Category — Uncategorized

I’m reading 10% Happier, and one of the things that Joseph Goldstein tells Dan Harris to do when he’s ruminating on the same worry for the 90th time is to ask himself, “Is this useful?” I’ve been trying to remember it when I restart a stress loop in my head at 2 am when I’m lying in bed. Is worrying about this right now useful? Maybe it is because I’m trying to work out a solution. Maybe it’s not because I’m just replaying the same conversation in my head again and again, and nothing is changing.

I read a post on Gretchen Rubin about the idea of making lists when you’re anxious. She was interviewing Chris Guillebeau and he said that he uses two prompts when he’s anxious, writing out the lists in his journal.

Prompt One is “What’s going well right now? (Because no matter what I’m anxious about, there’s usually something that’s going well or that I can otherwise be grateful for.)” and Prompt Two is “What bothers me? (Because identifying the root cause of distress is the first step towards remedying it.)”

And I sort of mentally combined the two pieces of advice and started using the prompts to write out the things I’m anxious about and then evaluate (when I see them on paper) whether they’re worth feeling anxious about. Is it useful? Sometimes it is because writing it out gives me a starting point for tackling the problem. Sometimes it isn’t though the act of taking something out of my head has worth as long as I only do it once.

We skipped a bunch of months going to Chincoteague, some of it a conscious decision and some of it just logistics. So August was our first time back on the island after many months. We kept hearing the same refrain: Where have you been? And while it felt a little awkward to explain why we had been away, it was really nice that people noticed that we weren’t there. It made me feel like we had reached an in-between zone. We weren’t locals, but we weren’t tourists. We were infrequent locals or regular tourists. Infrocals? Regists?

Anyway, it made us feel like our presence mattered–not just for the money we were putting into the local economy but because they liked us enough to remember us month-by-month.

It made me want to not let so much time pass between visits.

*******

Josh decided that we needed to become regulars somewhere close. I used to be a regular at the coffeehouse inside a bookstore, so much so that they named their chocolate egg cream after me. (Mel’s Egg Cream… okay… maybe not that exciting, but still.) And we’re regulars at a nearby water ice place. But a few years ago, he decided that he wanted us to become regulars at this small, family-owned Italian restaurant, and we’ve done a good enough job that the owner stops by the table and plays catch-up when we come in but not good enough that they can guess our order. Yet.

Where are you a regular?

The headline caught my eye: “Are Parents Enabling Their Grown Children by Paying for Them?” Enabling? That’s a word I usually use for parents who do their child’s homework. So… were these adults refusing to get a job, living in the basement and playing video games while their parents worked?

No. They were just adult kids. Full stop. Any adult kid. And the payment in question was the dinner check. Was it enabling if you took your grown kids out to dinner every once in a while and picked up the check or brought your kids on vacation with you and paid their way?

This was a case where I peeked into the comment section, and… wow… lots of opinions on an optional, family-by-family situation. In other words, I could pay for my kids and you could not pay for your kids (or vice versa) and neither decision affects the way the other family operates.

I mean, yes, it’s an advice column, so it makes sense for people to offer up advice. To state how their family handles the situation and allow the pooling of ideas to inform another person which decision they want to make. But the judgment! The name calling! The commentary on what other people do vs. what the comment writer does!

In the middle of trying to read the comments, a pop up came onto the screen with Oprah’s face asking if I was ready to live my best life and sign up for… something. Her newsletter? Her magazine? I don’t know because I was so distracted by the comment section on her article.

It’s interesting because we’ve been having a lot of face-to-face conversations with people about how we’re handling paying for college. There have been few times when the other person and I have the exact same parameters for covering (or not covering) college, but we both share what we’re doing and why and walk away either unchanged or maybe even rethinking how we planned to do things. It would be lovely if comment sections worked in the same way, especially when it comes to family-by-family situations.

For the record, we pay for the twins now, and we’ll pay for the twins later, choosing to only do both things–go out to dinner or go on vacation–if we can afford it. (Meaning, if we can’t pay for four meals, we probably shouldn’t be spending money on two meals, either, and instead choosing to dine together in a less expensive way.) Not because they expect it or demand it, but because it feels like a small kindness we can do to nurture them. But, of course, that’s not the only way to show a small kindness, so I trust that other families will find their own way.

This is a story with a happy ending, but it begins with stepping in dog shit.

I didn’t realize I stepped in dog shit until I saw the smear on the tile floor. It was just a tiny blob, but I got the bleach bottle and sprayed the floor to clean it up. Not thinking, I also sprayed the bottom of the shoe, which was a pair of canvas Toms.

The colour immediately started draining from the canvas, turning the back of the shoe a light reddish-brown. The Toms were still wearable in the sense that the bleach didn’t eat a hole through the fabric, but they looked really weird. It had been a hard morning overall, and I walked upstairs to meditate instead of dealing with the ruined shoes.

But when I finished meditating, I realized that I could dye the canvas with silkscreen ink. This was the second time printmaking supplies had come to the rescue that morning. A friend had a broken plastic box top for a large bin she keeps outside, and I told her not to get a new bin because the old one could be resealed with screen tape. (It’s a waterproof tape you use to protect your screens.) Not the most conventional use of screen tape, but I use it for everything that goes outside in addition to protecting my silkscreen frames.

So printmaking was on my mind, and I realized I could dilute some black ink and use it like a dye. I painted it onto the canvas and voila–my shoe is black again.

The kids needed to hold the shoe to the light to see where the colour changed and said it was impossible to see just from wearing them out and about. So… printmaking to the rescue. Twice.

The title that got under my skin: “Is it Possible to be Child-Free and Content?”

In case you didn’t know, there are multiple routes to happiness. But beyond that, this post is definitive proof of why titles matter. The piece that the post is about is stunning. (“Children felt like both a way to jump-start my real life and a way to end it.”) And has a great title––”How to Build a Life Without Kids.” It is clear. And it points out in no uncertain terms that it is possible (and even probable) to be child-free and content, a question that the poster clearly doesn’t need to ask if they read the piece.

Titles matter because if I had only rolled my eyes and hadn’t clicked, I wouldn’t have read this moment:

I would often catch myself entertaining other people’s fantasies of what it would mean for me to have children and, briefly, intensely wanting those fantasies too. Later, I’d worry about my indecision. I’d be in the shower, or about to fall asleep, and I would question who was right: them or me?

The updated piece (it was republished this summer) is a mixture of women who wanted to have children and couldn’t build their family and people who knew they didn’t want to go the parenthood route, and the whole thing is a great read.

These are questions every person needs to ask themselves with any of the “givens” in life such as go to college/get married/have a career/have children. To not get caught up in other people’s fantasies but instead carefully weigh each decision and go with your own feelings.