Now I realize this book review is coming to you a tad late considering it was published in 2014, but it’s been my soundtrack for quit some time, and has some really great advice that I feel any girl and boy would appreciate.
“Yes Please” by the one and only Amy Poehler. This book is a biography on her life. She shares so many interesting facts and intimate details that I honestly feel like I meet her and she just felt like getting something off her chest, and wanted to give me some pretty great advice.
In come cases I would say this is a coming of age kind of book. So much of it has to do with Amy’s life before she became a recognized comedian.
Now, some might be confused about why I would describe a book being my soundtrack. Poehler had blessed us with an amazing audio book version that she herself narrates, and if that not cool enough, she has guests. Seth Myers, Carol Burnett, Micheal Schur just to name a few.
I will put it on like a soundtrack when I’m not in the mood to listen to myself think and looking for some advice.
Poehler is someone I want to have dinner with, not necessarily because she’s going to make me laugh the whole time but because I would feel like I was in company of an old wise friend, but she wouldn’t talk down to me. She would impart her story and wisdom without even knowing it. Okay, enough of my dinner fantasy with Poehler.
I recently have been stressing out about graduating college. It’s in two very short months and I am super scared because not many people have nice things to say about the “real world” as if I haven’t been living in it for 21 years. So recently, while I was cleaning my room listening to the audio book, Poehler really spoke to me in one of her sections that I guess hadn’t stuck to me the first time I heard it.
She talks about getting older and how she felt her 20s was just an extended period of adolescence, she didn’t feel like an adult until her 30s. I have been saying I feel like I’m 16 since I was 16. I’m 21. She talks about the joys of getting older and how your thought process changes to not care what people think of you, and you stop internalizing everyone’s words and you just do you.
This is where Poehler read my mind. She said she enjoys being older and she “doesn’t miss the frustration of youth, anticipation of love and pain… What are you going to do? Makes you feel like you haven’t done anything yet.”
She talks about how both young and old people better us. We look to younger people as a way to take more chances. She says that the young and the old need to relax and just enjoy the moment.
Being 22 might seem fun but you’re always under pressure to be doing more and working harder then yesterday and always trying to proove something to the world. I feel like I am not doing enough when people ask me what my plans are after graduation. I take on other people’s worries because, to be honest, I didn’t have half of them in the first place.
I am trying so hard to enjoy what is left of the crazy thing we call college, while at the same time I am surrounded by my impatient peers. Of course I am ready to see the world and what it has to offer, but at the same time, I just don’t want to worry about 6 months from now, I just want to worry about tomorrow.
Overall Poehler really talks to me on this level. Just enjoy the moment. Life is fleeting and I’d prefer not to wish is away.
Love you, Amy!