If you have to ask....the answer is Yes.

Do these jeans make my butt look big? Yes. It looks huge. Stay home tonight.

Is this dress too tight? Yes. By a lot. Don't bend over (please).


Should I break up with Slime-ball #9? Yes. Unless you want to have multiple weddings.

Doesn't brown look good on me? Yes. Especially with your brown hair and brown eyes, beautiful.

Now. There are exceptions to every rule. But, in general, my rule of thumb is - if you have to ask the question, the answer is usually yes. Why is that? In my humble (or not always so humble) opinion, you ask because you want someone out there to validate what you already know.

There are multiple reasons for having a 3rd party validate  your decisions:

- If it doesn't work out, you can tell yourself (or others), that Joe-schmoe agreed with you, so it must not have been the wrong decision.

- The insecurity that comes along with making any decision - and there is comfort in numbers.

- This 3rd party data can provide evidence or outside 'data points' (that's for you, Vince), that you made the right choice.

And throughout the course of my last several weeks. I've been asking myself a lot of questions. Did I make the right choice? Did I screw up? Am I going to be laughed at if I fail?

So far, the best advice I've gotten (from 2 different sources) is to remain grounded in why I made the decision I did: my family. And I think that if I remain grounded in that, I will stop questioning everything, and start growing and cultivating what I've started.