It's Here! Making the Most of Online Dating, Loving Yourself & TikTok

In the first-ever episode of Making the Most, Kelsey Kruzel shares her introduction to dating (online and otherwise) in addition to her thoughts on loving yourself and, oh, TikTok!

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Transcript

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We're given one chance at the crazy messiness that is life, and we're all doing our best to make the most out of it. Whether we're navigating relationships, dating, our careers, or the ins and outs of life, sometimes we need to know that someone else is right there with us. Join me, Kelsey Kruzel, as I share how I'm making the most out of my life and sharing some of my best stories, lessons and learnings with all of you. Let's jump in.  Hey, everyone, welcome to the first ever episode of Making the Most: the podcast. I can't believe this is actually happening, and I am so unbelievably excited that this day is here. So I wanted to talk a little bit about what is making the most. What does making the most mean? I've found that in my life there are a lot of different areas that I really try to make the most of. So, this podcast is called making the most. What is that all about? I, in every space in my life, am trying to make the most out of every situation, whether that's traveling or dating or my career, or just interactions with other people, I'm trying to make the most and really take advantage of every opportunity that I'm given, and make sure that I'm not living out of a space of fear, and that I'm walking boldly and really trying to take advantage of every situation that I'm given. So this podcast is really built to be an encouragement to you, to help you make the most out of your life. And I'm going to talk about specifically a few different areas that I feel like I have a perspective on and have a little bit of experience in. A couple of those things that we're gonna talk about consistently: I'm gonna talk about dating. If you are interested in dating, if you are single, if you are in the midst of dating or even if you're married, I think that there's a lot of concepts I'm gonna talk about that might be interesting to you. I have a lot of experience dating. I don't know if that makes me a good dater or a bad dater, if that makes me successful or not in that area, but I have a lot of experience and a lot of stories, and that's kind of the impetus of all of this. I have created a dating blog called Making the Most with the same title and same name as this podcast, and that's just been a huge way to connect with people, and I just hear over and over again that people say, "Hey, this is a conversation that we need to have more often. This is something I really don't know how to speak to or how to navigate myself." And so I want to help people, in that area specifically, really understand all the nuances of dating and how to do that really, really well. I'm also going to talk about career. I am someone who's really passionate and ambitious, and really want to take the opportunity to share with you all things that I've learned or I'm walking through in my career, and how I'm really making the most and taking advantage of different opportunities in that space. And then next, I'm going to talk a little bit about myself. Part of the value of this podcast is that it is me, sitting in front of a microphone and talking to you about what's going on in my head, and I pride myself on being able to be vulnerable and share from a place of personal experience. We're gonna talk about just kind of whatever's on my heart that week, and it might be politics, it might be, you know, how I'm navigating certain situations. It might be, you know, just really what's going on in my heart and how I'm navigating my own mental health or, you know, just different topics or things that I'm passionate about or thinking about that week. And then, just for a fun little addition, I am known with my friends as kind of that person who shares what's going on and keeps people relevant. I'm gonna every week talk about the millennial tip of the week. I'm a millennial, and I'm gonna share a little bit: what fun thing is happening in culture, and why you should know about it, and maybe break it down for you a little bit. Those are really the areas that I feel most passionate about and feel like I have something I can add. If any of those things appeals to you, I hope that you'll join this podcast and you'll follow along and walk with me as I start making more episodes and start sharing different parts of my heart with all of you. So first and foremost, if you're gonna listen to a podcast about somebody talking about themselves, I figured it's a good way to start by introducing myself. My name is Kelsey Kruzel. Not Kruzel. Get that a lot. Kruzel. Think of Tom Cruise, but you know, less couch jumping and less Scientology. But yes, so I live in Chicago, have lived in Chicago for about 4.5 years, and I've completely fallen in love with the city and the hustle and the bustle and the diversity and the amount of people that I've been able to meet and build relationships with, the amount of experiences I've been able to have just by being a part of that city. I am originally from Michigan, a small town in northern Michigan, so definitely got a little bit of a country girl in me. I love to be outside, explore, and really dive into anything nature related. I'm pretty adventurous. I grew up in a big family, so, you know, I love to talk. Hence the podcast. You know, I'm really competitive and I always have really just this drive internally to figure out how to one-up myself, more so than one-upping other people. So if any of you know the enneagram, it would make sense to you that I'm an enneagram three. I am driven by trying to accomplish things, get things out there, and make connections with people. So again, that's why we are here and podcasting. I am just so excited to be here, and I'm excited that you're joining me on this journey, and I hope that as we get into this, uh, the words that I have to say are really, really helpful to you and can be an encouragement to you in whatever you're trying to make the most of.  All right, This is what you've all been waiting for. Let's get into the heart of it. Let's talk about dating. With this being the first episode, I wanted to start out with a little story and background about dating. In general, this part of the podcast, I will always start with a fun little story, sometimes probably not so fun. And then we'll talk through different themes or things that I learned from that experience or advice I have or ways that you cannot make the same mistakes that I did. I didn't date in high school or college, really. But when I graduated college, I had gone on one date with a GSI who had asked me out. I graduated college. I was living in Ann Arbor. I stayed in the area. I got an apartment. I started my first job, yeah I  was really at this place in my life for the first time, where I kind of had it figured out. Or, you know, so I thought. And I was like, "Okay, I know what I'm doing. I am rooted in this, this place and this job, and I have a church that I love. I'm ready to, like, try this thing and see if I can date." So I had a little mental space and I was like, I have the time and the energy to actually go out and try and date and see if I can find myself a man. I had--I kind of tried to get out there and was more open to going on dates, but I really didn't know how to date. I had never really but once been on a date, and I didn't know the kind of protocol. I didn't know the expectations. I didn't understand the nuances of when to text someone and having a conversation and when I should go out with them and who I really wanted to date. Up to that point, I had this list of who my ideal man was in my head. And it was, you know, the classics, right? Like he needed to play guitar. And I think when I was in high school and college, I really wanted, like, to date a guy in a band, who doesn't. I had this list, you know. He needed to be a Christian. I wanted him to be, you know, tall, dark, and handsome, and excited, and competitive--all of these things that seemed really like the checklist that I should have. But later, as I started dating, I realized that none of that really mattered, and there were a lot of other things that should have been on my checklist that I needed to pay attention to. Yeah, I was at this space and I was kind of thinking about online dating at this point, but I really was nervous about it because I had this fear that me going on online dating was me taking too much control over my dating life and what I saw as this thing that God was going to give me. And I felt like maybe going out and getting on these dating apps would be me undermining God or, like, failing to trust him. And so I started to kind of do some research, and I talked to a couple friends, too, who--you know, if you know anything about me, I have friends who are Christians. I have friends who are not Christians, and I really value advice from from both sides. And I think it's important to kind of take both of those things in with a grain of salt. Interpret for yourself what really matters. But I had a couple of friends, two of my best friends, Ellen and Maddie, who, you know, I was kind of asking about online dating or saying something, and I was like, "I don't know, it sounds kind of desperate." Because that was kind of my interpretation and even I had some historical baggage with my parents of my dad and my mom jumping on online dating after they got divorced that just made me feel like it was coming from a place of needing to fill a hole. I didn't want someone to have to fill that hole. I wanted to come from a place of being complete and confident in who I am and looking for someone who really complemented that. So I was afraid that I was gonna go out into this online space and just be desperate and that that's what the motivation was. And I kind of had this idea that that's what everybody who was online dating was doing, that they were kind of coming from a place of 'I just don't want to be single' versus coming from a place of 'I am great being single. But I really want to find that person that's gonna compliment me and add to my life'. So always make sure you get truth teller friends because one of my best friends just said, "Hey, Kels, like, that's super judgmental that you just think that everybody on online dating is desperate," and I was like, "Yep, yeah, you're totally right. That was really judgmental of me," and it just opened my eyes and kind of eliminated that fear and pushed me into a place of "Hey, yeah, I need to figure out, like, what does maybe God say about this, but how do you look at this through a Christian lens?" Because if you know anything about the Bible, you know that God in the Bible never explicitly addresses dating. Talks about marriage, talks about singleness. But this gray area of dating is not really addressed. And so there's a lot of interpretation, and that's part of why I'm here to talk through this. Yeah, so I started to do some research. I read some different blogs and just started to process it and pray about it myself. And I realized that yeah, it could--you could totally step into that space and be coming from a place of wanting to find that person but still being complete, and, and that you could do it well, right. All dating apps weren't just hook up apps, so there was an opportunity to step into that space and figure out how to do that. I signed up, started signing up. I think the first one I jumped on was OK Cupid at the time, and then I kind of dabbled my way through different ones. I, like, completely avoided Tinder at the beginning because it was still--I still have this interpretation of it really being like a hookup app. Just so you know, like, that's not a part of what I'm looking for. I'm really looking for a partner, and, um, you know, we'll talk a lot about sex throughout this podcast, but I am waiting for marriage, and that is something that's really important to me. So I was kind of avoiding all of the apps that were--had any implication of just being for hookups and was really looking for the ones that could help me kind of figure out who a future boyfriend could be. Yes, so I jumped on, OK Cupid. I made a profile, and I just started talking to people. The beauty, and I guess also downside of being a woman on dating apps, is that it's pretty easy to match with people if you--this is going to sound bad, but like--don't have high standards. You know there's a lot of people who aren't solely looking at looks and yeah, if you have, like, a good profile, decent profile, then it's--it's pretty easy. So I started just talking to people and man, the first, like six months of online dating, was fun. Like I was chatting people left and right, And for someone who really hadn't been pursued or, like, had opportunities to have, like, really romantic connections reciprocated throughout the majority of my life. I was like, "Wow, yeah, like this is so fun." And I had a lot of just, like--I was getting a lot of attention, which felt really good. And I was getting asked out on dates and yeah, it was a blast. And I remember I think it was my first date. I went out with this guy to a restaurant in Ann Arbor at the time. And let me tell you, he was boring as heck. Like we--you know, I got all dressed up. I was so excited about this date, and, you know, we went for an hour, and it was... It was painful. It was painful. And I will tell you that I have been on a lot of painful dates, but--but yeah, it just opened my eyes to to say, like, this is the point of dating. This is the point of, you make a connection. You see if it can go anywhere, you put yourself out there and you just figure it out and it doesn't have to be, you know, a date leads to a boyfriend, leads to marriage. It has a lot of opportunity for you to figure yourself out, for you to figure out that person and if you guys are right for each other, there's just so much exploration that needs to happen when you're dating. Yeah, I had my first date and then a second with different people, and I just started to get in this rhythm of figuring out and exploring by texting people, having these conversations, going out on dates, seeing what I liked, what I didn't like. And it really started to shape and help me understand who I was and what I really valued. Some of those things in my checklist that I mentioned earlier became less important, honestly. I really started to realize, like, I need someone who's ambitious. I need someone who is able to keep up with me, because if you know anything about me, I am not easy to keep up with. I have a crazy, busy life, and I'm always kind of moving on to the next thing. Yeah, I just, I need someone who's like on board with that. I needed someone who was interesting and fun, and, you know, who did care about their faith. You know, I'll talk more about this in future episodes, but that's a really easy weeder for me. But even at that point I was figuring that out. I wasn't totally, like, needing to date someone who was just a Christian. I went out with people who weren't believers, and that kind of shaped where I am now and convinced me more that I needed to be with someone who was, but it was this great time of exploration for me and getting to figure out, one, just like how to date--how to do it, how to go out on a date. You know, what to wear, what to talk about, what meant, you know, what qualified as a good date versus a bad date, what left me going home and saying, "Yeah, no, I don't really need to see them again," or how many dates you should go on with someone, or when you should kiss them--like, all of these different things that were just super helpful for me to help navigate and have an idea of what the heck I was doing out there. And it also helped me figure out more and more and just start to build this repertoire. Or like, you know, base for, like, what was important to me and how I really wanted, or who I really wanted to connect with and what really mattered to me. So, yeah, I think that for those of you who are navigating this online dating world or trying to figure out how to date, you know, I just want to say--put yourself out there. We, especially in the Christian world, can get really weird about online dating and even outside of it. You know, we have a lot of fear, like we hear about how bad online dating is. And listen, I don't love online dating. I think that I definitely recommend meeting people in person if you have opportunities to build your friend group or get involved in community where you're able to meet people, that is the ideal. But there's also all these people out there who we might not stumble across and who might be a great fit for us. And I think even more so, just that opportunity to really explore and figure out who you are and what matters to you is really important, and it gives you a lot of opportunity to navigate that. And it's not really this thing that has a stigma anymore. Online dating is everywhere. I mean, Aziz Ansari, like, wrote a book about it. There are online dating stories, people are getting married like crazy--true story, my mom at her fiance on Tinder. That's another story for another time. But it really is a powerful tool because you're able to explicitly state what you want, you're able to look and find and potentially meet with all of these different people. And if you're at that point where you're--don't really know how to date are trying to figure it out, I highly recommend it, just to get in the practice of being vulnerable, stepping out, putting yourself out there, and putting yourself in a situation you're uncomfortable with, because that's what dating is. Dating is constantly being in this state of unrest, and 'I'm not sure,' and 'how do I figure this out,' and navigating your emotions--that takes practice to be able to figure out how to do that well, and to find comfort in the uncomfortable, I highly recommend it. In future episodes, I'll dig into 'How do you pick where the online date,' 'What are different things that you should look for in a profile,' Or 'How do you set up your profile'. Listen, I got a lot of content here, so hold on for the ride. We're gonna talk about a lot of different things. That's really my story about how I started dating. And as we move through this podcast, I'll talk more and more about where that's led me, and what dating in Chicago has been like compared to Michigan. And I'll tell you, I have no shortage of stories here. Hold on and we'll dig in this together. Now we're at the part of the podcast where we're gonna do the heart check every time we do this podcast. I'm going to do little heart check and say, "Hey, here's the thing that's on my mind or my heart this week," and this is kind of the random section. So this will just be whatever I'm kind of thinking about that I think will help you guys make the most of your own situations. So this week, I want to talk about falling in love with yourself. I think this is something that I am so passionate about. I have always been someone whose confidence has come relatively easy, and I just think it's so, so, so important to everything that you do. But I am not unlike all of you, and I struggle with this, too. And so I think that especially if you're going in and thinking about dating, you really need to love who you are and know who you are so that you can really embrace someone else. And it also helps you to kind of weather the potential rejection and everything that comes with dating, and life, too. My quick tip for this week, and part of why this is on my heart, is to take a solo trip. Go somewhere, travel somewhere, whether it be like to the next town or cross country or internationally. But take some time to go travel by yourself and give yourself three, four, five days at least to fall back in love with yourself. I currently am--I'm recording this podcast from Manhattan Beach, California, where I kind of escaped the past few days, and I was just shocked yesterday after spending three full days pretty much by myself. Just having this realization of I'm having fun and I am fun. I just was thinking about all of these things and letting myself truly live into who I am, because there's no one else around to really say, you know, Hey, we should do this or we should go do this. And I am someone who goes with the flow so often, and I love to be with other people. And I love to have those relationships. But man, it was so good just to, like, be alone and have total freedom to just do the things that I love and do the things that I wanted to do. And so it was a great opportunity. Man, I drove around and I took a stupid amount of pictures. I dressed up and put on lipstick and was really fierce and unapologetically and I didn't feel this, like, shame or like I needed to be someone for other people. I like, drove around in this little convertible Mazda Miata and sang to like Taylor Swift and Adele and some of the really old punk throwbacks that I listened to in high school yeah. Just journaled, took naps on the beach. All of these things that I enjoyed and just realized I'm fun, and I got the chance to go meet new people and I realized just that ability that I have to connect with others. You know, this opportunity that I'm just like, I could be a fun person. It just reminded me of who I am and just gave me this real appreciation for myself, which I think the past really few years, that's kind of gotten lost a little bit in all the things I feel like I should be doing, and all the rejection professionally, personally, difficult friendships, or the spiral you can get into yourself of doubting yourself or feeling like people don't really like you are aren't validating to you. And and I think it was just super freeing to step out, give myself time to remember who I am and fall back in love with who I am. That's my tip for making the most this week and really what's been on my heart. And I will say it's a bonus, because when I tell you that the men in California have been extra appreciative of who I am, I think it really--I've got in a lot of people passing out their numbers and trying to holler at me in like, three days, and I think it really comes from this place of, I know who I am and I'm confident and I feel that fire again and feel like I can just, like, talk to people and that I'm beautiful and I really believe that. And I think when you really believe that the added bonus is that other people see that in you and they want more of that, too. I think that's--if you're someone who's struggling with confidence and dating, or just like in general and your professional world or with friends. I think that's a great place to start from, is, "do I really know myself and do I love myself?" Like, giving yourself space and time to, like, just fall in love with who you are, because I promise you, you guys are all awesome and have so many valuable things to give to the world, and they're all different. So it's up to you to take that and see that, and to believe truth, too, to see and know who God made you to be and to know that you are valuable because you are here, and because of what you have to offer to the world, and that you would listen to other people, too, because I can--I bet there are people around you who tell you how great you are, and it's up to you to believe that. That's what's on my heart this week. That's the heart check. Okay, so this last part of the podcast every time will be our millennial tip of the week. I am, if you didn't know , a millennial, and I think that one thing that I found particularly because of being in social media, is that it's part of my job to stay on the pulse of what's happening in culture. I also, like, want to give major props to my younger siblings because they keep me cool in so many ways and they will tell you and be the first to tell you that I am really not that cool. But I think compared to a lot of my friends who are late twenties, thirties, and just don't understand what's happening in the world anymore, I'm kind of that bridge and can help people figure out what the heck is going on in culture. So that's gonna be this segment every time. And this tip this week is gonna be really simple, as the first one, it's just something that I have become obsessed with and that is TikTok. Get on TikTok y'all. TikTok is this super fun app. It is kind of like the resurrection of Vine, except that the actual resurrection of Vine has just happened called Byte. But we'll see kind of how that plays out. TikTok is these short videos, I think it's like, up to a minute long. They're just this really, like, informal, funny opportunity to share different content, create hilarious things, and there are all of these really different interests within TikTok. There's a classic Vine. Funny commentary on you know what's happening or trends that are happening. There's this huge part of TikTok that is around these dances and these challenges, which are so, so fun. So if you've seen anything about the Renegade, you know any of those different dances. All of--different songs have started in TikTok and blown up. You know, that's where Little Nas X, his Old Town Road song, came from. It really, like, started and caught fire on TikTok. And there's so many different kind of songs that have come out of that, all of these dance trends as well. So a lot of those things are just starting on TikTok, which is so funny. That is setting the culture and really influencing the culture. And it is a lot of high school kids, early college kids, who are creating this content. But we know that that's a lot of times what drives culture. And I think that there's also other kind of subgroups within TikTok. There's there's a lot of cool crafting stuff, and what's fun about TikTok is as you start to engage, you'll start to find different things in your feed that are more related to you. So, for instance, I really love musical theater. And so I start getting all of this musical theater content in my TikTok, and when I tell you like I can waste time on TikTok like nobody's business, I spend probably more time on TikTok now than all of my other apps combined. And it's just this fun way to, like, stay up to date on culture and know what's happening and be very entertained. And I think unlike a lot of the other platforms where it's become this--there's a very curated feed, or you know what you can share and what you can't share--a lot of the gloves are still off on TikTok, and some people are just creating different things, and there is definitely some fear around TikTok--it is created by a Chinese company, and there's some weird censoring kind of going on, and so I think we'll start to see a lot more of that play out. And as people are flocking to Tic Tac more, I think there will be more of a cultural conversation, and maybe some accountability from a business perspective. But for now, it's still like this kind of free for all. And you're seeing brands start to get involved and people dipping their toes into 'how do we make this happen?' But in general, I would say, if you want to be relevant and know what's going on, TikTok is the place to be and I would challenge you to learn one of the TikTok dances. My sister and I did it on the eve of my 28th birthday. So if I wasn't trying to stay young. I don't know what I was trying to do, but it was just like, we did it for two hours to learn a sixty second little dance and it was hysterical. Get out there, learn a TikTok dance, figure it out, and then just maybe set a limit for yourself of how long you'll scroll. Because, uh, you'll get sucked in. That's the millennial tip of the week. Man, guys, this is it. This is the end. We made it to the end of the first podcast of making the most. I hope that this was something that was entertaining to you that was helpful and that you were able to take this and are able to make the most out of the situations in your life. I hope that you would like, subscribe, and stay tuned for everything else moving forward. I'm also on the Instagram @KelsKruzel and on Twitter @KelsKruz, and I hope that you can follow along and see some of the things that I'll be putting out in the future. Feel free to check out my blog at makingthemost.co as well. If you have any questions, feel free to like DM me on Instagram or on Twitter. And thank you guys. Thank you, guys. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you get out there and make the most. See you next time.