’ve you figured out what you’re doing and now it’s about doing it. And yeah I mean I think it’s still fun. But sometimes I do miss that kind of unknown and uncertainty.
Nicole Booz: Yeah, it’s like it’s kind of like a rose colored glasses moment. You know where you’re like I don’t know maybe like we romanticize it a little bit now that we’re older. Um, but yeah, yeah, yeah I mean other people need me to make them breakfast now. So more responsibility.
Marina Crouse: Is there a lesson in your book that you’re surprised you learned but are glad you did?
Michelle Douglas: Oh what a good question. Um I think you know I’m I’m grateful for all of these lessons I like truly the ah the act of writing something down every day. Ah. It really changes how you approach the next day and so I mean it when I say I’m grateful for each of them. They’ve all like made my day more useful and made my my life more productive. Um I think saying surprise just. Such a good question. So I think I’m most surprised about the things I’ve learned about love ah when I started writing this book I had the work chapter as like my very first chapter and I felt like that was the most important.
And most defining part of my twenties and that makes sense I mean I’m a really career driven/motivated person. But I know the love chapter was a little thin and you guys ah have both seen the book I think there are a few less lessons in love. But I think it’s a really meaningful chapter too but what I think I’m most surprised about was that I learned to move for Love. I think that’s not something that I ever thought I would do.
Like if you had told me in college that I would move for a romantic, a romantic relationship I would have laughed in your face. Um, but at 26 I left a city I loved for someone I loved and I think that that surprised me the most.
And maybe that I learned that it’s not a weakness to do something like that. But it’s actually a strength. Ah and I felt like it was a gift to like feel a love like that. That was so strong that I’d uproot my current life. Um, for the potential of what might be in store for another life.
And so the lesson in the book that I’m referring to truly says like move for love and and that person ended up being my husband and I realized that all situations like that won’t end the same way. But I feel really confident that um that God in the universe like recognize the act of sacrifice or the act of giving of yourself like that and that um you know moving or like moving a location or just moving being that like you make a change or make a sacrifice I think that um, that puts other things and plans into motion that like.
Couldn’t happen otherwise and as I’m talking and sharing this lesson I’m thinking that there’s at least 3 other lessons related to this idea that come up in the book so clearly like it’s um, it’s changed the course of my own life and so I’m particularly grateful for that one.
Nicole Booz: So that is so sweet.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, That’s really that’s I feel like the lesson I learned is that the one that I’m most surprised by is similar in that I have a lot of anxiety and always have and so I was very risk averse and tried so hard to make a plan follow plan and the biggest lesson I learned too many times was that it’s okay to take risks and it’s okay to deviate from the plan. You thought you were going to do because like jokes on you.
The plan never turns out how you plan for and it’s kind of like yeah you’re taking this risk to. To move out of your favorite city to to pursue something greater which is this like love and life. You want to build with someone. It’s like yeah, that’s it’s a beautiful thing. It doesn’t have to I mean it can be scary but it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It doesn’t make it like doesn’t say anything bad about you to try something new.
Nicole Booz: Yeah I was reading something recently that said that your heart is your strongest muscle in your body and you should listen to it and I love that. I think because I find myself to be a more like intuitive feelings person versus like a “what makes sense kind of person” you know. So I love that that was like a really surprising lesson for you because I think it’s a very important lesson because I’m very heart-driven. It’s how I describe myself.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah I something that just came to mind when you were talking about the plans piece Marina is, I also one day wrote down like as you grow adjust your fairytale and and I think that that was something that I had to do in this particular situation.
But also so many other times like it’s like you have this you know similar to what we were saying before about who we imagined ourselves as in our early twenties you know. I had it all outlined like I was in advertising I was going to move up in my career this is where I was going to be and it’s like then this event happened or this person happened that but changed my plans and I um. You know like I said it surprised me then and it still surprises me and that I really didn’t think that That’s how my story would go but it it kind of changed my story and I think that’s what we have to realize is that whenever we make certain decisions it kind of changes the the next set of options from there.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, you know what that makes me think of Michelle, if I think about who I thought I was going to be when I was thirty back when I was 22 ah hilarious um for one I’m not her but I like myself so much more than I could have ever imagined I’d. Because if that makes sense like what I’m what I’m doing now I couldn’t I couldn’t dream up because I was my world was still so small I guess I hadn’t lived enough and now at 30 I’m like, wow I am doing things I could only have like read about or dreamed of let alone like believed I could do. And so it’s like hey it worked out even better than I planned so go try it.
Michelle Douglas: Um, yeah, that’s so good.
Marina Crouse: So we think a lot about the lessons we’ve learned and the advice people who’ve been in our shoes before us have given us what do you think the worst piece of advice you’ve ever received about or while you were in your twenties was because I have thoughts.
Michelle Douglas: Um I don’t I’ll be so interested to hear everyone has to go around and and answer this question. Um, what a funny thing. What’s the worst advice you’ve ever received. So specific to your twenties, I think mine is about work I had someone advise that it would look bad if I changed jobs too many times in my twenties but it would seem like I bounced yeah that it would seem like I bounced around too much or like I didn’t know what I wanted to do um.
Marina Crouse: Oh. Yes, I’ve read that one.
Michelle Douglas: And I actually couldn’t disagree more with that advice or opinion I think your twenties is really a time to try a variety of different jobs or career paths like in order to figure out the best one for you? Um, and I think it’s a time like of fewer obligations or costs or people to worry about and it’s just like really fun to explore as many opportunities as you can and I also think on a resume that the you know the mention of several different jobs or even the mention of a job that you only stayed at for six months like allows you the opportunity to tell people about your priorities or why something was or wasn’t a good fit for you and so I think it just makes a lot more sense to kind of take the chances while you’re young and while you can and not worry about something like that. So I think that that was log-winded but that’s probably the the worst advice I received was that it would look bad if I changed jobs too many times.
Marina Crouse: Yeah, absolutely and so one thing I want to touch upon before we finish talking is that your book also includes space for the reader to work through their thoughts and ask themselves questions and I think that’s so important that you’ve included like it’s like turns into almost a workbook it. Ah point and I know that people are going to love that because your book shares experiential experiential and actionable advice already and so I know that everyone’s going to learn so much from it and in turn better know themselves.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, and I think that that was um, that was important to me like I said before when I realized that it was important that I show everyone how I learned um I felt like then it was really important to give everyone the space to Like notice their own life experience and to really take the time and the moment to recognize that they already possess an extreme amount of wisdom too and so at the end of each chapter. There are lessons that include prompts for the reader and my hope is really that. You know these prompts can kind of help spark a thought and like I said this realization that you possess a lot of wisdom but then also maybe can inspire someone else to to really take notice of what’s going on in their own lives and start to record the lessons that are happening to them.
Marina Crouse: I love that so Michelle I know people are going to want to purchase your book and follow you so where when is this available where can people connect.
Michelle Douglas: So the book is officially out into the world as of April 5th (Don’t Wear Shoes You Can’t Walk In: A Field Guide For Your Twenties) and it’s available wherever you buy your books so you can ask for it at your favorite Indie Bookstore or it’s also available at like Amazon, Target and Barnes and Noble.
And then your listeners can find me online at fieldguideidefortwenties.com and similarly on Instagram I’m at @fieldguidefortwenties for both of those. I would just absolutely love to connect and answer any questions I share a lot of my lessons via Instagram and on a blog but I’m also always happy to to share them by message or chat. So I’ll look forward to anybody joining me there.
Nicole Booz: Awesome! Well thank you so much for joining us today. We are so excited to have you on to talk about your book and all the lessons that you learned and I think this was like such a valuable conversation and I really hope that people will join us on Instagram and join you on Instagram to talk more about it. So thank you so much for being here.
Michelle Douglas: Yeah, thank you both so much for having me. This was such a fun chat.
Nicole Booz: All right? So this has been another episode of The GenTwenty Podcast. Thank you so much for listening and buy Michelle’s book! Bye!About the Author
Nicole Booz is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of GenTwenty, GenThirty, and The Capsule Collab. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and is the author of The Kidult Handbook (Simon & Schuster May 2018). She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. When she’s not reading or writing, she’s probably hiking, eating brunch, or planning her next great adventure.
Website: genthirty.com