Yes Please

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

As far as these celebrity memoir-type books go, this is an easy read and decently entertaining. The editing feels sloppy; there doesn't not appear to be any linear momentum or cohesive arrangement. It also goes back and forth between being biographical and just entertaining vignettes. It does feel like a more "real" look into who Amy Poehler is, which I certainly loved, but only occasionally has her witty, comedic voice. It is actually much darker and melancholy than expected. Overall, though, I did enjoy it.

* * *

I am interested in people who swim in the deep end. I want to have conversations about real things with people who have experienced real things. I'm tired of talking about movies and gossiping about friends. Life is crunchy and complicated and all the more delicious.

[Lorne Michaels] handed me a rope and it was up to me whether I would climb it or use it to hang myself.

Other people are not medicine

Career is different. Career is the stringing together of opportunities and jobs. Mix in public opinion and past regrets. Add a dash of future panic and a whole lot of financial uncertainty. Career is something that fools you into thinking you are in control and then takes pleasure in reminding you that you aren't. Career is the thing that will not fill you up and never makes you truly whole. Depending on your career is like eating cake for breakfast and wondering why you start crying an hour later.

Ambivalence is key to success.

You will never climb Career Mountain and get to the top and shout, "I made it!" You will rarely feel done or complete or even successful. Most people I know struggle with that complicated soup of feeling slighted on one hand and like a total fraud on the other.

Remember, your career is like a bad boyfriend. It likes it when you don't depend on it. It will reward you every time you don't act needy. It will chase you if you act like other things (passion, friendship, family, longevity) are more important to you.

We did the thing. Because remember, the talking about the thing isn't the thing. The doing of the thing is the thing.

If I have learned anything from hip-hop, it's that there's nothing sexy about a baby that ain't yours.

The only thing we can depend on in life is that everything changes. The seasons, our partners, what we want and need. We hold hands with our high school friends and swear to never lose touch, and then we do. We scrape ice off our cars and feel like winter will never end, and it does. We stand in the bathroom and look at our face and say, "Stop getting old, face. I command you!" and it doesn't listen. Change is the only constant. Your ability to navigate and tolerate change and its painful uncomfortableness directly correlates to your happiness and general well-being. See what I just did there? I saved you thousands of dollars on self-help books. If you can surf your life rather than plant your feet, you will be happier.

I wondered if I was just [going to Haiti] as some kind of ego trip. Then I decided I didn't care. Not enough is made of the fact that being of service makes you feel good. I think nonprofits should guarantee that giving your time and money makes your skin better and your ass smaller. Why not? There are so many people in the world with so little. Who cares why you decide to help?

(Quoting author Pema Chodron): 'There are no promises. Look deeply at joy and sorrow, at laughing and crying, at hoping and fearing, at all that lives and dies. What truly heals is gratitude and tenderness.'

Wendy shared a story about how her daughter was caught in an elephant stampede and lived to tell about it because she ran left instead of right. And because she knew one simple fact: elephants leave the way they come in.

[The Dalai Lama] says, 'I think technology has really increased human ability. But technology cannot produce compassion.' Man, that's good. That's why he's the Big Lama. He goes on to say, 'We are the controller of the technology. If we become a slave of technology, then [that's] not good.'