I was a terrible vegan

It's nice to hear from experts that they were once beginners.

I was at an improv class yesterday, and the teachers were awesome. I admired them for being so great at improvising. I wondered if I am any good. They told us how they got started in improv, and they told us about how nervous they were the first time they did certain activities. It was really empowering to hear about how they used to be beginners, like me.

I read a blog post today about exercising. The writer is very much into fitness and she's really awesome at it. Her blog post was about where she started, which was at a point at which she couldn't even do a sit-up, couldn't even run on a treadmill. She was a beginner, like me.

Most of us don't like being beginners. We would prefer to be experts right away. But when we hear from experts that they were once beginners, it makes real the possibility that we'll one day be experts.

So, to make you feel empowered in your journey to veganism (heh, I like to pretend everyone is on a journey - some just longer than others), I want to tell you about the terrible vegan I was in the beginning.

I first tried to be a vegan as a 30-day challenge. I think I lasted a week. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know where to shop, where to eat, what products/brands to look for or to avoid. I was clueless. The first night, I decided to make something super easy: spaghetti with marinara sauce. I went to the store and picked up a box of spaghetti noodles. Eggs? What the what? I didn't know there were eggs in noodles. I was irritated. Here I thought this would be easy, but then I learned I would have to read ingredients. That didn't sound like any fun. I looked at a couple other brands and found some noodles without eggs (Barilla is good; not Barilla Plus).

The next item I needed was marinara sauce. I went down the aisle to grab some Ragu, which is what I grew up eating. I thought to myself, "I guess I'd better read this label too." Milk. What is milk doing in spaghetti sauce?! I was officially annoyed. What I thought would be an easy dinner was turning into a label-reading session. If spaghetti was so complicated, what was I supposed to eat for dinner the next night!? (FYI: Many of the higher-quality sauces are also the ones without milk/cheese).

When I became a vegan a few months later (for real this time), I knew a little more, but I still didn't know everything. Sometimes when you try to take on something that's new to you, you assume there are rules you have to follow. So, you learn the "rules," and, when you mess up on one, you beat yourself up and think "I just can't do this." Well, that's not true. The point of being a vegan is to do what you can to avoid harming animals. That's it. No more, no less.

Beginner or expert, you're doing what you can. And that's a beautiful thing. So, keep trying. Start slow. Start eliminating certain animal products until you're comfortable eliminating more. Keep learning about the variety of foods you can eat instead. Ask questions. Google. Keep trying.

Surround yourself with people you view as experts, people you admire, people who inspire you.

Keep "messing up." Keep falling off the wagon. And then remember how terrible a vegan I was when I first started trying.

And get up, dust off your knees, and push ahead.