When I walk into Sephora, I immediately get uncomfortable. I never feel as unattractive and grody as when I go to a store that's supposed to make you feel prettier. Being surrounded by floor-to-ceiling displays of products I don't know how to use and have never applied, and the sales associates with their poreless skin and fake eyelashes out to there getting all up in my face, makes me hyperventilate just a smidge. So I usually end up looking at the Philosophy bath products, because even I know how to use body wash somewhat successfully, and hightailing it out of there before I have to actually speak to anyone.

Last week we joined a new gym. For years we've been going to an old gym near our house, but when a new mega gym opened a little closer to home and with locations all over the city, we switched. When I go back to work I'm planning to go to the gym at lunch hour and there's a couple locations close to my office, which was the main reason for the switch. Going to this new gym for the first time, with its fancy equipment and shiny locker room, and new people intimidated me. I was used to the old gym with its slight grubbiness, and I was used to the people who go there. The meatheads and Jagerbombers and old people who used the treadmills for standing and talking rather than working out were annoying, yes, but they were familiar. The new gym also has meatheads, Jagerbombers and old people but it's a fresh crop of faces to become accustomed to.

I go to the farmer's market carrying a leather bag, leather wallet, wearing leather boots, and I feel uncomfortable around the hippies.

I go to the jewelry store to get my engagement ring cleaned, wearing an entire outfit that cost probably one-tenth the price of the cheapest thing in the store, and feel completely out of place.

I go to the spa to get my hair cut with my ridiculous shaggy-dog mane and feel like the most unkempt person on the planet surrounded by these girls with cool geometric bobs and Kardashian curls (kurls?)

Where do I feel comfortable? The bookstore, coffee shops, the grocery store, outdoors. Any kind of work event - meeting new clients, networking events, presentations, workshops. Any time I'm with my family or friends.

Pretty much everywhere else I feel too old, too young, too messy, underdressed, overdressed, or just generally out of my element. You'd think this post had been written by an angsty 15-year-old, right? Some things never change.