#1: Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think
“A few researchers have looked at this cohort to understand what drives their unhappiness. It is, in a word, irrelevance.”
I love.
Alone, I still love,
Even when I am alone, I love.
In company, I am more than whole,
I am solitude by choice, and I am whole.
#3: El Lazo Fuerte by Juana de Ibarbourou
Crecí para tí
Florí para tí
Fluí para tí
Alas dí por tí.
“My PIN number to this day is my second grade best friends birthday. There are people I don’t talk to anymore whose families are still in my prayers. There are shirts I wear to bed from exes of 8 years ago who are married now with kids. And I haven’t found a macaroni salad recipe better than my college boyfriend’s moms’. Our lives are made up of so many people and when people become parts of our lives, some parts remain long after they leave. And in the same exact way, it’s comforting to know there are so many lives you’re still a part of that you have no idea about.”
#2: Hey, Pretty Shining People
Why, why, what a terrible time to be alive if you’re prone to overthinking
Why, why, what a terrible time to be alive if you’re prone to second-guessing
The note is cute and down right admirable, especially because of the maturity exuded from a 6yo. But I confess I am also here for the comments… “When the 6 yo gets it but the republicans don’t.” 😂
#4: The conundrum between being special and being happy
[…] most people never feel “successful enough.” The high only lasts a day or two, and then it’s on to the next goal. Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill, in which satisfaction wears off almost immediately and we must run on to the next reward to avoid the feeling of falling behind.
Intimacy of crying in front of you.
Intimacy of singing (badly) at the top of my lungs while road tripping.
Intimacy of driving with you in the car, exposing my subjectively bad driving skills.
Intimacy of sharing meals and letting you see me eat freely, no pretense.
Intimacy of letting you know the foods I do not eat.
Intimacy of discussing a book together.
Intimacy of letting you know what my favorite movies are, no matter how childish.
Intimacy of letting you see my camera roll.
Intimacy of letting you hear the most-played songs on my Spotify account.
Intimacy of letting you see me sleep.
Intimacy of having you over in my house, of seeing the inside of my bathroom, of seeing my messy kitchen.
Intimacy of the unladylike laughs that resemble snoring more than anything else.
Intimacy of talking about our views of money.
Intimacy of recognizing your handwriting.
Intimacy of cooking for you.
Intimacy of talking about our childhoods.
Intimacy of doing grocery shopping together.
.
…funny how intimacy has been reduced to sex, when clearly there’s so much more that makes us tingle, that sends shivers through our spine, that weakens our legs.
#1: The Best Workday is Sunday
Get a little done on Sunday, have a little fun on Friday. Write an email on Sunday, watch a YouTube video on Thursday.
#2: A Note To My Remaining Students
#3: “Your chocolate chip cookies are better than you mother’s.”
After twelve years of marriage, seventeen years together, my husband says to me, “Your chocolate chip cookies are better than you mother’s.” It’s an otherwise standard evening: we’re in the kitchen after dinner, I’m at the sink rinsing dough from the bowl of the stnad mixer, he’s about to collect our four-year-old for his bath.
To understand the gravity of his pronouncement is to know that my mother is in fact famous for her chocolate chip cookies–famous, at least, in a certain set that includes my father, their various neighbors, plumbers who need extra motivation to finish a project, every friend of my youth, my own son. She bakes them to make the house smell good when my sister is coming to visit or when a realtor is coming through with prospective buyers. She wields them as if they possess a kind of supernatural healing power, an ability to relieve back surgery pain or the fallout of childbirth or broken-heartedness.
Case in point: At eighteen, a freshman in college, I went to Philadelphia to visit friends. They introduced me around the gathering of new acquaintances in their form common room, and while I didn’t expect these people to say, “oh, yes, hello, we’ve heard so much about you,” I also didn’t expect it when they actually said, “oh, yes, hello, we’ve heard so much about your mother–the one with the cookies.”
The truth is, I bake chocolate chip cookies from the same recipe as my mother; the one on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse bag, with only slight modifications. And yet, my mother’s are on another plane: fluffier, richer, more substantial. It seems not a coincidence, then, that the only person ever to insist that mine are superior to hers is the person I married.
He is flush with boyishness now, sneaking another cookie. “Objectively better,” he says, before walking out of the kitchen to get our kid in the bath.
These are the thins that aren’t marriage exactly–aren’t part of the big agreement we made when we got married, aren’t any of the millions of small negotiations and commitments we continue to make as we stay married. They are something else, some kind of supportive tissue, as if the marriage is the primitive, rudimentary joint of bone to bone, and then these moments are the tendons, lithe fibers, holding it all together, allowing it all to move. — by Kelsey Motes-Conners
Dunning-Kruger effect, in psychology, a cognitive bias whereby people with limited knowledge or competence in a given intellectual or social domain greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence in that domain relative to objective criteria or to the performance of their peers or of people in general.
#2: The Secret To a Fight-Free Relationship
“They noticed that by waiting, they could avoid the pain and gamesmanship of impulsive arguments; in the midst of a fight, they were too preoccupied with “winning” to attempt to solve problems. For Cutler, the distance often brought clarity. By the time she had read through the paper in her desk drawer to prepare for an upcoming contract talk, she would deem some of the entries too trivial to raise.”
A very interesting article, factual article, that proves that kindness is really the foundation for a long-lasting relationship
This post really warmed my heart. If only we could cheer for each other like this, with no envy, no hidden-agenda, no ulterior motives… what a different world would this be.
#1: Modern Love: An Anxious Person Tries to Be Chill
“Henry didn’t need things to be dramatic to feel alive because he paid attention to the small details that make life feel miraculous. His capacity for delight, his seemingly boundless sense of wonder, was one of the first things I loved about him. I just didn’t know it at the time.”
Brave is matching your insides and outsides.
If one wants to ride and does, that’s brave.
If one does not want to ride and doesn’t- that’s brave.
Actions are not inherently brave- the honoring of the inner compass instead of the outer expectation is the braveness.
Brave cannot be judged by the crowd. Sometimes we are the only one who knows we’ve been brave.
And that is enough.
That is everything.
#3: “Wishes for sons” by Lucille Clifton
i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon.
i wish them no 7-11.
i wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
i wish them one week late.
Just a good ‘ol pieces of heart warming news. There are people who care.
I often think about giving up. Admittedly, today I started my day wanting to give up.
Not on life—no need to panic there—but I am constantly tired of always swimming against the current. I am tired of being resilient. I am tired of life seeming uphill more often than not. When I reflect on it, I believe it’s because I overexert myself. I go full speed, I take no breaks, I put my life on hold, which every now and then leads me to a point where I get frustrated, tired and resentful.
A few months ago, I received a promotion. And it has been exhausting.
Netflix recently launched a series called The Chair, staring Sandra Oh. The series explores the life of Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim, a professor who’s been newly named Chair of the English Department at the fictional Pembroke University, an elite college. In her new role, we see Ji-Yoon struggle to meet the demands of her new position, her role as mother, as a friend, and as a woman. In one of the episodes, she has to make it to a meeting so she drops her kid with her dad, who complains that her family barely gets to see her anymore. Frustrated, Ji-Yoon says: “Appa, I don’t know what you want me to do. This is for my job!” Her dad says “I thought this promotion means you don’t have to work so much.” To which Ji-Yoon wisely replies: “What promotion ever means you don’t have to work as much?”
Right?! When will work ever become easier?
It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago, when I had to pull an all-nighter to stay afloat with work and I had a pounding headache that it dawned on me that life is not supposed to be like this. Life cannot be spent working 15-hours days. And you might think, umm that should be kind of obvious… well, yeah. I knew that I was working too much, that it was not a healthy lifestyle, but it never got through me how bad was the situation I found myself in.
So there I sat, at 7:30AM, having not slept at all, having to take a shower to dial into my “first” meeting of the day, feeling tired, frustrated, guilty and extremely mad. And I knew something had to change.
It was as if the universe had heard my unspoken pain and my unheard complaints that I found a book recommendation by Luisa Weiss: “Burnout” by Emily Nagoski PhD and Amelia Nagoski DMA. The term burnout was first established in 1975 by Hebert Freudenberger, a condition that encompasses emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decreased sense of accomplishment.
I am burnout, and it’ll take time to recover from it. I have found myself needing to take a step back and redefine the important and non-negotiable things in life. I am taking time to find my meaning in life. I am taking time to examine what I want my future to look like. I am determined to savour the days of work, but also the weekends, and the evenings. I am excited to broaden my interests and to go back to one of the things that I love doing the most… classes.
#1: Beth Wilkinson – Lindsay Magazine
“If you are never getting noes, then you are probably not aiming high enough!” Beth is the founder, editor and creative director of Lindsay, based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. In this brief talk, she shares seven lessons that she has learned since starting her magazine: make something with love, pitch with care, never ever take silence as a no, don’t take noes to heart, don’t set your own limitations, it’s not meant to be easy and be proud of your successes.
Eric Eliasson and Lara Mitra interviewed several liders to understand what makes a successful career. While there is good advice there, there’s one that particularly caught my attention:
“We have never expected more from our careers. Jobs purport to give us everything: belonging, purpose, meaning, community, and an identity. Buying into this mindset can lead to unhealthy results: when work does not go well, you will feel unwell. For me, the key to avoiding this cycle is to diversify the things I am passionate about and dedicate my time to. Kat Cole, former President and COO at Focus Brands, shared in our interview how putting more time and energy towards volunteer work made her happier and ultimately more effective. By diversifying, I lower the stakes for what work needs to do for me — and all my human needs can be fulfilled with a variety of pursuits.”
Which reminded me of a sound advice given by Neal A. Maxwell: “[…] some of us neglect to develop multiple forces of satisfaction. When one of the wells upon which we draw dries up through death, loss or status, disaffection, or physical ailment, we then find ourselves very thirsty because, instead of having multiple sources of satisfaction in our lives, we have become too dependent upon this or upon that. How important it is to the symmetry of our souls that we interact with all [principles], so that we do not become so highly specialized that, if we are deprived of one source of satisfaction, indeed we are in difficulty. It is possible to be incarcerated within the prison of one principle. We are less vulnerable if our involvements […] are across the board. We are less vulnerable if we care deeply about many principles—not simply a few.”
Realizing you’ve made a mistake quiet.
Saying something hurtful and immediately regretting it quiet.
Not able to understand someone’s pain quiet.
Walking at 6 AM on sidewalks whose pillowy snow has been untouched quiet.
Finishing the last page of a book quiet.
The instant after having been told “I love you” quiet.
Failing at something quiet.
Receiving a ‘no’ when hoping for a ‘yes’ quiet.
Being the last person to exit the room quiet.
Internal struggle to gather the courage to be brave quiet.
The moment after saying a prayer quiet.
Getting lost in your thoughts quiet.
Getting lost in music quiet.
the-pickwick.com 