Happy Tuesday!
Over the weekend, I wrote an essay about my writing process. For a long time I’ve resisted writing about writing. Who wants to read yet another post about someone’s writing process? But then I got fired up, so I started a draft.
I hate when people say, “If you want to be a good writer, you need to write every day.” I’ve been writing for years and I disagree with that sentiment. It’s a very personal process and something you have to figure out on your own.
So I wrote a piece and it was boring. Very boring. I felt really down about it, like I had to figure out a way to salvage it and make it better. Then Sam told me to chuck it. Forget about it. Move on to something else.
I felt better.
It’s not a waste of time to write something I don’t publish. I had thoughts burning in my brain that I wanted to get on the page and I got them on the page. Maybe I’ll go back to it. Maybe I’ll use snippets of it for something else. Or maybe that one was just for me.
It’s back to the drawing board. Sometimes it feels like I have nothing to say, like I’ve already used up all my good ideas. But let’s be honest, it doesn’t take much to get me fired up. I’m very opinionated. I’ll figure something out.
Quarantined with a Cockroach
I hate, hate, hate cockroaches. Sam likes to call them palmetto bugs, as if calling them a different name will make them any less repulsive. They are the most disgusting bugs I’ve ever encountered and they’re all around us in Wilmington.
I wrote about the time we were at war with one of these monsters.
Intuitive Eating
Do you have the same nagging thought as soon as you wake up in the morning and as soon as your head hits the pillow each night?
For a long time, I did. It was my weight. As soon as I opened my eyes, I thought about getting on the scale and planning my meals and calories for the day. When I laid down at night, I thought about all the calories I had consumed that day - usually too many - and started to plan my calories for the following day. My life revolved around the number on the scale and the number of calories consumed.
When people talk about making big changes in their lives, they talk about changing daily habits. They say this like it’s easy, like it can be done, but it has nothing to do with habits and everything to do with your perspective on happiness.
As long as I kept telling myself, “If I can get down to 115 pounds, I’ll be happy,” I was never going to develop healthy habits. The only way to become a healthy person is to have a healthy perspective.
The Realization
It wasn’t until a bad break-up when I was in a dark place that my friend convinced me to read The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer. No matter what your nagging thoughts are each and every day, this book can help address that pain and the voice in your head.
“If you don’t solve the root cause of the problem, but instead, attempt to protect yourself from the problem, it ends up running your life. You actually feel that because you’ve minimized the pain of the problem, you’ve solved the problem. But it is not solved.
“All you did was devote your life to avoiding it. It is now the center of the universe. It’s all there is. Notice that you aren’t asking how to get rid of the problem; you’re asking how to protect yourself from feeling it.”
When I read those words, I had to put the book down.
Sometimes when I’m hit with new information I can convince myself to ignore it. Like when my friend told me that I can’t use flushable wipes because they may not clog your toilet but they’ll ruin your pipes. I didn’t want to believe her, so I refused to Google it even though I thought about it all the time. It wasn’t until my HOA sent an email to all residents that we had to stop using flushable wipes because they were ruining the pipes, that I finally conceded. (Sam was not happy that I had been keeping this information from him.)
This was not one of those moments.
When I read the words in the book, it was a holy shit moment - it felt like I had the wind knocked out of me. I was flooded with relief and fear all at the same time. Relief that someone was telling me that this was normal and there was a way out; fear that I had to change because I knew it would be really fucking hard.
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These are my beginning thoughts for a long-form essay I’m writing about my relationship with food and my journey with intuitive eating. It’s equally daunting and exciting to share my story that starts as a senior in high school and is still ongoing. I look forward to sharing my process with you as I navigate this beast.
The Fedex Delivery Guy
We had a glider chair delivered for the nursery. In case you’re not familiar, gliders are the new rocking chairs (it looks like a recliner).
I’m staring out the window when the Fedex truck arrives. I watch as a skinny guy with scraggly hair and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth literally tosses the box off his truck. It slams down on the sidewalk with a thud.
We make eye contact at this point: me with eyebrows raised, him with a “I give no fucks” expression on his face.
He then picks up the box, steps a couple feet, and slams it down, again.
It all felt… unnecessary.
Later, Sam opens the box and heaves the thing upstairs in two pieces. Sweating, he puts the chair together while I watch and tell him, “Good job.” Not until he sits in it does he notice a puncture through the fabric on the right side of the chair.
Was it the Fedex guy’s fault? Probably not. It looks like someone actually stabbed the chair with something sharp.
Still, this TikTok video had me crying laughing. The plant at the end puts me over the edge every time.
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Until next week,
Charlie