Half Ideas Vol. 4
It’s been a quiet month in this space but a wild past 30 days out in the real world. Thanks for your patience as I untangled myself from the wildness of summer and settled into a more fastidious fall. The last days of August were jam-packed with travel and preparation for sending my littles back to school, not to mention reacquainting the family with a real daily routine. I’m glad to be back with you and ready to return us to a more consistent newsletter schedule around here. There are also new friends among us, welcome! If we’re just meeting for the first time and you want to get a feel for what it’s like around here give this, this, this, and/or this a read.
Here in Jersey we’ve had just about the most perfect transitional weather you can imagine which has lent a certain buoyancy to all our moods these first days of pre-fall. The mornings are crisp and chilly, the sun’s been out in its full glory in the afternoon, and the nights have gently cooled to a perfect temperature for throw blankets and cuddles.
I’ve missed writing to you all in the last month. I’ve come to think of these posts like letters and you all as my pen pals. There is a lot I want to tell you about but I’m going to ease us back in. And how better to do that than with Half Ideas?! For the new friends among us, Half Ideas is a monthly format where instead of going deep into one theme, I write little vignettes on all the topics I can’t stop thinking about.
Let’s do this!
Maybe just do what you want to do.
I have this thing where, often, when I really want to do a big thing, I don’t do it.
There have been several distinct moments in my life where I settled for a watered-down version of what I wanted. It’s not uncharted territory for women. And, being caught in the net of the martyr-wife-and-mother is a deep fear of mine. And yet, time after time, I don’t take the leap because it’s going to be hard for everyone else if I do. Because maybe it’s inconvenient for absolutely everyone but me.
But in August, I did the thing. I went to Hawaii.
No kids.
No husband.
Many, many logistical difficulties.
It was incredibly hard to plan for that trip—there were scheduling conflicts and lodging challenges. We had so much going on as a family at that time and the trip was the bookend to a long summer filled with trips and zero routine. Not to mention I had next to no brain cells left for planning one more big trip. But a good friend was getting married. And I wanted to be there. I wanted deeply to have the shared memories with the friends who were going. I wanted to see Hawaii (of course!) for the first time.
I hemmed and hawed. I told my therapist all the reasons I couldn’t go and she all but rolled her eyes. She explained that the anxiety I felt around going was likely deeply rooted in guilt. Ah yes. Hello guilt, our old friend. There is no guilt like mom guilt, partner guilt, over-scheduled, high-achiever guilt—three faces of the same paralytic.
And so, armed with some unbiased information from someone who certainly (hopefully!?) knows better, I stopped thinking about NOT going and only thought about going.
All forward motion was in service of just freaking going. All of it was complicated—the travel days, the childcare planning, the events I missed, the tears from the littles when they realized I was going for so long. But I went. And it was worth it. Every bit of it. But I only managed it because all my energy was invested in the going and not judging myself for making the decision to do so.
On our first full day we took a boat ride along the Napali coast in Kauai. It was one of the most breathtaking places I’ve ever seen. I felt lucky to be alive to see it. So maybe just do the thing. Make the call. Give your energy to forward motion and don’t look back.
Red light, green light
I have started taking long outdoor walks a few days of the week. It’s part of a new workout split that I’m trying out (MWF-strength training; long walk or run on Tues. and Thurs. if you’re interested). This week while I was soaking up the aforementioned chilly morning air I started thinking about the most valuable things I’ve learned about myself in life thus far. (My approaching birthday is making me very introspective)
Over the past few years I’ve become obsessed with idea of cultivating curiosity about yourself. Spending as much time understanding your own interworkings as you do on other’s. This work has led me to greater self knowledge and I landed on a pretty simple metaphor for one aspect of the things I’ve learned via self curiosity—a stop light.
Ask yourself what in life stops your creativity, gusto, and joy in its tracks—that’s your red light, what slows you down and makes you stumble—your yellow light, and what drives your creativity and happiness forward—your green light?
For many of us (myself, included) I think the first instinct might be to contextualize that question within work. That was my initial reaction as well but as I was trying to name my lights, it felt a bit hollow. Work is so changeable. What motivates us today may not a month from now. Certainly my interests have changed dramatically in the last five years even and the older I’ve gotten the less bearing I want my career to have on my identity.
I challenged myself to start thinking about my red light, yellow light, green light in the context of emotions that I can give and receive. Emotion is universal and knowing the good and bad, what stops you in your tracks and what greases your wheels makes those things all the easier to avoid or seek out respectively.
So where did I land?
My red light is inauthenticity. When I feel that I am being inauthentic or that someone is being inauthentic with me, it’s like having my shoes sunk deep in mud. I am immobilized by it.
My yellow light is injustice. I’m a Libra through and through. Being surrounded by injustice gets my hackles raised. It makes me ragey and panicky all at once.
My green light is confidence. I love to see it (and better yet help bring it out) in others and it’s the emotion that brings out the best in me. When I feel firmly planted in an idea and well supported in its truth by my lived experience and intuition, there’s no better feeling. My close runner up here was curiosity. Another emotion that lights me up clearly.
As I came up with those I was so eager to share them and proud of the level of introspection that I think took me all these 38 years on this spinning rock to articulate. It’s a fun little exercise that I highly recommend to get to know yourself better.
The glory of a fall Sunday
This past weekend we had the first of what I think of as the prototypical fall Sunday. I already mentioned the blissful perfection of the weather. But there was also the blank slate of a day without plans. The manic summer energy was gone. The kids weren’t covered in sand and bug spray. When I lifted them from their beds their cheeks were cold when they pressed them to mine but their little bodies were warm from the extra blankets we finally pulled out. The screen door was open, my apple cider candle was lit, the coffee was hot, and we had sweatpants on. The first brown and red leaves were falling on our patio. My husband was giddy with plans to be a football zombie and the kids were well-rested and relaxed. We baked, we ran errands, we hung cinnamon brooms on the doors and put plum and burgundy colored flowers into vases next to black taper candles in brass holders. I sipped a latte and a half—too much caffeine but the joy of chilled air and warm hands was irresistible. We menu planned and organized and all the mundane tasks that summer neglects. When the sun started to go down we took a stroll around the block pointing out flaming red leaves on the neighbor’s trees and spotting a doe through the tree trunks. We shivered a little as we rounded the corner to our house and took lungfuls of crisp air with us inside.
Wishing you many glorious fall Sundays to come. Talk soon.
Still thinking about…
My older sister recently informed me that September is for apples. We need to give them their due before we put pumpkins on a pedestal. So here’s my no-fail apple cake recipe from the depths of my time working at Ladies’ Home Journal (RIP). It is amazing. Yes the batter is supposed to be that thick. Yes you need a bundt pan. Yes it really takes over an hour to bake—she’s dense ya’ll!
Just read this book and was pleasantly surprised by its how balanced it was in being deeply observational of the complexities of modern relationships while also being very readable and well-paced.
On the note of books, no one can shut up about this one so it’s in the queue.
Can’t stop using this drugstore mascara and this drugstore bronzer.
Hearing that this is a great faux tennis necklace, maybe one of the best out there right now, and dropping not-so-subtle hints that it’d be a great birthday gift