Kelly Bandas - Rookie Mistakes: A Grown-Ups Field Guide for Getting Your Act Together

Rookie Mistakes is a hilarious and thoughtfully written guide to becoming a real-life grown up. I nodded along, often laughing, while reading the relatable stories of Kellys life that so many of us can identify with.

KATIE CRENSHAW, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF HER BODY CAN

It can be all too easy to look back on our rookie mistakes with nothing but regret and embarrassment. Instead, Kelly invites us to consider our younger selves with kindness, and of course, good humor. Readers will enjoy her stories, laugh aloud, and leave with a little more grace for the time it takes us all to learn through experience.

MEREDITH MILLER, PASTOR AND HOST OF THE ASK AWAY PODCAST

With unflinching honesty and peak relatability, Bandas delivers the book we need right now. Dripping with 90s aesthetic, Rookie Mistakes cracked me up, made me think, and reminded me that Im not alone in this disorienting world. Spoiler alert: Rookie Mistakes is a sneaky, cackle-worthy guide to being human. Read it and find yourself somehow more alive.

SHANNAN MARTIN, AUTHOR OF THE MINISTRY OF ORDINARY PLACES AND FALLING FREE

Honestly, who gave Kelly Bandas the right? Who gave her the right to be hilarious, hot, and a gifted writer? Kelly serves in the space where its not the end of the world to mess up, and bonus: she got a good story out of it. Enjoy this book like you would a night out with some of your oldest and dearestshutting down the restaurant, belly full of good food, scream-singing Semisonics Closing Time at the top of your lungs.

ERIN MOON, COHOST OF THE BIBLE BINGE PODCAST

Kelly takes us down the back roads of our childhood. Softly swaying with the windows rolled down. I can feel the wind on my face and the force of the breeze as I fly my arm plane out the window. She takes us to that time where our innocence is rife. Where we first heard that we were not enough. As we are. Where we first learned the beauty of the mundane. Even if only years later. This book is brimming with Kodak moments that you see and feel at once. Its an immersive experience. She takes you to the familiar. Maybe, even, the long forgotten. She sifts through the non-adjudicated moments of our past and finds the gold. And points us to it. Kellys voice is so funny and fresh, shell have you laughing out loud. By yourself. In your bed. She is a generous journeyman and guide. You will be so glad you took this tour with her. Youll come out on the other side, remembering your past differently and enjoying more of the moments that made you, you. In a world that is overcome with uncertainty and jagged edges, this was the consistent soft spot I visited daily. Her humor is wide and deep. But so is her wisdom.

CHA BAREFIELD, HOST OF THE CHA SHOW

Rookie Mistakes

2022 Kelly Bandas

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.

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Any internet addresses, phone numbers, or company or product information printed in this book are offered as a resource and are not intended in any way to be or to imply an endorsement by Thomas Nelson, nor does Thomas Nelson vouch for the existence, content, or services of these sites, phone numbers, companies, or products beyond the life of this book.

ISBN 978-0-7852-8841-1 (audiobook)

ISBN 978-0-7852-8840-4 (eBook)

ISBN 978-0-7852-8831-2 (TP)

Epub Edition May 2022 9780785288404

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021950479

Printed in the United States of America

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To the Bandas Boys.

As a person who has spent most of her life skipping pages numbered by Roman numerals, I would like to take a moment to applaud you for choosing to read this introduction. Especially because no one will ever know if you flip forward a few pages and reallocate the time you just saved to another equally important task, like

1. picking at your cuticles;
2. walking to the other side of your house to get thatcrap, what did I come over here for?; or
3. eating an apple for a snack and then LOL-ing two minutes later when you get back up to get Extra Toasty Cheez-Its or whatever your preferred real snack might be.

But now that youve identified yourself as the type of person who reads the Roman-numeral pages, I would also like to preemptively apologize for the inevitable moment when your partner or child or roommate interrupts your reading time to ask you where you are in your book and you have to do rapid-fire mental math to decipher what lv means. (Just kidding, I would never ask you to read a fifty-plus-page introduction, but I needed to make it a hard Roman numeral and not something like iii.)

So good job, and also, Im sorry.

You know, now that I think about it, this Good job/Im sorry vibe is exactly how most of my real-life introductions seem to shake out. Although they usually start something like this:

ME: Hi, New Friend!

NEW FRIEND: Hey!

ME: I love your sweater.

NEW FRIEND: Thank you! I love your sweater!

ME: This old thing? I literally paid 75 cents for this at a dogs garage sale.

NEW FRIEND: I love animals!

You know the drill: You meet a new person, say something nice about her outfit and something self-deprecating about your own, begin sharing random pieces of personal trivia and quicker than you can say, Oh my gosh, I also love podcasts, you are bored of the small talk and ready to get into the good stuff. You know, the stuff that isnt just about your new friends work or most recent vacation or favorite show on Netflix (even if its Outlanderbut maybe if its Outlander because... IM REALLY INTO THAT SHOW RIGHT NOW, OKAY?!).

The good stuff is the real stuffthe stuff that connects us and makes each of us grow. And for me, listening to the good stuff typically generates one of two responses:

1) Good job.

or

2) Im sorry.

Maybe Im oversimplifying things here, but it seems to me that our relationships with other human beings could be much better served if we all said those two phrases a lot more. Not because they fix anything or absolve us of the responsibility of taking action and growing ourselves, but because they make whomever we are talking to know they are seen, valued, and important. Whether youre offering an Im sorry because of a stressful family situation or a Good job because your new friend finally figured out how to sync her iCal with her Google calendar, it doesnt matter. What does matter is that we use our time together as a means of investing in our relationship, helping each other feel seen, and hopefully having some laughs while we do it.

One thing you should know about me before we get started is that Ive always been a bit of a perfectionist. Someone who derived a hearty chunk of her self-worth from doing things the right way: having each of my three kids on the perfect nap schedule, making sure I never drove a mile past what the Valvoline sticker on my windshield dictated, and so on. And dont get me wrong, those things were okay because thats who I am as a personand maybe its how you are too. I think a lot of us need that kind of control in our own lives when the outside world feels... lets call it