on giving it all up and becoming a mormon mommy blogger

I have not written a piece piece in quite some time.

As this month-long article drought may have left loyal AYFKM readers thirsting for content, here is a list of things that I have done recently that took up time I would have otherwise devoted to this page.

• I started LSAT class and made many new friends there, because misery loves company and nothing is more miserable than the basement of the Times Square Marriott. My friends include: the boy who sits next to me and uses his LSAT book for booger target practice, the very stylish girl with a very stylish bob who asked “so like, how important is the homework actually” on the first day of class, the man who wears stripes to every class, a la Evan Hansen, but unlike Evan Hansen is VERY confident in his intellectual abilities, and our fearless teacher, Janet*

• *Name has been changed to protect Janet and her fearlessness. Also, she got a 180 on the LSAT so I imagine she is smart enough to hunt me down and yell at me about doing this instead of doing reading comprehension problems

• I bought four new blouses in attempt to revamp my wardrobe/break from monotony. These blouses are all black or white, similarly shaped, and virtually indiscernible from any other blouse I currently own. Needless to say, I expect my Paris Fashion Week invitation any day now.

• I got a new job and left my current one

• I scheduled a haircut and contemplated getting a very stylish bob, just like my very stylish friend, then convinced myself that that would be a very bad idea, then contemplated it again. Rinse, repeat.

• I found a water bug in my bathtub.

This business is not super unusual for me. I guess that this particular combination of time-consuming stuff has left little time for me to write about life and politics and my fears for the near and distant future.

How does this relate to Mormon lifestyle bloggers? Well, for starters, blogging may be the only thing we have in common. Most of them live in Utah, with a few scattered in Arizona and California. They have luscious hair. They usually have 4-5 kids with names ending in -on or -eigh, like “Paxton” or “Pringleton” or “Brynnleigh” or “Eterniteigh.” I know this because I am genuinely fascinated by these families.

In particular, I know too well the lives NYC Mormon celebrities Naomi Davis, her handsomely dweeby husband Josh, and their gaggle of impeccably dressed, startlingly cute, quirkily named, freckly-nosed children, Eleanor, Samson, and Conrad (not to mention twin girls expected in late May). Naomi, who also goes by Taza, started her blog—Love Taza—over a decade ago, and has since regularly filled its pages with delightfully earnest prose and wonderfully adorable photos.

The Davis family lives in a sunny, colorful, straight outta Anthropologie two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side. While Josh, a Columbia grad, used to be an investment banker and Naomi, a Juilliard alum, a dancer, they now work full time on their blog, Love Taza, with sponsors like Apple, Old Navy, and yes, Anthropologie, paying them big bucks to market products.

With that, this family is different than the other Mormon mommy bloggers because Naomi doesn’t peddle hair gummies or preach about homeschooling her children. Naomi’s kids do not wear flower crowns and dance through the fields of the greater Salt Lake area, but traipse through Manhattan. Her husband’s beard and skinny jeans are straight outta Brooklyn; she is now the college-educated breadwinner of the family. Naomi and her family are all the more endearing and interesting and aspirational for it.

​​Naomi loves bright pink and Joe’s pizza. She owns a delightfully kitschy yellow piano and jumps in puddles on rainy Manhattan days. She takes beautiful photographs and edits them tastefully. She shuns the use of capital letters, travels often, and started a luggage line through Target.​

She can pull off bangs (see photo of me the last time I tried to pull off bangs).

​She also married her husband Josh when she was younger than I am now, and gave birth to daughter Eleanor not long after. Less than two years later, Samson came along, then Conrad. Now, she is pregnant with “The Twins.” I assume their names will be cute and that they will be as enviably photogenic as their older siblings. They will probably wear overalls, and in 3 years have their hair pulled back into milkmaid braids that match their mother’s.

If I sound jealous, it is because I totally am.

I envy Naomi’s effortlessly quirky—but never tacky—style, her vacations to Australia and Switzerland and Paris, and her beautiful kitchen with an island in the middle.

​​I envy the fact that Naomi has the time to write, that she can spend hours taking photos and editing them, that she is paid to be beautiful. I envy that, for her, wearing red lipstick isn’t being brave.

I envy the pure, unbridled joy—and perfectly polished Instagrams—she gets from walking through the park, from eating a ripe piece of fruit, from staying at home with her kids.

And I envy her stability, her emotional openness, her knowledge of what she wants to do with her life.

Because while I question whether buying a shirt or eating a mozzarella stick or switching jobs is an irreversibly consequential economic, dietary, or general life decision, Naomi carries none of this fear. And when she does get stressed, she talks about it with the hope and understanding that this too, shall pass. While she literally dances in the rain, I weep into my unlaundered sheets on warm spring days about the unfairness of being born without a natural joie de vivre. NAOMI OOZES JOIE DE MOTHERFUCKING VIVRE.

Look, I have not fallen completely under Naomi’s spell. I know that the whole point of lifestyle blogging is to induce envy, to capitalize on it. I want to look like Naomi looks, live in an apartment like Naomi’s apartment, eat what Naomi eats, travel where Naomi travels. Blogs like hers are not inspirational, but aspirational—they are meant to encourage you to buy like Naomi so you can be like Naomi.

And of course her blog is not a totally realistic version of her life. Of course there is more that happens behind the camera—the temper tantrums, the marital squabbles, the internal emotional struggles over whether a magenta jumpsuit is really a good idea.

​​The rational part of me—the part that totally understands the promotional and unrealistic nature of Love Taza—knows that it is absurd to measure my life against Naomi’s. The rational part of me knows that I, too, have plenty to be thankful for, plenty to be excited about, and plenty more life to live. The rational part of me also knows that I don’t want to be married right now, that I don’t want three children before 30, that I don’t want a bright pink sofa or a kelly green velvet headboard. It knows that I take pride in thinking about politics, in engaging with tough questions, in being witty and sharp and biting and career minded.

I think that ultimately, this blog makes me question whether decisions that render me busy—LSAT classes on nights that could be spent with friends, new jobs that promise more intellectually stimulating, but less free-time enabling work, haircuts and style choices that say “corporate woman” and not “trendy freelancer”—are the right ones. It seems at times that nothing I do is without some accompanying anxiety, warranted or not.

Despite being only a few years older than me, Naomi has figured out how to unequivocally love all that keeps her busy. I would too if what kept me busy was family bread baking classes and trips to Mallorca and baby showers at ice cream parlors. What if my aspirations are just not as prone to happiness as Naomi’s? What if my aspirations are not really my aspirations at all, and I secretly share Naomi’s aspirations? HAS LOVE TAZA MADE ME SOFT?

To be clear, I understand that Love Tazanxiety nests in communities of privilege, and obviously many women have far greater worries than lipstick shades and haircuts and decisions over which good job to take. With that, it is no different than any other aspect of the modern women’s “can I have it all dilemma.”

​It certainly seems that for Naomi Davis, the answer is yes. She is both career driven and family focused, confident but not insufferable, young but sure.

But then again, perhaps “all” is anything, and “all” is kind of bullshit. And perhaps I have my own version of this elusive, ridiculous, stupid “all.”

Naomi Davis hasn’t purchased a bouquet of bodega flowers in attempts to freshen up her apartment only to drop the whole bunch in the toilet, inciting fits of “all” giggles with her roommate.

Naomi Davis hasn’t started and doted on and abandoned and re-doted on a blog dedicated to the f-bomb, allowing her to experience the “all-ness” that is venting to the universe (and many of her mother’s friends) about shitty neighbors and shitty politicians and shitty life experiences.

Naomi Davis hasn’t experienced the terrifying joy of quitting her job and leaving to try something totally new, creating worries and ideas of what a new work “all” is and could be.

And Naomi doesn’t have many, many friends who are equally unsure about their lives and what their version of “all” will be, and she doesn’t share late night chats and laughs and tears with them, usually over ice cream and Friends reruns.

Naomi Davis has her “all” and I have mine. Hers won’t include standing margarita dates, and mine won’t include chic bangs, but both of our “alls” will change, adapt, grow.

I’ll take it.