I was going to mention Kanye West until I remembered a lot of people don’t like Kanye West. I am a people pleaser, you see, which means I like to please the people but the problem with pleasing the people is the people are often pleased by very different things. So it gets tricky. That was my long-winded introduction to preface why I am still going to mention Kanye West here. I am trying to be better at not pleasing everyone, you see, as it only gets you to one place, Disappointing Yourself. Or the only place worse than that, Not Being Yourself.

As we live in an era of likes and gratification and cancel culture and public humiliation, it is only becoming more difficult to be yourself. But when I was four it wasn’t. When I was four, I was very much myself. I had worn dresses up until that point but at four, I was done. I had trees to climb and monkey bars to swing, which called for one thing: pants. I wore pants up until high school when I probably lost myself again or the school uniform denied them and ever since then, I’ve been climbing me, myself and my character back to pants. I have dabbled in skirts and dresses, both short and long, but now I am back in The Good Place, which for me, is Wearing Pants. For as long as I have thought about it (which is a lot) I am still lost as to why pants are so good. They are comfortable. I know that. But I do not know why they are so good. They just are.