The New York Times had a great piece about the idea of the entire nation taking a one-week, paid vacation. All on the same week. Everyone included.

Of course, this would mean that people couldn’t go to hotels or restaurants or travel very far. Hotel workers would be off, same with restaurant staff, and travel workers. Hospitals may throw a wrench in the plans—we kind of need health care workers to keep working—and it would be really hard if you needed something at the store during this time. But other than those things, as long as everyone is willing to stay local and not do anything, it could totally work.

Vacations are hard because life continues on without you. Planning needs to happen. Getting back up to speed once you return needs to happen. It can sometimes feel like more work to take a break than to not take one.

But this idea is perfect because every single person would be off at the same time. Across the world. Everyone would get somewhere and then just… stop.

I’m in.

There was a piece in Vox recently that was about the decision whether or not to have children, but I thought the advice in the piece was applicable to anyone at a crossroads during infertility as well. Just as it is hard to know whether or not to begin with family building, it’s also hard to know whether to continue with family building.

I guess the article got me with these lines:

Most people who contact me say they feel like they’re the only one who can’t decide. I let them know immediately: They’re not the only one. Our society allows little room for ambivalence around this topic.

That’s because we, unfortunately, live in a pronatalist world where the unspoken message is that everyone should want children and should have them, the end.

It is hard to detach from that pronatalist society to make it a personal decision (instead of a societal one) because we are always surrounded by that message. And the people around us are also influenced by it. Therefore, it’s like trying to have a conversation while surrounded by noise. It takes a lot of effort to separate what a person wants as an individual from that larger societal message. And I think this is equally true no matter where you fall on the want spectrum. Society just has a way of getting very loud in delivering its message of what it thinks you should do and how it thinks you should do it.

The other piece of this article that grabbed me: “It’s important to know that a person’s desire and decision are not always the same, nor is the goal for them to be the same. The goal is to know your truth about each of them.” In other words, these are two separate things that we sometimes try to solve at the same time. And we can’t always deal with both simultaneously. Sometimes it’s about figuring out one, accepting it, and then figuring out the other.

She gives six steps to help people decide, and many are helpful in also deciding whether or not to continue with family building when you’re in the middle of it. Placing this here in case it helps anyone.

We are nowhere close to being ready to travel—not even to another state—but we’ve taken the first tentative baby steps towards travel by thinking about traveling and Googling details. It’s such a weird baby step, but it is what it is.

One of the kids threw out the idea of Iceland in winter, and then the other chimed in that it checked all of my boxes: cold, isolated, rocky, and surrounded by puffins. (Though, I don’t believe there are any puffins in winter because the flock that moves through that northern Atlantic area is there spring to late summer.)

It would be kind of perfect. Northern lights, dark all the time, negative temperatures, and ice caves. Does it get any better than that? Plus, it’s a short-ish flight from here.

Or if air travel still feels fraught, we’ll aim for Canada.

Where are you dreaming of going in the future?

It’s been shared in your feeds 3000 times by now, but on the off-off-off chance you missed it, Adam Grant has a great piece in the New York Times about the mood of the moment: languishing.

He explains: “As scientists and physicians work to treat and cure the physical symptoms of long-haul Covid, many people are struggling with the emotional long-haul of the pandemic. It hit some of us unprepared as the intense fear and grief of last year faded.”

In other words, the panic of the pandemic is over (in the sense that our nervous systems have adjusted to that threat), and now we’re dealing with the emotional aftermath of being on high-alert for so long. “It wasn’t burnout — we still had energy. It wasn’t depression — we didn’t feel hopeless. We just felt somewhat joyless and aimless. It turns out there’s a name for that: languishing.”

The power in the article is that he gives you steps to get out of the state of languishing; or, at the very least, to understand that naming it gives you power (somewhat) over it. It’s just a really great piece if you’re not feeling like your usual self and don’t really know why.

I read a really interesting piece, posted long ago, where a person created a hierarchy of self care. The base of the triangle were the most basic things that had to happen so the next level up could happen and so forth.

I tried to imagine what my own hierarchy would look like, and it made me wonder why I don’t prioritizing the lower base so the upper tiers can happen.

Because at the very bottom is sleep. I don’t get enough sleep. I don’t prioritize sleep. I don’t put down the book at the end of the night and turn off the lights. I’m much more likely to stay up and try to finish so I can start a new book tomorrow. So sleep—the base that needs to happen so I have the energy for the next tier.

On the same tier is alone time. It’s as important if not more important than sleep. I can’t function to do all the other things above it without alone time.

Next up is another two-fold tier: eating things I enjoy (that are healthful) and exercise (yoga and walking). If I’m eating a bunch of stuff I don’t enjoy, I’m in a miserable mood, and if I can’t exercise and close the rings on my watch, I feel anxious. So these two things need to happen daily.

Next up from that is meditation. It’s foundational. I meditate at least once a day. On hard days, I toss in a second or third session.

Next up from that cleaning. An odd one because I often don’t feel like cleaning, but organizing, cleaning, even showering, makes me feel 10 times better.

Next tier is time with others: Josh, the twins, Beorn, family, friends, etc. I save up energy with alone time and spend it on together time.

And the top point of the self care triangle is reading. And games. But mostly reading. Still, I like to be challenged by crossword puzzles or Sudoku or match-3 games, and I play them daily. That’s the time when I feel my best.

Games and Reading

Time with Others

Cleaning

Meditation

Eating Things I Enjoy and Exercise

Sleep and Alone Time

What does your triangle look like?