23. Throwback

When you travel with two other girls of similar age (or at least esprit), there is no one to complain about taking too long to get ready. You eat when you please. You walk aimlessly on cobblestone streets simply because it’s beautiful. You squeal over the fat Bulldogs gracing blue doorways in Le Marais and the scroll-worked balconies that adorn all the apartments of Paris. You stop at all the stands at a farmer’s market you chance upon. Tasting five different kinds of olives from the nice oliveman and buy un peu to eat later with your wine.

You take 984326 photos and spend ten minutes in silence on a park bench while you all edit your respective pictures and selfies. Music is always playing as you get ready. There are never enough mirrors.

//

You find a garden and sit on a blue bench under the perfect cloudless sky, next to the lawn that is so vibrantly green it looks like you’re seeing it through a filter. You look up at the enormous  phallic monument that is intricately made and notice that new leaves are starting to bud on the tree behind you.

Vagrants sleep on benches next to you. Their heads resting on shopping bags stuffed with their belongings. And still, everyone seems happy and life seems so good.

(Photo: Sacré-Coeur on our last day)

22. Comparison is the thief of joy

Yesterday marked 21 posts.

As a profoundly undisciplined individual, this is a big freaking deal for me. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. Well, I took more than 21 days, and some posts were less than substantial, but I’m here. On the other side of 21.

And yet.

And yet, it only takes a look at a list of winners to make me feel thissmall. 

Up until five minutes ago, I was feeling pretty great. I had woken up early and finished two online courses, sent out a long over-due email, gave and received love. And yet. In comparison to these amazing strangers, I felt like none of it mattered.

I realize we are all running our own race. The only person I should be trying to beat is myself. Yet, this is so hard for me remember when another accomplished person is a mirror, reflecting all the things I am not.

So, this is what I propose:

To surround myself with people I love. To live a life that makes sense to me. To continue to grow in ways that stretch me and scare me. To be better today than I was yesterday. To be happy for another’s success without making it about me. To know that a lot of things are not about me. To know success comes in many different forms, and resentment cannot coexist with joy.
Small accomplishments are still accomplishments.
And Happy Hump Day.

(Photo by Matt Blease, illustrator-extraordinaire)

21. Hodge-podge

This is what today looks like:

Waking up early, and then sleeping in late.

Gratitude for having the time to read lengthy articles about medicine and a neurosurgeon’s account of his mistakes. My heart swelling with pride for all my primary care doctor friends.

“Our philosophy is that the primary-care physician and patient should become the hub of the entire health-care-delivery system,” Hernandez said. He viewed the primary-care doctor as a kind of contractor for patients, reining in pointless testing, procedures, and emergency-room visits, coördinating treatment, and helping to find specialists who practice thoughtfully and effectively.

“Do No Harm” is an act of atonement, an anatomy of error, and an attempt to answer, from the inside, a startling question: How can someone spend decades cutting into people’s brains and emerge whole?

Ear-marking recipes for butter chicken (or murgh makhani).

Reminiscing about my favorite place in Paris.

Pining after beautiful things I don’t need and are sold out.

Getting in that lesley fightmaster yoga.

Waiting for 5pm.
(Photo: Aziz Ansari as Tom Haverford in Parks and Rec. Because that face)

20. Sleep is restorative

Barely-there earrings for a barely-there grace this monday afternoon.

19. Dear Mama

One mother’s letter to her young daughter:

“Thanks for watching me so that I can be accountable to my words. So that I’ll pinch at the cushy layer around my hips less, and quit trying to deny the things I need – like quiet and a little space – because I want you to not be afraid to ask for what you need. And along those same lines I hope you see me asking for help…Watch your dad and I work intentionally on our marriage. Forget what you heard Cinderella say the other night, because even though you may indeed experience the grace of finding “the one” you need to know that “the one” will disappoint you at times and make mistakes but, little girl, it’s still a fairy tale and real life fairy tales are so much prettier than the movies. Because scabs, wounds and trials just make us shinier. And they give us stories worth telling.”

Thankful for all the strong loud loving women who have raised me. 

You made all of us. 

(Photo: Halmuni blowing out her Mother’s Day cake)

18. Feminist Fridays

Just wanted to put this out there, as this resonates with me more than I care to admit.

Third-wave feminism and a look at two new books: 

Consider Spinster‘s concern with the way women melt into their relationships: “It wasn’t merely that my identity was constructed entirely out of my relationships with other people — my relationships were my identity. My relationships took the place of myself,” she writes. Anyone who has worked with younger women will tell you this mentality is neither unusual nor specific to Bolick’s milieu. Subsuming yourself in relationships, no matter how empowered you were raised to be, is a common affliction of growing up in patriarchy.

(so it’s not just me?)

“The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own,” wrote none other than Betty Friedan. The secret that Toni Morrison’s story reveals is that women, in fact, do better by their loved ones — whether in traditional, unorthodox, or unofficial arrangements —  when they buck the messaging and become their most fulfilled selves, refusing to be swallowed by relationships or reduced to them.

My feelings about (third-wave) feminism and how women should treat other women can be summed up by Amy Poehler,

“’Good for her! Not for me.’ That is the motto women should constantly repeat over and over again. Good for her! Not for me.”

Preach.

17. Adventure is out there

  

I came across this article some time ago. A young family uproots their comfortable life and moves to South Africa, with a goal to “reset.” I saved the last paragraph after reading it. Since then, it’s been a chunk of text that’s been buried in the notes on my phone. I read it from time to time, sometimes on accident and most times on purpose. Always reminding me of what’s important.

 

And as I’m discovering, the big adventure is not a place, an experience, or a plane ticket. The real big adventure is the thrill of a life (any life, anywhere) that’s lived honestly, deeply, and with intention. This kind of life doesn’t avoid questions, risk, or vulnerability. This kind of life is the one I want.

 

(Photo: Sunrise over California) 

16. Better

We all want to be the best version of ourselves. Richer, thinner, kinder, pursuing our passions. I don’t know what your best self looks like but I know how hard it can seem to get from where you are to where you want to be.

Something that’s helped me from getting overwhelmed and falling into a shame spiral:

Do one thing today that gets you closer to your goals.

It’s blaringly obvious and almost idiotic in its simplicity but it’s true. It’s so easy to get bogged down by the enormity of writing a book or losing thirty pounds, that it can seem impossible. But one thing? One thing is so doable, even for me.

What that looks like for me, lately:
– move my body (for my the sake of my mood and my inner thighs)

– write (here)

– practice kindness

– read (better)

Be better today than you were yesterday. Even if it’s in the smallest of ways.

15. Haters

I’ll keep it short this Monday:

(and then some). 

14.

1. Designlovefest in Amsterdam is basically my dream vacation

2. I will never understand when/why/how to wear this.

3. Garance is 40, and she wrote the sweetest letter to her 20 year old self.

The truth is, everything you’re afraid of is going to happen to you.
You’ll be poor. You’ll get dumped. You’ll lose someone you love. You’ll be ridiculous. You’ll make mistakes…Sometimes you’ll feel completely lost….But whatever happens, you’ll always have yourself….Learn to let go and give yourself over to loving arms. Learn to see the magic of existence.

4. If you’re as addicted to brownie brittle as I am, you need these sheet pan brownies in your life.

5. Finally, rediscovering Anais Nin:

I know that human beings place upon an object, or a person, this responsibility of being the obstacle when the obstacle lies always within one’s self.