The _______ Life of Brent and Erika

I turned 33 on Saturday, which seems to me to be a perfectly fine age. Approaching my birthday, I've had a lot of thoughts swirling in my head and if I don't write them down they'll get lost in my busy life and busier brain, and I don't want to lose them. About a month ago I read two things that are still bouncing around my brain. First, I listened to The Year of Less  by Cait Flanders. It's a memoir documenting Cait's experiment going a year without buying anything other than necessities (food, cleaning products when they run out, etc.). That experiment is interesting, but honestly the book becomes more about coping mechanisms. Before the book Cait quit drinking and changed her diet to lose weight; during the book she ends up going through some fairly significant family troubles, and finds herself unable to turn to drink, food, or shopping to dull the pain, so she turns to Netflix. And discovers that is also unhealthy, so she turns to friends. It's really...