The Logbook
Thoughts & Goings-Ons
Slow Summer
Five quiet ways to enjoy the summer season.
Order something from a bakery and enjoy it without looking at your phone.
Roam a section of a bookstore you don’t normally explore.
Listen to an entire album, in order.
Watch the sunset or sunrise while doing nothing else.
Send a postcard to a friend. If you don’t have a post card, make one.
4 Favorite Things
Four things I’ve been into this summer.
Midori MD Notebooks
I’m a huge notebook/pen/stationary junkie, and can be a bit fickle, but I’ve been pretty loyal to these Midori MD notebooks for over a year now. They’re minimal/simple in the best way, have nice thick paper, and my favorite part is the way they lie completely flat. They’re somehow more “informal” than the super popular Leuchtturm and Moleskine brands, which I find leads me to reach for them more often without pressure. I’m mostly using the A5 size (I like the grid pages) right now, but I’ve love their B6 Slim, which is perfect for throwing in my bag.
You get can get them on Amazon, but I much prefer to support Atlas Stationers, a delightful stationary store in Chicago that sends a hand written note in all of their shipments.
Disney Dreamlight Valley
I love cozy games (I basically lived on my Animal Crossing island in 2021), and I’ve recently rediscovered my love for Disney Dreamlight Valley. As far as I’m concerned, running around my valley planting carrots and mining for gems with Mulan or Flynn Rider in tow is the perfect summer evening.
I play the Apple Arcade version because we have a subscription, though I do suffer from intense jealousy of not being able to buy all the cute stuff from the premium shop I see on YouTube.
One of my favorite parts is the creative community and their decorating skills. Like I said, my valley’s more or less just rows of planted carrots, but [some people are so creative with their builds!]
https://disneydreamlightvalley.com/
Vuori Daily Skirt
I’ve mentioned before that I have a very minimalist wardrobe and wear the same thing pretty much every day. Vuori’s “Daily Skirt” is aptly named—it’s become the most essential part of my summer wardrobe!
If this skirt isn’t in the wash, I’m wearing it. It’s has built-in shorts which makes for zero self-consciousness when bending down to pick up dog-owner-in-the-city duties (💩) but looks like a cute skirt, and can be dressed up or down. I have it in black, but have been eyeing the white!
A note on the length... Per their website the Regular is for people 5’7 and below, and Long for 5’8 and above. I’m 5’7 so I got the Regular, and it’s definitely a short skirt on me. If you’re in the 5’6 / 5’7 range and don’t like to show a lot of leg, you might want to consider the Long. :)
Loving Tan Mousse
On the note of summer vibes, I feel so much more confident with a “tan” but not a tan.
I’ve been using Loving Tan (I know, I know, the company name is terrible…) for years. I’ll sometimes dabble with celebrity recommended brands, or whatever’s new and featured and highly reviewed on Nordstrom, but I always come back to this.
It wins for me in all categories. The color is non-orange, the scent is almost non-existent, the application is easy/non-streaking and one application lasts a full week.
I like all their products, but my go-to is the mousse in Ultra Dark.
ChatGPT Interview
I forget when the silly image first popped into my head, but sometimes when I sit down to write, I imagine it as sewing.
The “pen” (keyboard) is the needle. I then thread the needle with an idea or story of some kind and then sew until I get something recognizable. A sweater (novel), a questionable sock (the articles on this blog).
Only sometimes I don’t feel like making a sweater or a sock, but I still want the ritual of sewing. Basically, I want to sew, but have someone pick the thread and pattern for me.
Which actually, is a real thing.
When I was a kid, I used go to Michael’s during summer vacation and get a stamped cross stitch kit. The design is already printed onto the fabric and all the appropriate colored threads are provided. You just have to pull the thread, in the pattern provided. Basically the sewing equivalent of paint by numbers.
Today, I’m doing a “write by numbers.” I asked ChatGPT to come up with 10 random interview questions. My only parameters were “varied in topic and seriousness, and non-cliché.”
Stamped cross stich, but for writers…
Which do you trust more—instinct or logic?
My instinctual reaction was logic. 😅 And I think I stand by that answer, though I’ve been easing my grip the past couple years, opening my mind to things that can’t be seen/proven. Tarot. Astrology. All things witchy. 🔮👀 I feel immeasurably happier and calmer, even though there’s no logical reason why.
If your laundry could give you performance reviews, what would it say?
“Proficient, but no style points. It’s like you don’t even enjoy this…”
If your personality were a location, where would it be?
A really remote cabin in the woods, but a nice one. Like, it’s way off-the-grid, but also somehow has super fast wi-fi, wine cellar, and excellent water pressure.
Which animal do you think needs a new PR team?
Spiders. Evolution totally did them dirty…
Hey, yeah, so you’re going to have two more legs than the other bugs, which means your gait’s going to be distinctly unsettling. Also, don’t even think about trying to hang out with the insects, because you’re not one. Also, some of you will be poisonous. Also, some of you will have to live out your days in a lighted box as an inexplicable pet. Also, you will have sticky string that shoots out of your butt, which you must use to build your own house. You will then have to rebuild that house constantly, because your butt string is fragile. Also, for a hot minute you’ll be tempted to thank E.B. White for making you a heroine in Charlotte’s Web, but best you don’t get too invested in the ending…
If your childhood bedroom could talk, what’s one sentence it would say?
“I know there’s a cactus in a broken pot hidden in the back of your bookshelf because you’re too scared to tell your parents you dropped it…”
If your inner critic had a name and a profession …
Jace, never Jason. Went to MIT. Dropped out because he was smarter than the professors, or so he thought. Now is an essential part of Silicon Valley’s unique brand of bro culture. Turns every single idea into an app that is acquired for 7 figures. Jace knows that none of my ideas or passions are even remotely scalable to pay for Manhattan’s cost of living, and lets me know it often.
If your life had a sound effect that played every time you entered a room, what would it be?
The clack of old-fashioned typewriter.
If someone followed you around for 24 hours, what would confuse them most?
That I love to go to bed in the 8pm hour, and often am awake by 4am. On purpose.
This is highly uncool in a city where shows don’t start until 7pm, and 7:45 dinner reservations are considered “early.”
But my brain does its best work in the early morning. Case in point, I’m writing this post from bed at 3:45am, and many college papers and Lauren Layne books have been written much the same way. And honestly, I just like being up early more than I do being up late.
One of my favorite fantasies is flipping the script. Being bold enough so that when someone suggests dinner at 8pm on Friday, I say, “I can’t, but how about bagels at 6am on Saturday?” And when they laugh incredulously and say they’ll be in bed, I reply, “Wait, so you don’t want to change your sleep routine to grab a meal on someone else’s schedule?!”
What is your superpower?
I don’t really get bored or lonely. I’m pretty happy entertaining myself for days on end.
If your inner monologue had to be narrated by a celebrity, who would you pick and why?
Not a celeb, so much as a specific character: Nick Miller. If he’s on deadline for another zombie book, then Wednesday Addams.
What’s a hobby you’ve never attempted but deeply intrigues you?
Making bread. I think about it a weird amount but have never even tried!
The Offense of Star Ratings
I think star ratings are ghastly when applied to art.
When I say art, I’m talking specifically but those art forms that are most often subjected to star ratings:
Movies and books.
(And if you’re thinking those don’t count as art, I’m thinking you’ve never made a movie or written a book.)
To be clear, it’s completely valid to have strong positive or negative emotions about a piece of art. I watch movies that I don’t enjoy all the time. I dislike plenty of books. Just as often, I’ll find myself all-consumed by a movie, delighted by a book I can’t seem to stop thinking about.
What is offensive to me is taking subjective stance (love/like/didn’t like/hate) and applying an objective rating (1-5 stars).
I don’t think there is a such thing as 1 star movie or a 5 star book. How can there be when one person’s 1 star “didn’t finish” is another person’s 5 star “keeper shelf.”
How can a movie be one star and five star?
It can’t be.
Yes, you could dismiss it as a simple shorthand. “Oh, it’s just a quick and easy way to keep track of which movies we liked or didn’t…”
But I’d argue this shortcut is a caustic one.
Star ratings ecourage us to think of art as a commodity, especially on sites like Amazon where novels and movies are subjected to the same rating system as batteries, and plastic food storage containers, and toilet paper.
Batteries can be objectively bad if they don’t hold a charge. Plastic food storage containers should get a 1-star rating if the lid cracks with first use (no, you’re talking from first bitter first hand experience…)
And let’s be, really, 1 star toilet paper is basically a crime.
But is it right to slap the same 1 star rating to a book as subpar batteries, shitty tupperware, or toilet paper that doesn’t do its job?
I’d argue that’s the bigger crime.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Anth and I watched The Sandlot and National Treasure. I enjoyed both immensely. But I wouldn’t recommend either to my parents. Or come to think of it, most of my friends.
What I enjoyed in that particular moment, on that particular day doesn’t translate to all people in all situations.
Does that make it a one star movie? Five star?
I recently finished The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. It was well written, well-researched, and interesting, but I didn’t love it. A mood thing, probably. So … two star? Four star?
Art isn’t a product. It can’t malfunction. It can’t arrive broken. It doesn’t owe you convenience or personal resonance.
Maybe we stop trying to score books and movies. Maybe we simply experience them.
And make room for others to do the same, without bias.
Digital Gardens
Digital gardens explore a wide variety of topics and are frequently adjusted and changed to show growth and learning, particularly among people with niche interests. Through them, people are creating an internet that is less about connections and feedback, and more about quiet spaces they can call their own. Source.
A garden is a collection of evolving ideas that aren’t strictly organised by their publication date. They’re inherently exploratory – notes are linked through contextual associations. They aren’t refined or complete - notes are published as half-finished thoughts that will grow and evolve over time. They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing.” Source.
I mentioned yesterday that I want to turn this website into a place with “a bunch of stuff to click on.” Not a blog, not a portfolio, not a shop.
But all of those things. Plus my own sort of wiki, notes-to-self, guides, photos, designs …
Random scraps of me.
Here are some resources I’ve scrounged up on digital gardens and personal websites.
Personal Website Ideas
How to Set Up Your Own Digital Garden
Create a Digital Commonplace Book
Return of the Personal Website
Open Garage Door
I forget where I first heard/read the idea of “working with the garage door up,” but I think about it constantly.
It means sharing your process while you’re still in it—not waiting until everything’s polished, edited, branded or launch ready. Showing the planning stages, the half-baked thoughts, the false starts, the uncomfortable doubts. It’s your random ideas or things you find interesting that don’t have a formal “place or purpose,” but you share them anyway.
It’s about connecting with and inspiring others with the process, not impressing them with the final product.
I particularly like Andy Matuschak’s take on the concept:
One of my favorite ways that creative people communicate is by “working with their garage door up,” to riff on a passage from Robin Sloan. This is the opposite of the Twitter account which mostly posts announcements of finished work: it’s Screenshot Saturday; it’s giving a lecture about the problems you’re pondering in the shower; it’s thinking out loud about the ways in which your project doesn’t work at all…I want to see the process. I want to see you trim the artichoke. I want to see you choose the color palette. Source.
Today’s Garage Projects
One.
I recently finished The Notebook (not the tearjerker Nicholas Sparks novel). Eventually, I may try to take my messy notes and put them into a nicely written assessment, but for now, here’s where we’re at. These are my book notes … (way better viewed on a computer/tablet, or at least turn your phone vertical and pinch and zoom.)
https://app.milanote.com/1UxmWi1C0jw888?p=O1uAhuBoe6V
Two.
I’ve felt a little paralyzed on what my website should be/look like, and I think I’ve settled on this terribly profound direction: I want there to be a lot of stuff to click on. I want it to be stuffed full of my ideas, other’s ideas, interesting facts, poems, my creative portfolio, astrology guides, daily tarot pulls, color palette inspiration, book notes, Milanote tutorials, makeup recommendations, apps I love… I want to turn this site into a digital garden ← Digital gardens will probably be the topic tomorrow’s post, unless I change my mind, which is likely.
Three.
I created this graphic for one of my favorite poems.
Pretty Things
When I first started having the inkling that I may not want to write romance novels anymore, at least not as the all-consuming full-time job it once had been for a decade, I was terrified.
There was no back-up plan.
This was wildly terrifying on two fronts.
The first: Money. Obviously. I essentially quit my job.
But I can figure that out. What keeps me up at night isn’t that I have no idea how to pay rent. It’s that I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I wanted to be an author more than anything for literally my entire life, and suddenly that drive was gone.
Losing your job is stressful. Losing your purpose is devastating.
Whenever I start to spiral with a shrill, “What do I do if not write romance novels?!”
What do you want to do?
Without thinking, I always respond with the simplest of answers.
I want to create pretty things.
Minimal websites. Typography-first designs. Vision boards, wallpapers, logos, brand boards. I like to take concepts I love (astrology, tarot, digital gardens, slow living, commonplace books) and package them in an aesthetically minimalist and pleasing way. Book covers, pins, mood boards.
I’ve spent the past year or so trying to figure out how to stuff that desire into a business plan. A creative studio? A template shop?
I thought I was being practical, but I think I’ve just been … stalling.
Spending so much time thinking about what to do with the skill/passion, that I’m not actually doing anything at all.
So today … I did. I made pretty things with no agenda other than the creative process.
The first is a graphic I made to remember our meal from yesterday, in one of my favorite fonts. It serves no purpose but to please my own eye.
Below that is a wallpaper I made for July for my laptop and phone. If you want to download them for your own use, you’re welcome to.
Here’s to letting the creative process lead us, and not the other way around.
Yesterday’s menu.
July Desktop Wallpaper
{ download }
July Phone Wallpaper
{ download }
The Fourth
Happy Fourth to my fellow Americans. I love this holiday, especially now that our elderly dog is too deaf to hear the fireworks which used to cause three straight hours of her trying to dig to safety in the bathtub. 🙂🇺🇸
Weather
A flawless summer day in NYC. Sunny, low humidity and just a touch of a breeze. So naturally, we will be spending most of the day indoors. 🤷🏻♀️
Listening to
I will probably belt out wobbly alto version of Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” at some point today, but most of the the summer bbq / Fourth of July playlists out there start to get a little monotonous, like we’re only allowed to listen to Springsteen, Katy Perry’s “Firework” or country everything.
So I made my own playlist, one that probably only Anth and I will like. It has everything from Dolly Parton to Third Eye Blind to Oscar Peterson to Taylor Swift to Natalie Cole to Abba.
Watching
We watched Independence Day last year (which I remember being a lot more fun than it was on rewatch 🤔). Anyway, weren’t feeling that again this year, so I put together a list of campy favorites. We won’t get to all of them, but here are the contenders.
National Treasure
Nicholas Cage steals the Declaration of Independence? I mean, you’ve gotta. (I unapologetically love this movie).
The Parent Trap … the new one
Has absolutely nothing to do with the holiday, but it’s got flawless summer vibes and a great soundtrack. Impossible to watch without instantly wanting to relocate to Napa.
The Sandlot
American nostalgia at its best . “You’re killing me, Smalls!”
Jaws
I’m not sure I’ve even seen the whole thing! But apparently it takes place on the Fourth of July.
Maverick
Anth and I love this movie more than is strictly healthy. I like it better than Top Gun. I said what I said.
If we’re feeling ambitious and brainy:
Ken Burn’s Baseball or American Revolution documentaries. The latter’s only 12 hours, shouldn’t be a problem.
Eating
We always do fried chicken on the Fourth, but we’re changing it up this year!
We’re big Thomas Keller fans, and some internet sleuthing led us to this Fourth of July menu from his restaurant Ad Hoc.
We’re going to try and recreate parts of it.
Watermelon & Friseé Salad
Our version: watermelon, friseé, mixed pitted olives, radishes, drizzled with balsamic and olive oil
Lobster rolls
We don’t mess around with celery or even lemon. Butter, a ton of lobster, stuffed into the most basic of hot dog buns. That’s it. Maybe some chives. Maybe.
Corn on the cob & red potatoes
Low-key boil, then served with some chive-garlic butter.
Homemade Oreos with Peanut Butter Filling
I don’t have a sweet tooth, and always skip desert. My two exceptions are Oreos, or anything but peanut butter, so I’m counting the minutes until these!
Sipping
Whispering Angel rosé, Vermentino. Perhaps a Negroni for Anth (red!) and a Manhattan for me (American whisky!.) ← This is about the point that “God Bless the USA” will make its appearance, sung by yours truly.
Enjoying
Life.
5 Simple Things
Here are five simple things that dramatically changed my life for the better.
I wear the same thing every day
This one is such a minimalist cliché that it sounds almost culty, but I am so much happier when I keep my wardrobe at the absolute bare minimum.
I have wear a black linen-blend tee every day in summer. In fall it’s a long-sleeve black cotton tee, in spring a short sleeve cotton tee. Sweater in winter. I have 1-2 exact duplicates of each top for laundry day. I have exactly one dress for nice occasions, exactly one skirt for kinda nice occasions, and so on.
The commonly quoted rational behind having a “uniform” is that it reduces decision fatigue. Every choice we make throughout the day drains a bit of mental energy. Streamlining your wardrobe eliminates one early, unnecessary decision.
Which I know sounds a little silly. How much mental energy can getting dressed really use?
But it’s worth noting that former President Obama said this:
“You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
Steve Jobs said this:
“Every day I get up to a closet hung with the very same shirt, and the very same slacks, and the very same shoes … I do that so that I don’t have to think about that. And I choose not to think about that because I choose to think about much more important things.”
And Albert Einstein said this:
“I don’t want to waste my brainpower on what I’m going to wear.”
I mean, if it’s good enough for those underachievers…
I read the Daily Stoic every morning
This book has been a part of my morning routine for about four years now and I can say with total confidence that I’ve become calmer, kinder, and less likely to cluck about petty or trivial things.
It takes a single minute, maybe two, out of my morning, and this book makes me question and contemplate every single day the type of person I want to be.
This link is for the original version of The Daily Stoic. If you’re ever looking for a stunning gift idea, this leather-bound edition is one of our most prized possessions.
I quit dying my hair
I started going gray in my twenties and my hair grows fast, which means by the time I was 40, I was in the salon every two weeks.
After a year of contemplating “letting it go” but being too scared, when I was 41 I had a blunt chat with myself. “What’s the plan here, Lauren? To spend the next 30+ years going to the salon every two weeks, to sit in a chair for an hour to get chemicals brushed onto your scalp to pretend your hair is a color it hasn’t been since you were 23?”
That plan sounded horrible, so … I quit. I quit slopping black dye on my head every couple weeks.
I could write a whole essay about how freeing it was to go gray at 41 as a woman in a culture obsessed with youth optics. I could write a book.
Instead, I’ll say this. My mom (very supportive of my decision, btw) asked yesterday how I was liking the process, and I said, “Best thing I’ve ever done.”
Which I know is a little eye roll—it’s just hair. But a strange thing happened when I let my hair be itself; I started to be myself. When I quit pretending to be a brunette, I found myself questioning where else in my life I was pretending to make myself be “prettier,” more palatable, more in line with society. Embracing gray at a “young” age didn’t just change my look—it changed my personality.
Like I said. I could write a book.
I (mostly) quit reading the news
Anth and I quit checking the news every day, and have become happier, more productive, and more creative. For some reason, this often sets people into a tizzy. “Don’t you want to be informed?!”
To which I’m always dying to say, “You’re ‘informed’ and how’s that working out for you? You’re always worked up about something some senator said, and you seem kinda miserable …”
I don’t bury my head in the sand and ignore the world, I just prefer to explore and understand the world through reading books. I want to hear from someone who took years to research a topic, and another year to write about it. Not someone reading off a teleprompter or churning out clickbait articles about a topic nobody will remember next week.
As Anth said in this post, if it’s not worthy of writing a book about, perhaps it doesn’t need our full attention or to dominate our thoughts.
I journal
I used to really struggle with anxiety. Not in the “needs meds” kind of way, but a worrier, for sure. I say used to because I’m not anymore, not in the same way. Sometimes I try to pinpoint what changed, and shrug…no idea.
But a few days ago, I was anxious. Quite anxious, for a few days, just like the old me, kind of out of nowhere. It passed, and when it did, I realized something:
I didn’t journal on those days. I almost always journal at least once a day, but I didn’t on those. Which got me thinking back …
My anxiety disappeared when I started regularly journaling. There’s something about putting all the crap in your head onto paper to help realize a lot of it is just that: crap.
Journaling helps me identify which thoughts are worth exploring (creative ideas, etc) and which are best handed off to those patient, non-judgmental pages.
My Tech Habits
I’ve always been fascinated by how other people do things.
Morning routines, evening routines, writing processes, productivity systems, file management set-ups, goal setting processes. I’m into it, and I want detail.
When I read Erin Loechner’s For the Curious: My Own Tech Habits, Rules, Boundaries blog post, I knew I wanted to write my own.
I see a lot people talking about the tools they use in tech (favorite apps, digital set-ups, etc) but few people talking about the role technology plays in their life. Not just the ways we choose to use it, but the way we don’t.
Here are my tech habits, rules, and boundaries. There are many overlaps with Erin’s because I share (and have been influenced by) her digital minimalist mindset.
I don’t check email every day.
This one’s relatively new, and not so much a rule, as something I stumbled into. I used to check my email all day long. Not compulsively, but I think like a lot of people, my inbox was simply open when I was on my laptop. And whenever I reached for my phone, I’d check the Mail app out of habit.
I think the shift started when I quit wearing my Apple Watch. I’d grown accustomed to doing a quick check of my inbox on my wrist. When that was no longer an option, it broke the habit, and for whatever reason, I never felt compelled to replace the habit by checking my email on a different device.
I don’t have any rules about it, it’s not even a conscious thing. It’s, “Okay, no email on weekends” or “no email after five” or “I tackle my inbox on Tuesdays and Thursdays only” kind of thing. I just sort of … check it when I think about it.
Most email is not urgent, and if it is truly time-sensitive, my life is set up as such so that the one who sent it has my phone number and knows to text, which happens about once a year.
Inbox Zero
When I do open my email app, I don’t close it again until it’s completely empty.
I delete most of my email. Way more than I used to. Anything that’s just an FYI or heads up, I delete. I’ve quit doing the, autopilot “Thank you!” or “got it!” to every email. That’s just one more email in the other person’s inbox that they have to deal with/delete. No wonder so many people’s inboxes are out of control.
When it’s someone sending me something to read or watch, if I’m not in the mood or not interested, delete, unless the link/article is paired with a thoughtful discourse. I forget who planted this seed in my head, but I can’t get it out: It takes approximately 30 seconds to copy/paste an article link or YouTube link into an email with the note “thought u might find this interesting.” And yet when we receive such an email, we feel need to spend far more than 30 seconds reading/watching the thing sent to us, and then replying with something that proves we consumed it.
I’m not actually as snippy about this as I sound, I always appreciate someone thinking of me, it’s more that I no longer feel obligated to consume everything sent my way. And when I send something to someone else, I try to take put some thought and time into it. If I think it’s worth their time, then I should be willing to make it worth my time.
(👆🏻 I break that rule all the time, especially with poor Anth. “READ THIS.”)
If an email requires my response, I respond to it then and there. If it’s something chunkier that requires more time than I have in the moment, I drag/send the email to the Things app (my task manager) and set the date where I need to deal with this, based on its priority. (You can also send email to Apple’s free Reminders app).
As I write this, I’m realizing it’s really less about the an obsessive need to get to “Inbox Zero,” and more about ensuring that my inbox never doubles as a “to do” app. When I sit down to figure out what I want/need to do on a given day, I never have to open my inbox to see what’s languishing and risk getting derailed by low priority stuff.
I don’t subscribe to emails
Continuing on with my email habits, I don’t subscribe to … anything.
I try to live by this oldie-but-goodie:
Create more than you consume.
I find one of the easiest ways to make that happen is to remove any sort of “automation” from my consumption process. That means no email subscriptions of any kind. Not just from retailers and businesses (I prefer to buy new makeup or sweaters when I need new makeup or sweaters, not because I get an email letting me knew something is new and on sale) but from other creators/writers as well.
I used to make an exception for James Clear’s excellent 3-2-1 emails. It’s still excellent, but he’s become a bit salesy and self-promoting, and I don’t allow that into my inbox unless specifically requested, which I did not. Unsubscribe.
That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy other people’s writing, and that I’m not a superfan/follower of many writers and creators. I totally am.
But I find if I enjoy someone’s work enough, I remember them. I’ll actively seek them out to see what they’re up to. Case in point, the aforementioned Erin. I’ve read and re-read every single thing she’s written for years, but I’ve never subscribed to her newsletter. I visit her website when I think to visit her website, which is often.
Same goes for Ryan Holiday. I’m low-key obsessed, and visit his website once a week or so, not because I get his emails, but because I want to read what he has to say. This applies for authors I like as well. I’ve never subscribed or followed Ron Chernow, Lisa Kleypas, or Walter Isaacson, but I always know when they have a new book out because I proactively check every so often.
Does this mean I miss out on some nuggets by creators whose work I truly like because my brain isn’t big enough to remember everybody? Sure. But maybe this is a good thing. Maybe that allows me to stumble upon something new and fresh I’m meant to find, or better yes, create something new and fresh.
Email newsletters (and oh, hello, Substack) have been foisted up onto the Creator Pedestal in the past few years as the anti social media. “The only user base you actually own!” The advice is not wrong. I still think gathering newsletter subscribers is a way better option than amassing social media followers. I have a sign-up here on this site for people that do like to get email. My way doesn’t have to be your way.
But it’s worth noting that at the end of the day, everyone is still fighting for a chunk of your precious time and attention.
Protect your inbox. Create more than you consume.
My love of Pinterest is waning
As someone who’s been inactive on traditional social media for years, Pinterest has long been my safe haven.
And if you’re thinking, “Wait, isn’t Pinterest social media?” Not really. Marketing gurus call it a “visual search engine.” It’s more about finding creative inspiration for a specific concept rather than following or getting updates from a specific person/business.
But whatever we call it, it’s always felt a little less toxic than traditional social media, perhaps because unlike TikTok and Instagram, it hasn’t been deliberately engineered to be addictive and keep you on the app; posts are clickable to external links, which prioritizes the original creator of the content rather than platform itself.
That said, while I still do use and enjoy Pinterest, it’s less than I used to. What used to be a safe haven is increasingly feeling like a maze of billboards. Every urban sketch or color palette inspiration I want to save is sandwiched between an ad for Swiffer and an ad for ugly wide-legged pants. 40-60% of the posts I can see on my screen at a given time are ads.
I get it. Pinterest needs to make money somehow, we all do. But I have increasingly less patience for being constantly sold to. That old adage, “If something is free, you’re the product” is something I think about often. If we’re not paying for a product, it usually means our attention, data, or behavior is being sold to someone who is.
If Pinterest offered a paid subscription where we could use the platform without ads, I’d literally throw my money at them.
I pay for YouTube Premium
Which is why I happily pay for YouTube Premium even though I’m not really a YouTube power user. Mostly I use YouTube to watch “journal with me” videos, commonplace book flip throughs, and Hogwarts ambiance videos while I’m working. But the monthly cost is worth it to consume only what I want to consume without an algorithm trying to coax me to buy shit I don’t need.
I don’t listen to podcasts
I’m echoing Erin on this one, though my reasons for disliking podcasts are different than hers. To be really blunt, I find listening to someone blather on in my ear completely unbearable, no matter who it is or what topic.
I don’t keep work hours
Anth and I are both full-time creatives (I know, I kind of hate that term too, but I don’t have a better one) which means we get to set our own work hours.
It’s hands down the best part of being self-employed, which is why … we don’t set any work hours. We didn’t leave the 9-5 to create a self-imposed 9-5, or 7-3, or M-Th work week, or whatever. I know some people thrive by creating these boundaries; no email on weekends, no laptop after 4pm, whatever. That works for them. *
But not for us. We work when we feel like it, which honestly, is kind of all the time.
Our work isn’t something we do, it’s who we are. I’m not writing at 6am or designing a website template at 7pm on that same day because it’s work, I’m doing it because I love it. Because there is literally nothing else I’d rather be doing more.
So yes, we work on weekends, because the idea of a weekend has become mostly irrelevant to us. We work in the early mornings, we work in the late evenings, sometimes all the way through.
But we also take breaks. Yeah, you’ll sometimes find working on a new passion project for 12 straight hours on a Sunday by choice, but just as often you’ll find us at Dalton’s just a couple blocks over on a Tuesday afternoon with fries and a drink because we didn’t feel like working. If I need to step away from work, I do. If I feel like working, I do. The clock and calendar have nothing to do with it.
*I think if we had kids or one of us had a traditional job, this would probably be different; I think I would probably make sure I set aside dedicated family time. But we’re a self-employed family of two adults, which enables us to connect organically throughout the day.
I don’t take many photos
I used to take pictures of everything. What I was cooking, what I was eating. Sunset. Sunrise. Selfies. Grand Central every time I passed by. Literally everything my dog did. Until I realized that I almost never go back and look at any of the photos. And much worse, it serves as an excuse to keep our phone glued to our person. What if I need to take a photo?!
I’m not a purist. I do take the occasional pic, mostly if I think to share a little bit of my life with extended family, all of whom live in different states. But mostly these days I’d rather experience the moment than point my iPhone lens at it.
I try to go analog as often as possible
I love my Apple devices about as much as I love any of my possessions (In a fire, I’m grabbing my dog, my 12 inch iPad Pro with nano texture screen, and our go-bag with important documents in that order).
But I try also try look at something other than screens as often as possible.
I used to love the convenience of ebooks (especially in a tiny apartment with a tiny bookshelf) but these days I read physical books exclusively.
Afternoons and evenings always involve at least an hour with my notebooks, and I carry a little field notes book in my purse, even when I opt to leave my phone at home-especially then.
If I need a mental break, I try to reach for my sketchbook instead of a device.
Again, there are no rules. It’s not a “no screen time after 7pm” kind of thing, I just don’t want my phone to be a central part of my day. It’s worth noting that this becomes much easier when you don’t check email, don’t use social media, and don’t take photos. As such, much of the day I’m not even sure where my phone is.
One thing I would like to get better at is my mornings. I’d love to not keep the phone by the bed, but I need it to turn on the lights with our Home app at 3am when our blind, elderly dog gets a little disoriented trying to find her pee pad. That’s fine, but what happens more often that because I’m usually the first one awake and I don’t want to get out of bed, which wakes the dog, who then wakes the husband. So I reach for my phone as I wait for everyone else to wake up on their terms. Thus, far too often the first inputs into my brain in the morning is random crap on the internet.
I’d like to change that. Maybe do something crazy like lie there and … think.
I keep as few apps on my devices as possible
I used to be a bit of an app junkie, especially as it related to “productivity,” but I’ve made a concerted effort in the past couple years to simplify my life—routine, belongings, mindset, focus—and that includes my tech stack.
I’ll save the actual apps I use for another post, but my general rule is that they must be absolutely essential (Calendar, Messages) or delightful (or at least delight me). For example, I chose to purchase Things instead of using Apple’s free reminders app because I find the minimalist design is a joy to use.
Which is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately as it relates to my tech use. Joy.
We talk a lot about what tech does—how convenient, how useful, how easy to connect! And we’re quick to point out tech’s benefits as a justification for how often we’re staring at screens, but less willing to question what it costs us.
Yes, tech can help us save time. But is it time well spent?
Do we take that extra time to write that book we’ve been meaning to? Send a postcard to a college friend? Dust off the hobby we always say we’ll revisit? Read a book? Make brownies for a neighbor? Write a thank you note to our mail (wo)man?
Or do we google yet another pointless thing, amassing knowledge that we’ll never do anything with, because that would require us to put the phone down. Doomscroll our news app/site of choice and get all worked up about the state of the world. Watch another video of someone making a viral sandwich. Refresh our email/DMs.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking how tech feels—how it makes us feel.
If we’re not walking away clearer, calmer, more joyful, or more connected to what matters after picking up our phone, tablet, or computer—maybe it’s worth asking why we picked it up in the first place.
Emotional Accountability
The Daily Stoic has been a part of my morning routine for a couple years now. And supplemented with other reading (The Courage to be Disliked and Ego is the Enemy come to mind), I’ve developed one sort of grounding principle that shapes the way I move through life:
Other people are not responsible for my happiness. I am not responsible for theirs.
That’s not to say I don’t slip up constantly. That I don’t get my feathers ruffled by an email, or irritated at a tone or comment. That I don’t get my feelings hurt.
But I’m getting better at responding to those things. Of reminding myself:
I can choose whether or not to get upset. I am the only one who gets to decide what bothers me.
100% of the time, I am happier when I choose to not let things bother me.
It goes the other way too. Wondering if someone else is upset by a choice I’ve made. I’ll tie myself up in knots taking on moods or wants that do not belong to me. Literally sick to my stomach because I know someone wants me to do something that I don’t want to do.
I have to constantly remind myself: I am not in charge of whether or not another adult human decides to get upset. That’s their business.
That’s not to say we should all live isolated lives, or tromp on other people’s feelings all willy-nilly. We don’t get to say, “Well, you chose to get upset that I said you were ugly and stupid, soooo… that’s your problem.”
We must live with integrity, and act with kindness. Non-negotiable.
But I think too often we misapply ethical principles to suit our emotional needs. We expect other people to do what we want them to do. To want them to want what we want them to want.
And when they don’t, weaponize it. We make it a them thing. The other person is selfish, uneducated, inconsiderate, unkind, or just plain doing life wrong.
But maybe we have it wrong. Maybe the most selfish thing we can do is expect other people to live according to our terms, our values, our wants.
Recently Anth and I got into a … well, I’m not sure it was even a fight. But it was a deeply unpleasant discussion. I wanted him to respond a certain way to something I was working on. And I let myself felt really wounded when he was in a very different place.
That’s the key. I let myself.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend it didn’t hurt because I’m a Stoic. That’s a common misconception. Stoicism is not about not having feelings. People get that wrong. Emotions are a part of being human. Stoicism is about acknowledging your feelings, and deciding what you’re going to do about them.
It’s about saying:
Okay, that stung. What’s my next move.
I have to admit, pre-Daily-Stoic me, my next move would have been to draw this out into a huge drama that I allowed to shake the entire foundation of how we operate as a team. “You don’t support me!!!” (insert shrill reality TV energy here)
I was tempted! “BUT MY FEELINGS!!!!!!”
Instead, I channeled all my energy in the day or two that followed into thinking: “Okay, Lauren. He feels that way. What the hell does it have to with you? You get to decide if his stance impacts your mood and next steps.”
It took work. It takes work to take accountability for your own emotional mood.
But it’s worth it.
The key to a happier life is not wishing/hoping for other people to think like you, be like you, please you.
The key to a happier life is learning how to consistently say, “This happened, this person thinks this way, is this way.”
And then to say:
“Cool. But what’s my move?”
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” —Marcus Aurelius
Kate Spade Shoes
The water was coming up from the floorboards.
“This is weird, right?” I asked, applying pressure to the floor with the sole of a hot pink Kate Spade stiletto that was a little too big, but that I’d gotten on steep discount at Nordstrom Rack.
Water oozed. Squish.
Anth did the same thing with his shoe in another corner of the living room. Water there too. Squish. “We should call them.”
Not five minutes later, Chad, the head maintenance guy in our apartment building was in our unit; they don’t mess around with plumbing issues. Five minutes after that, Chad left and promptly returned with Amy, the building manager.
“A pipe burst under your shower and spread through the entire apartment. We need to get you out of here so we can tear up the whole floor.”
“Today?” I asked distractedly, noting that our dog seems increasingly displeased by her wet paws.
“Right now. For good. We’ll find you an open unit in the building.”
This is how we ended up living in a lavish two-bedroom corner apartment on the top floor of a luxury apartment building in downtown Seattle for roughly the same cost as our modest one bedroom with the squishy floors.
It remains our nicest home to date, with unobstructed views of the Seattle skyline and Mt. Rainer, two ovens, huge bathtub, a balcony... I don’t remember the square footage (who are we kidding, I never knew the square footage), but I do know that our current bathroom could have fit inside that walk-in closet. And that wasn’t even the only walk-in closet.
I remember those years fondly. How could I not? We had cushy-ish paychecks, a decent amount of disposable income, and an apartment nicer than we’d properly earned. Sure, we weren’t in love with our jobs, and lived for Friday afternoon even as we started dreading Monday morning. But that’s what you do in your 20s, right?
We knew the bubble would burst when our lease came up for renewal, and we braced. But not hard enough. Our lease renewal packet was more grenade than bubble. Rent went back up to market value which was roughly double what we’d been paying. And so far out of our price range that we didn’t even bother with the conversation of, “Well maybe we can make it work if we cut back on happy hours, and quit buying Kate Spade shoes at Nordstrom Rack …”
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had been able to stay in that apartment. I think we probably would have. And I think our lives would have gone a very different direction. Eventual house in the Seattle burbs? SUV? Two SUVs? Middle manager in a cubicle? Kids? Maybe. Maybe even probably.
Instead, we were staring down the barrel of an expiring lease with no idea where our next home would be. There were other apartments in Seattle in our price range, obviously. But we’d had the taste. A taste of the “good life.” We’d become snobs. I’d also recently typed “the end,” on my first romance novel, was increasingly unhappy at my day job.
Suddenly the life that had felt so sparkly and new just months before was peeling at the edges. We weren’t hard-up, but there was a vague restlessness that we hadn’t even identified until …
Anth got a call on a random sunny afternoon from his boss. His company was expanding to New York, and was Anth interested in relocating to NYC to open the Manhattan office? The trick: it was happening fast, in August.
Our lease in the cushy apartment we could no longer afford? Also up in August.
We didn’t believe in signs, but this definitely felt like a sign.
We said yes before we could think it through, and I’m glad we were so rash. Had we had time to research cost of living in NYC, those Seattle one bedrooms we were wrinkling our nose at would have looked awfully nice by comparison.
But we found a place in the city. New construction, which felt safe considering our tight timeline meant we would be signing a lease sight unseen. And it was in midtown, which to the uninitiated, seemed a prime central home base until we could get our bearings in a new city.
Plus, we could afford it. Barely.
But it still somehow felt right. Or maybe we were just too far committed. We’ll figure it out.
Anyone who’s ever moved knows that it’s not until you have to pack up your home that you realize how much shit you have. This becomes even more acute when you’re moving from a huge two bedroom with ample closet space into …
A studio apartment. With no walk-in closet. There wasn’t even a closet, just sort of wall with a nook to hang a few clothes in the hallway leading into the bathroom. And by hallway to the bathroom, I mean take a medium-sized step and you were in the bathroom.
We got rid of nearly everything. We had to. And when we arrived in Manhattan and began unpacking, we had to get rid of more. Until we were down to the bare essentials, not because we were minimalists—not yet—but because it’s what would literally fit. At one point I was down to three pairs of shoes. A pair of sneakers, a pair of “nice but practical” shoes, and one pair of horribly ugly waterproof boots for east coast winters. Those discount pink Kate Spade heels were long gone by this point.
It’s been sixteen years since that pipe burst under our floorboards. Fourteen since we moved to New York.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what’s next for me, for us, which counterintuitively, means I’ve spent a lot of time looking backwards. At that Seattle apartment, which to my memory, feels a bit like the Golden Age. Back when fancy dinners were commonplace, I thought nothing of buying a new dress for an upcoming event, and our bathrooms were freaking marble. Not faux. The real stuff.
And then I think back to that little studio apartment as well. Where our bathroom doubled as a phone booth, because it was the only place in the home with a door when one us needed to take a call. Where our idea of a big splurge was hailing a cab during a sudden downpour, or a slice of cheese pizza from Claudios for dinner.
Our living situation right now is somewhere in between the two. We’re still in New York, and there are no walk-in closets or marble bathrooms. But we have do have a large one bedroom, and we now have two doors—no more bathroom phone calls. We still go to Claudios for cheese pizza, only now we can afford the whole pie.
It’s a good life—a very good life, one we work hard to craft intentionally. If I had a time machine, I wouldn’t go backwards.
But if I could bring elements of our past into our present?
It wouldn’t be from the Seattle golden age. I have a fondness for those glittery Seattle years, but it’s more bemused nostalgia.
But I do miss what happened after. I miss what happened to our lives, to us, when we got rid of it all.
In our earliest months in that little studio, we had no furniture besides a mattress on the floor. One sweltering September evening, Anth was working late. I had the windows open because money was tight, and AC costs money. I sat cross-legged on the hard floor, writing my second romance manuscript on my laptop.
I was hot. I was sweaty. Supremely uncomfortable. And almost unbearably … happy.
I miss the peace that comes from having everything you need, and not a single thing more.
I do not miss the Kate Spade shoes.
Someone’s Kelly
Writing regularly feels right, but I’m also feeling self-conscious as hell.
Not only because publishing anything is inherently vulnerable, but because I worry I’m doing this whole non-fiction/essay/memoir writing wrong.
Worried that I’m not sharing anything valuable with the world. I read the work of Glennon Doyle, Erin Loechner, David Sedaris, all of whom share their life and the inner workings of their mind with the world, and it feels profound.
But I sit down to do it myself, and wonder, “Am I just hitting publish on my diary? Are people going to read this and think, ‘Um, you sound like a self-indulgent hot mess … no need to share your every issue and thought and gripe with the world.’
To combat this feeling, I started watching David Sedaris’ Masterclass. It’s already immensely helpful, especially as it relates to people I know reading what I’m writing.
But I also started digging into myself. About why I want to write. Why I feel called to share the deeply personal, even when it comes from deep vulnerable places. Especially when it does.
Part of it, I think, is ingrained. I’ve never not wanted to write.
But my desire to share the personal goes back to a very specific moment.
First, indulge me in a little backstory:
It was late 2022, and the pandemic lockdown had largely lifted. Social lives came back online. The world seemed thrilled.
I was … conflicted.
Here’s something the extreme introverts in your life might be embarrassed to say aloud: We didn’t mind the COVID lock down. Yes, the death and stress and loss was horrific. Hard pass on that. We of course wouldn’t repeat it.
But not having to be anywhere? Go anywhere? See anyone? All without having to come up with an excuse? We did not hate it. We thrived.
And so while I was delighted to have the threat of the virus itself in the rear view, I was faced with the startling realization that I was less happy in late 2022 when normal life had mostly resumed than I had been in 2021 when my days were full of … nothing.
Suddenly my calendar was full of stuff again. And I pasted a smile on my face and nodded along eagerly to all of the “It’s so great to be out at a restaurant again!” declarations.
But beneath the surface? There was a knot in my stomach every time there was something on my calendar. Anything. Fun stuff, stuff with people I care about, things I should enjoy, that in theory I do enjoy, and yet:
There was a knot. Not quote dread, I just already felt weary and eager to be on my way home, and I’m not even there yet.
And I know most people delight in a free day—once in a while. But in the deepest authentic “real me” part of myself that I try to bury? I want them all to be free days. Not so that I can never see people or leave the home, but so that it’s spontaneous and organic and of the moment. If I feel like it. Because sometimes I do feel like it! I just don’t know today if I’m going to feel like it next Saturday.
But here’s what I hated even more than having something on my calendar:
Myself.
I hated myself for feeling that way in the first place. Convinced to my core that I was broken for not being excited about dinner reservations, or shows, or travel plans, or happy hour.
And so one morning, when I found myself dreading dinner plans three days from now and feeling like a Horrible Human Being, I googled this exact phrase.
“I hate having things on my calendar.”
It was a hail mary. A desperate call to the universe to reassure me I’m not broken, or at least not the only one on the planet who is.
And you know what?
I’m not the only one. I know this, because a stranger named Kelly wrote this on a random blog:
When I have something to do on my schedule, I can’t stop thinking about it all day. Even if it’s just one thing, I base my whole day on it. And having MORE than one thing scheduled in a day? I instantly feel my stress rise.
Having a clear day with nothing to do feels like a dream. No stress, no obligations, and I can make my own decisions. Ahhhh.
I don’t even know if Kelly’s a man or a woman. We’ll never meet. But those few lines written by a stranger on the internet changed my life.
I’m not the only one!
I don’t know if Kelly meant to be brave when they put that out there. I don’t know if it was just a throw-away musing for them.
But for me, it was pivotal. It didn’t eradicate the knot in my stomach whenever I have to be social. That’s still there. But now I know I’m not the only one. Even if it’s just me and Kelly, and least it’s me and Kelly. Not just … me.
Why do I write? Why am I trying to be brave enough to write the deeply personal?
I write to be someone’s Kelly.
If not that you relate to The Knot, then something else here on my website. That I hate ketchup, that I struggle to balance my ethical disdain for Amazon with my love of convenience, that I don’t know how to define myself, and am not sure that I want to.
I write the darkest, weirdest parts of myself, the parts I sometimes hesitate to share even with Anth, in hopes that a kindred spirit will find it, read it, and their soul will sigh in relief. I’m not the only one.
I write to feel less alone.
Ironic, I know, for someone who loves to be alone :)
Below is the link to the Kelly’s post if you’re curious, but I will warn you: the website is completely smothered in janky ads I don’t remember from last time, including one pervasive pop-up that takes over the entire page repeatedly.
What am I
Ryan Holiday is one of my favorite writers and his annual birthday posts are some of my favorites. He has a knack for stating what should be obvious, but most of us overlook or willfully ignore in the day-to-day.
Take this nugget:
I’m not sure I’ve ever opened a social media app and then after logging off thought, “Wow, I’m so glad I did that.”
Or this:
George Raveling—who I think is one of the most remarkable people of the 20th century—said that when he wakes up in the morning, as he puts his feet on the floor but before he stands up, he says to himself, “George, you’ve got two choices today. You can be happy or very happy. Which will it be?”
But the one that’s been looming extra large in my mind is this one:
Most labels are unhelpful, too—filmmaker, writer, investor, entrepreneur, executive. These are nouns. But what gets someone to that position? Verbs. Forget the nouns. Focus on the verbs.
I prattled on the other day about my journey in decoupling my identity of romance author from writer. And while it feels really good to be writing again, it wasn’t really the whole picture of what’s been going on with me over the past couple years:
Who am I? What am I?
I enjoy a lot of things and I’m good-ish at a lot of things. Which is not a unique concept. It has a name: polymath. In more modern circles it’s often called a multi-hyphenate.
In an age where authors are also podcasters, and podcasters also have YouTube channels, and YouTube creators often have a course, and from that course you can learn to be a coach, who has a Substack…
Being a polymath isn’t just common, it’s perhaps necessary in today’s creative economy.
There are even multi-hyphenates who make a career out of being multi-hyphenates. Take Jenna Kutcher’s homepage:
She’s way more than just one thing, and we are too!
It should be freeing, right? YOU CAN BE ALL THE THINGS!
And yet for years now, every time I go to create my Pinterest profile bio, my about page, even my homepage I freeze up when I try to finish this sentence:
“I’m Lauren. I’m a …”
Who am I? What am I?
For example, I love to design brands and websites, and I’d like to think I have an eye for it, but I hesitate to call myself a designer for fear real designers will scoff.
I’m a New York Times bestselling romance author, but I haven’t written a book in years, so … former author?
Dog mom? Nope. I love Bailey, but I’m not putting that.
I know a lot about astrology and can kinda sorta read your birth chart, but wouldn’t call myself an astrologer.
I’ve written a screenplay, but does it count if it’s not yet a movie and I’m not working on another one? Not a screenwriter then.
I love to talk about and teach the Milanote app, but “Milanote expert” feels ridiculous.
I’m highly organized, especially digitally, and know I could help other people be as well. But what the hell do you call that? Professional digital organizer? Is that a thing?
I’m good at helping my author friends talk through and organize their careers, and feel like I have a million tips to share on how to write a romance novel. So, author … coach? educator? I guess, sometimes.
And I of course love to write, I’m good at writing, and I do call myself a writer…
But “I’m a writer” feels so woefully far from the full-picture of how I spend my days and what I have to offer, of ways I can contribute. And practically speaking, the kind of writing I like to do right now is not the kind people will pay me for.
Who am I? What am I?
Even if I did get comfy calling myself a designer, an educator, an astrologer… how do I take all of the things that I am and make a career out of it? Does anyone want any of this shit from me?
I’ve been looping in this identity-crisis for years, and laying awake at 3am at night, the self-reflection too often takes an ominous turn.
What am I doing with my life?
It’s uncomfortable to realize: I’ve been so busy deciding what to call myself that I haven’t really been doing anything.
It’s why the above quote from Ryan about labels being unhelpful was such a welcome light bulb moment.
I’ve been focusing on nouns. And in doing so, asking myself the wrong question: Who am I? What am I?
Here’s the better question:
What will I do today? What will I do right now?
Focus on the verbs.
Today, I will create something that did not previously exist and put it out into the world. Repeat.
Letting Summer be Summer
New York is stepping into summer in classic fashion: heat wave.
Temps? Nineties. Heat index? Hundreds. Chance of a good hair day? Zero.
I used to bemoan New York summers, especially these kind of days, the ones where it’s stifling by 7am. And while I still catch myself whining, it’s mostly because I go into small talk auto-pilot when someone says, “whew, hot one today!” in the elevator.
The truth is, I’ve quit minding summers. Not because I particularly relish the sticky, smelly heat of the city from June through September.
But because life seems too short and unpredictable to be constantly wishing for the next season, the better season, the trip to a place with better weather.
In the past couple years, I’ve gotten a bit better at “being here, now.” Figuring out how to enjoy this moment. To find delights hidden in any forecast, in every season. Even summer in Manhattan.
No, it’s not particularly comfortable outside. I don’t step outside into the thick air that smells a bit like hot garbage and think, “Now this is nice!” I’m not Pollyanna.
But there are sneaky, other joys if I look for them.
The fact that that for a few months, the city is already awash in morning twilight when we start the coffee at 5am.
Entering a revolving door in swampy heat and exiting into the refreshing bite of my apartment lobby’s air-conditioning. The shock to the system. The respite of home.
The threat/promise of a summer thunderstorm. The kind that are either a doozy or not-at-all, and you likely won’t know which until you’re caught in one.
That said…
All my big talk about making peace with the weather aside, I mostly hibernate in summer. The way some hunker down in winter until the thaw, I go mostly underground in summer and emerge when it’s time to wear boots again.
Which means that summer tends to be an incredibly creative time for me. That’s perhaps an odd thing to say, since I’m a professional creative. Ideally all times are at least a little creative for me, and when they’re not I’m in trouble.
But summer is different. Even though I don’t have kids or head to the beach for the season, I’m not immune to summer vacation energy. Work hours shorten. Productivity seems somehow less the point of it all. When June hits, my creative pursuits skew more recreational than professional. Neglected art supplies come out, screens go away. My email inbox grows fat, but so does my sketchbook. The first from neglect, the second from little bursts of wobbly artist bravery.
A legacy from the summer of 2020. That strange, surreal time when it hit all of us that the COVID lockdown wasn’t merely a little spring blip. With no end in sight, I, like many of people, had to create new ways to fill the days.
For some it was making sourdough, for me, it was eating store bought sourdough, and dabbling with watercolor. I didn’t take to that particular medium—too imprecise—but I did fall in love with the process of creating something that I didn’t have to worry about making marketable. Of spending countless hours on something that would never become a side hustle.
Even more, I fell in love with the tactile. Of rediscovering the sensation of tools other than electronics beneath my fingers. My iPad Pro is one of my favorite and most used possessions, but I’ll take the scratch and flow of a real pen and real paper every time. Procreate’s a pretty cool app, but it can’t beat the satisfaction of painstakingly drawing a crooked tree on a blank page, even with smudged ink. Especially with smudged ink.
And so the long summer days begin.
The ever-more challenging quest to be out of bed before the first hint of dawn. Leisurely conversations over coffee as Anth and I muse whether this will be the day we finally figure out, what’s next, what are we doing, where are we going.
Maybe, maybe not.
But in the mean time, it’s ink-stained fingers, and fresh notebooks. Flowers doodled in margins. A new pen I probably did not need. Nectarines I ate a day before they were perfectly juicy because I couldn’t wait. A glass of ice cold rosé, dinner of tinned fish and baby carrots, because why not. Jazz. Frizzy hair. Linen everything.
And if I’m lucky, a summer storm.
Amazon
One of my least favorite things about myself is that I have daily fantasies about being brave enough to stop buying from Amazon …
But then five minutes later, place a Prime order for makeup remover pads. Pee pads for the dog. Sea salt Chomps. Laundry soap, toilet paper, dishwasher pods, loofahs, a new storage shelf, pens, notebooks, kitchen tongs, dish towels, bath mats, batteries, packing tape.
The list sometimes feels endless. My order history tells me it pretty much is.
Like so many people, I persistently fall into The Trap.
Amazon’s cheaper, easier, and it can be here tomorrow.
And so I try not to think about the other factors.
Like the fact that I live in Manhattan, and can walk to get all of those things myself, which would require no packing material or fuel, and would, you know, get me outside instead of waiting for UPS to do everything for me.
And then there are those Other Things we’ve heard and try to ignore, like Amazon’s reputed sketchy treatment of its workers, the broader environmental impacts, the accelerating decline of small businesses, that whole pesky monopoly thing.
And yet, if I want a new Midori grid notebook and I want it now, I am remarkably good about putting my head in the sand, or sticking my fingers my ears when it comes to the ethical implications of ordering from Amazon. Lalalala I can’t hear you!
Sort of how I generally eat well, am fully aware of the date on processed food and fast food, and yet good luck convincing me to say no to a Taco Bell chalupa.
And so I don’t say no, and then …
I feel gross after eating that chalupa.
Because it’s shit.
Much like the way I’m increasingly beginning to feel about ordering from Amazon.
Gross.
Because it’s shit.
For me, there’s something working beneath the surface, something more nuanced than listing “Amazon is problematic because…”
Increasingly I have an emotional, almost visceral reaction when I order something from Amazon. The nagging sense that something is just not right.
Frustrating me lately is my inability to put my finger on exactly why.
Why do I feel always feel like not quite looking myself in the mirror after a spontaneous click of Buy Now on Amazon. Or why do I feel ashamed of myself whenever I think about actually using that Amazon affiliate link I’ve had on the back burner for years.
Is it that Amazon knows I need to reorder tampons before I register my period is right around the corner? Or that when I add dishwasher pods to cart, I’m promptly presented with paper towels and I realize I’m almost out of those too. Convenient? Undeniably yes. But also distinctly unsettling.
Is it the way I type in a search with the exact book title and exact author name, I’m still presented with dozens of other search results that I very clearly wasn’t looking for?
Or that every book page (Amazon’s OG purpose, remember! books!) is smothered with sponsored ads to other books. Shopping on Amazon for books is like going to Barnes & Noble and picking a book off the shelf, and someone thrusting another book in front of your face because the author or publisher paid them to.
Is it the fact that Amazon has largely excused us from having to make choices. “Well, they said I got this last time, and that was fine, so …” As we shouldn’t be bothered to think or shop for ourselves because an algorithm knows better than us what we want.
Maybe it’s all of that.
All I know for sure is that there’s an instinctual unease. A sense that I lose a little something every time I choose to order from Amazon, or at least, become less the human I’m meant to be.
Anth I are dying to read Ron Chernow’s new Mark Twain. We make a point to order from Bookshop.org which supports indie book stores, or sometimes The Painted Porch, which is an indie book store. It’s always more expensive, and this is a (literal) price we’re willing to pay to ensure that when we travel to little corners of the United States, we’re able to tuck into little book stores trying to survive in Amazon’s wake.
But this latest book on Bookshop.org is $41.85.
Shipping is extra.
Woof.
We spend a lot of money on books, and this still felt like a hard punch in the face. So I couldn’t resist. I checked Amazon’s price.
On Amazon, the same format of that same book is $24.47 as I write this.
Shipping is free.
It was really hard to not just one-click buy on Amazon and have it delivered tomorrow.
And yet, I hesitate.
Maybe it’s because I’m an author myself, and know what it feels like to devote years of your life to writing a book. To 12+ hours in your chair putting words on a page in a single day. To literally ignore your family and everything around you because you’re so committed to birthing this thing.
Only to learn that Amazon is going to discount your work for $1.99 or $3.99 (in my case). Or $24.47 (in Chernow’s).
And perhaps the dollar amount matters less than the fact that Amazon cares very little about standing for something other Cheap.
Then again, who doesn’t delight in cheap shit.
“Damn, a set of twelve for $4.99, and this artisan store wants to charge me $19.99 for one?!”
Until we pause a moment. Change our emphasis. And realize we’re actually just getting cheap shit (see: the AA batteries we just bought from Amazon that last approximately 45 seconds, or the off-brand Q-tips that snapped in half when we merely looked at them.)
Or, just as bad, maybe worse, we all support a company that takes quality good and merely prices them as shit.
I’ll pause here to note that my argument is wobbly at best because it’s hypocritical. Most of my author income comes from Amazon, even as my touch points with Amazon as an author have been almost exclusively negative.
Hypocrite.
And I’d be silly not to mention that Amazon’s cheapening of the price of books means that they’re accessible to more people than ever, and that’s a good thing (and yet … libraries…).
Nuanced.
Or that for those of us without access to Costco or another big box store, Amazon’s price on Kleenex is hard to look away from.
Practical.
And yet, the ick remains.
This sense that our lives are determined by algorithms. And that we’ve lost the sense of discovery that happens when we go looking for our new nightstand lamp, and come home with a vase that looks like Medusa.
Or just the satisfaction of buying a quality hand-crafted picture frame direct from the person who actually made it rather than from the ginormous company that is going to throw it in with the same box into which it throws bulk dryer sheets.
Maybe next time I need my ankle socks in bulk, I care less about, “Wow, this pack of thirty socks is only $11.99!” and start asking why it’s only twelve bucks. Who made it? What was compromised?
Something is always compromised.
Perhaps I’m ready to treating myself, my belongings and the planet with more respect than Cheap Shit, Fast.
I may not yet ready to spend $41 on that Mark Twain biography, but I’m not going to give Amazon $24 for the book either.
Conceptually, I love the idea of saving $17.
Ethically? I question the actual cost. I’m ready to start asking what corners were cut to make that $17 in my pocket possible.
Yeah, I may gain cheap book. But what do I lose in the process?
Afraid
I was a quiet, awkward-ish kid with a big gap in my teeth, a unibrow, and a genuine excitement for writing assignments in school.
Now, I was a good student, but not a particularly dazzling one. Group projects were my nightmare, I could never sleep the night before a math test, and science experiments were just never nearly as cool as the teacher’s excited tone implied they would be (A battery out of a potato you say!? Boy oh boy, I hope they make lab coats in size Fifth Grader!)
But a double-spaced, one-inch margin, 12pt Times New Roman two page essay on MLK, tornados, or the theme of My Ántonia? I loved every part of that. The trips to the library for research (this was the 90s, so I yes, I was probably wearing Doc Martens or Adidas Sambas with my school uniform as I perused the Dewy Decimal system like a casual pro). The satisfaction of writing the notes in my college-ruled spiral Mead Five-star notebooks, even as I wondered why they didn’t come in cuter colors. And most especially, the almost unworldly satisfaction of watching a blank page fill with words. My words.
👆The above love of writing as a kid is usually part of the story I tell when people ask if I always knew I wanted to be come an author.
Yes. Yes, I did always want to become an author, and when I was 28 I quit the corporate world to do exactly that. And I’ll forever be grateful to have spent more than a decade living my dream career. But in hindsight (I’m 42 now, and therefore Wise), I see that that something happened without me realizing it:
In my concentrated pursuit of becoming a published romance author, I somehow narrowed my view of what it meant to be a writer. Even when I broadened my scope to include screenwriting, in my head, being a writer meant creating fictitious stories.
Which might not have been a big deal, had my life gone to plan. I thought I’d be like my icons, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Nora Roberts, and the late Mary Higgins Clark, writing novels well into my 70s and beyond. And nobody was more miffed than me to wake up at 40ish with the uneasy but unavoidable realization of:
I don’t really feel like doing that anymore—at least not right now.
So I hit pause on being an author.
And so ingrained had this idea become that for me, writing = novels, that I inadvertently hit pause on being a writer as well. I closed the door on that life-long identity because I thought it no longer fit now that I was no longer publishing romance novels every year.
It’s a strange sort of blind spot, considering I read nonfiction almost exclusively, but while I strongly considered (and attempted, and failed) to pivot to another fiction genre, it never occurred to me that I could step away from novels and still be A Writer.
I’d forgotten that girl who delighted in writing the cliché “What I did over summer vacation,” who couldn’t wait to write the book reports that my classmates loathed. Or the college student who pulled an all nighter writing to Simone de Beauvoir and the application of The Second Sex to politics, even though the paper wasn’t due for another week.
And you know what happens when you turn your back on the thing you were born to do, even accidentally? You listen to Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” on repeat while eating string cheese, drinking Chard, and trying not to freak out about what you’re supposed to do for the next several decades.
Who am I if not a writer?
One of my most-used apps is Things. Don’t worry, this is related. So anywa, Things is not only my task manager, but my “catch all” for thoughts and ideas I want capture when I don’t have a notebook nearby.
For example, it’s not unusual to open my Things inbox and find things like “Is time a natural phenomenon or human framework?” sandwiched right in between “buy toilet paper” and “clean out the cheese drawer.”
The other day, a thought kept nagging me, so I opened Things and typed this:
I feel like I have things to say, but I’m afraid to say them.
Then, as I usually do when I’m in the app, I did a quick scan of the rest of the inbox items to see if anything need to be scheduled or deleted.
My eye caught on this, written months ago:
I feel like I have things to say, but I’m afraid to say them.
Verbatim of what I’d just written.
Suddenly, the very thought became very loud. Less a recurring passing thought, and more a calling. And a realization that when I’d put down the pen, so-to-speak, I’d inadvertently been censoring myself. Silencing myself.
I knew that when I typed “I have things to say” was that I really meant was “I have things to write.”
Writing isn’t just something I do, it’s who I am. It’s how I express myself. It’s when I’m most alive. The most me.
Things I’m meant to write. Not just made-up stories, but my stories. Essays. Poems. Papers. Opinions. Articles. Blog posts just like this one. All those things I’m afraid to say, but somehow suspect that I’m meant to be the one to say them. Even just collecting other people’s writing in a commonplace book of sorts.
But I’m rusty.
Enter, The Summer Writing Project.
Every day from June 20th to August 31st, I’ll be writing something. Anything. And posting it here on this blog. (Yes, we’re starting using the start of astronomical summer for the start date, and the end of meteorological summer for the end date. Because today is the first day of “official summer,” and that’s handy, but also, summer is dead to me on September 1st.)
My husband decided to join me in the SWP. (an acronym makes it real)
There are no rules. Not in length or topic. It can be a list of things we ate that day, a book review, a poem, a rant, a personal essay, a deep thought, or a single sentence.
You can subscribe below to get notified of new posts if you want, though you should know I make no promises on what sort of content you’re going to get. They may be only lightly edited, or not at all.
I spent more than twelve years writing 42 novels that I hoped other people would like.
This summer, I write for me.
It’s what I’m made for.
(No, YOU went too deep on the first SWP installment …)