If you’ve been monitoring your inbox carefully, you’ll notice I’ve suspended the Friday release dates. Though I’m under no illusion that you are waiting with bated breath, hot coffees, and eager anticipation each week, I can’t in good conscience update a cadence or break a promise without some sort of direct communication addressing the change.
You see, I have this annoying core quality of extreme self-policing that prohibits me from falling through on expectations, even those self-imposed, without intense guilt or repeated apologies. Neither of which I’m proud of, but that’s another mental issue to process in another essay.
So instead of ghosting you readers and listeners (believe me, there’s enough ghosting in the world) and pausing TFYGP for a little while with no context, I’d like to set some intentions for this third month of the year.
March is for me.
Writing has become more of a chore than an escape over the past few weeks. Maybe it’s because I’m working a few jobs to stay afloat financially or simply facing the end of winter blues, but I found that like clockwork, Thursday nights rolled around, and I had nothing planned and nothing drafted. Thus ensued a swift flurry of late-night writing and googling for silly links and an inevitable, exhausting pang of disappointment when I realized the essay’s word count was veering more toward 500 than 1000.
And all of this crescendo of activity… for what? There’s no one holding a gun to my head forcing me to write! I could insert a thoughtful analogy of the gun being my anxiety, but I’ll save you that potential fleshed-out visual.
And what example am I setting for my audience if I’m stressing this much to deliver content “on time?” Even if my audience is small, it’s dishonest for me to suppress creative blocks, exhaustion, and distress to maintain an illusion of: “I’m doing this thing and loving it! Look at me, and laugh at my stuff, and click on this link, and be sure to subscribe!” As Haley Nahman put it in her essay the other week, my outward behavior felt disingenuous and remarkably unsexy.
So with the encouragement of a select few in my inner circle, I put a pause to this project for this month and am instead focusing on comforting hobbies I’m being pulled toward.
I’ve always had a love affair with books, but with my newly minted Chicago Public Library card, devouring books and devising my plan of checkout attack has become all-consuming, escapist, luxurious.
A few nights ago, while texting a friend, she asked me: “What would you do if you had a week off?” Within 10 seconds, I wrote back: “Stay at an all-inclusive resort, read a book a day, have other people cook for me, and talk to no one.” That got me thinking: why not incorporate some of that week-off fantasy into my daily life? Thus, books.
March is for madness.
Something has been in the air the past few weeks, and I can’t quite place it. People around me are getting new jobs, test driving convertibles, flying to Utah, contemplating stealing dwarf monkey grass, asking if vodka shots are Keto approved.
On Monday, Chicago lifted its mandatory mask mandate (or, as the 9-year-old I nanny called it, “the masked bandit”), and seeing people’s lips in the grocery store has never felt more scandalous and seductive. I wonder if we’re all crawling out of this collective nightmare of seclusion buzzing with energy, not quite sure where to exert it.
In my world, I’m entering into a prescription transition period and therefore facing insomnia, bizarre nightmares when I do sleep, brain fog, and headaches. I’ve searched “executive functioning” and “SNRI withdrawal symptoms” eleven times in the past 24 hours. Not sure what new information I think I’ll get with each successive search or if it’s the aforementioned brain fog that’s causing the repetition, but I’ve been feeling…. mad!
There may be a simple antidote for this feeling of madness: take a chill pill, relax, remove things from your life that don’t serve you. I could make some quippy retort in response to all of the commonly suggested remedies above, but instead, I’m choosing to sit in awe and curiosity of the surrounding madness and refer to this quote from Mari Andrew’s Sticky Mind Problems: “I have never met a truly creative person who isn’t also very anxious.”
March is for the matriarchy.
After a frustrating series of Hinge dates last weekend, my friend Jordan made an apt suggestion to “Lean into feminine energy.” This simple sentence gave me a new mission for the day. Bolstered with a new purpose, I quickly bought a sage smudge kit and made a list of ways to embrace the power inherent in being a woman. I won’t reveal the complete list, but to give you a taste: “using only lamps” and “keeping fresh flowers” made the cut.
Also, please note that I strongly considered “March is for menstruating” as the subheading of this section, but I thought better of it. I’m committed to the cause of the chuckle, even in this more serious issue of TFYGP.
March is for meandering.
There’s this pawn shop meets secondhand store on Clark Street that I pass by with Dexter the dog. In the glass display window, tiered blue velvet shelves showcase a selection of traded-in items for sale: mostly jewelry, an old version of a Macbook, a trombone, a watch (not a model worth reporting). Each time I pass by the window, with Dexter pulling me toward the nearest streetlight to pee on, I command him to “Stop it! Come here, Dexy Baby!” and survey the items for sale.
There’s been this 80s era gold necklace with an oblong sapphire pendant that struck my eye each time, the way it draped over the bust in the window. On Friday, I noticed it had been sold or taken off display and rotated for a new piece, and I felt this feeling of sadness that it was no longer there. I had a fantasy of stopping in and treating myself to the purchase of this necklace, maybe if I’d had a good night of tips at the bar or gotten a raise. But that unique item was no longer available to me, and I mourned the loss of potential.
When you have a job like I do, nanny/house manager/dog walker/grocery shopper, you meander through your tasks and share that patience with the object you’re taking care of: child/dog/laundry. Often, the kids and I will be walking on the sidewalk together and will stop to debate what we think the cat in the window’s name is, wonder in unison what destination that plane is flying toward, or explain why the rock salt on the sidewalk has the same chemical makeup of the salt you sprinkle on your food.
These tiny moments, where you suspend your schedule and take your damn eyes off your damn phone, feel like meandering to me. The necklace, the cat, the plane, the salt… all of those small things can only be cherished if you take the time to notice them. Though I love technology, TikTok, and YouTube as much as the next gal, I hope to meander more this March. The weather’s warming up, and other than my core responsibilities to show up to my jobs on time, I don’t have anywhere to be or anything to write.
That’s where I’ll leave you. I hope to see you in April refreshed!
Clearly and dearly x Clara