Another week down in the strangest year of our lives! I have some delightful treasures for you this newsletter. But before we do that, I have one Q+A that I want to answer. I intended to answer more, but…alas. Time is a flat circle.
Q: “Weight gain during this craptastic time. Feels hard, but I don’t want to just ignore it.” — anonymous
A: (takes your head in my hands, looks deeply into your eyes, with great love) I’m not a doctor, nor am I a nutritionist, so please take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt. You are undergoing massive amounts of stress right now. I know that because everyone on the planet is undergoing massive amounts of stress right now just living through a global pandemic. Add on whatever personal qualifiers you have in your own personal life and you’ve got a real s-word sandwich. Can I just tell you that you don’t have to add this to your plate? That your body is under enormous pressure and it’s okay if you’ve gained weight. You’re not failing, you’re not wrong, you’re not broken. If you put your energy into depriving yourself right now or worrying about the weight that you’ve gained, you’re going to end up even more stressed out and frustrated than you already are. You’re putting impossible expectations on yourself.
Something that has really opened up my eyes around the food/weight/body conversation lately is intuitive eating. I’ve been reading Evelyn Trioble’s book (Intuitive Eating) and it’s blowing my mind (thank you Lazy Genius!). All that to say: give yourself some grace. Take care of your body. If it wants to curl up on the couch and drink a glass of wine, let it. If it wants to go for a Stupid Walk™️, listen to that. You are getting through one of the most fraught eras of recent history and your resilient body is carrying you. It is strong and capable and sometimes it wants a brownie. That’s okay.
On that note, I’m going to eat a brownie right now.
Okay, I’m back. Let’s do some treasures.
🤝 I loved this article about a town in Arkansas rallying around a family who got a hateful letter after displaying a Black Santa in their yard.
🦩 If you are anything like me, your work and general life rhythm has been thrown off for - I don’t know, all of 2020? This video of God creating flamingoes really resonated with me.
🎄 I honestly cannot tell you how this has made me laugh. Several of you alerted me to this account, and all I can say is: BLESS YOU. It’s got a real Garth and Kat vibe and I’m just grateful. Also very partial to “Martha Has Not Been Socially Distant.”
This is extremely all of us:
Also me:
Let’s do Twitter Hall of Fame now, yes?
And of course, if you can, please visit the We Got You Club spreadsheet to see if you might be able to spread some yuletide cheer to someone.
Hey. Guys. Listen. You’re making it. You’re doing great. Seriously. I mean it. Take a rest when you need to. Eat the brownie. Proud of you.
I think I've spent enough time lurking around here to have a pretty good idea how things work, so here we go:
I had a pretty intense talking-to from my boss this week, which I 100% deserved but that doesn't keep me from taking it really personally (like I tend to do with all criticism) or replaying the whole thing constantly. I'm not planning on staying at this job too much longer anyway but I need to be able to leave on good terms, so basically I really need to get my ish together. And also to sleep.
I just started Schitts Creek and it is a delight. If the whole show was Stevie and David I wouldn't be sad about it.
I feel confident that there must be at least one other Star Trek fan in this group because I NEED someone to talk about Discovery with. This is easily the best season yet and I can't get over how good it is. Saru and Tilly are the power team 2020 needs.
I am late to the party this week but just read through all the comments. I love this little community!
Quick treasure (OK, in a re-reading it’s not super quick 😳): a little back story here. I started work at a firm in Jan of 2009. At one week shy of being there ten years, I left to take a job that was FOUR MINUTES from my house and that I believed would give me more flexibility and time with my family. After a year and a half at the new job, I got a THIRD call from the old firm asking me to come back but the circumstances had changed and the new job just was not as advertised, so I said yes. At my job I went back to, I am now working for a partner that I really didn’t work with previously (for a lot of weird reasons), and my confidence took a pretty big hit at the “interim” job, so I was unsure if he’d think I did good work and want me to stay. We basically agreed to a part time situation through next spring tax season and then re-evaluate. Since I got back to the old firm in August, I haven’t had a ton of feedback about my performance but have been really happy with how things have gone. I don’t normally work on Friday but today I wanted to run by my office and do a couple of things to set up next week to be a little easier. While I was there my boss gave me both a Christmas bonus and a performance bonus (both unexpected) but more importantly, told me he has been really happy with my work and hopes that we can find a way to keep making it work. This novella doesn’t even begin to cover all the bizarre things that have happened in the last couple of years but today was such a huge relief to me.
Also, I don’t know if we have any others in the group who watch the Voice but if you need to hack your crying, here you go: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSBqACFYmM
Hope you all have a relaxing weekend.