I usually create ten prints per week of these images; I’m taking a break until a little later in the year. Weekly prints will return soon!
A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Dear Friend,
It’s a new calendar year. Mind you, this isn’t what I would call the beginning of the new year; for me, that’s usually in late March or early April, when things start coming up from the dirt. This is still the hibernation period. The plants are doing diligent and slow work underground, and that’s what my body wants to do, too; grow slowly, rest, wait. And yet, there’s this clean-slate attitude that comes with the calendar year that makes us what to resolve to do things. And I get that. I like to make resolutions, too!
But I’ll maintain my belief that January is not the time to take on a huge new project or ramp up one’s workout routine. Save those big overhauls for the spring. And as a person who feels the itch to accomplish things no matter what the weather, I’ve discovered a handy workaround that might serve you, as well: resolve for this to be the season of tiny goals.
What makes a goal tiny? I’m so glad you asked. No matter how small you’re thinking, THINK SMALLER. One tiny goal, for example, might be to set a tiny goal. Look! That one accomplishes itself! Check. Or a tiny goal might be to write down a tiny goal and cross it off. You could do that right now! In fact: go ahead. No, seriously! I’ll wait.
Are you back? Do you have your list (with two goals already checked off)? Great. Now you have the only tools you will need for your tiny goals: a sheet of paper and a pen. This is important, because it feels good to cross something off a list. And making your goals super-tiny can remind you how much you actually get done in any given day. Even in the days where you barely get out of bed and you watch the same show you have already watched 35,392 times on your laptop for hours, you’ve accomplished not only (1) lying in bed, (2) using the internet, and (3) working a computer; you’ve also accomplished (4) self-soothing, (5) letting your body rest, (6) protecting yourself and others from exchanging breath during a global pandemic, and (7) practicing extreme fandom of an incredible show. THOSE ARE SOME BIG THINGS.
Index cards make great canvases for tiny goals lists, and you can save them to look back at when you’re feeling particularly useless in the middle of winter. (Make one of your tiny goals “survived a day of winter.” That’s a hard one, actually. And if you live in the Northern Hemisphere, you do it EVERY DAY.) I am a big fan of cheap plastic index cards holders, which allow you to create decks that you can look back at when you need reminders of how things were. But if you don’t have index cards or the ability to go to Staples to buy an index card holder, you can write your lists on the backs of receipts or junk mail envelopes. All that matters about this exercise is that you’re paying attention to what a good job you’re already doing.
Here are is a sample Tiny Goals List for a day in January:
Make a tiny goal.
Cross off a tiny goal.
Find some food.
Get the food prepared to eat.
Eat some food.
Get out of bed.
Brush your teeth.
Get naked.
Take a shower.
Put some water in a vessel.
Drink some water.
Unlock your phone.
Send a nice text.
Eat another food.
Take three breaths without distracting self.
Say the word “noodles” out loud because it is fun.
Close eyes.
It is somewhat critical that you make the list BEFORE you do the things on it. That makes the crossing off of the things WAY more satisfying. I can’t explain why; I’ve tried it both ways. It’s something about making a plan and following through with it that feeds the craving for accomplishment. And it’s enough for now. It is plenty.
With Love,
Sophie
Add this to your to-do list.
See above. If you have to choose one thing, let it be the “noodles”-saying thing. I love the idea of a nation of humans just randomly saying “noodles” at some point today.
A drawing.
Once I drew every bird in North America. Here is the blog post about that, and here is a picture of it.
What’s on my mind this week.
(This will be about new parenthood. Skip it if you don’t want to read about new parenthood.)
I am writing this dispatch from an airplane. It is impossible to overstate how stressful the concept of taking an infant on a 4.5-hour flight has been for me, especially over the past two weeks. We scheduled this trip almost a year ago; we are going to Puerto Rico (!!!) for my mother-in-law’s birthday. When we scheduled the trip I thought, “That is practically a millennium away. I can worry about that later. For now I need to worry about being pregnant.” And so I worried about being pregnant and waited until two weeks ago to be worried about air travel during a global pandemic. It is maybe irresponsible to fly right now, I don’t know. This is not about that. This is about bringing a 7-week old baby on an airplane. At some point, I am going to write a full blog post about what it is like if you are TERRIFIED about flying with a screaming baby, because you are a people-pleaser and because you don’t want your baby to suffer or the people around her to suffer or your husband to suffer. There are shockingly few helpful posts on the internet about this subject. (There are some baby-traveling posts on blogs with names like “The Savvy Mommy Traveler,” but they don’t answer the questions I had, which are, like, “WILL SOMEONE KNOW HOW TO HELP ME PUT THIS CARSEAT IN THE SEAT WE BOUGHT FOR OUR BABY?” And, “I CAN’T BUY HER A PLANE TICKET UNTIL SHE IS BORN BUT I NEED TO BOOK THE FLIGHT RIGHT NOW WTF DO I DO?” And, “AHGHAOIDHJAIOSFHIOANDBAOISJFDSAPOIDJAOISD AND IS IT NORMAL FOR ME TO FEEL LIKE THIS?!”) (Yes, those questions are in all caps. I wish there was a CAPS for things already in CAPS because that’s how loud my brain was shouting these questions.) (Years ago, it drove me crazy that there was nothing online about how plausible it was to have sex in a Roomette on an Amtrak train, and the post I wrote on that subject is by far my most popular-ever content.) (BTW, yes you can have sex in a Roomette; and yes the car seat-on-the-plane thing is definitely worthwhile.) Anyway, as you might be able to infer with the knowledge that I am writing this on the airplane, it’s all OK. It all ended up OK. At least so far, everything is fine.
(And then as soon I finished typing that sentence, T started screaming for the rest of the flight. But it’s OK. We are here now. As my neighbors [and friends] who have traveled with a baby would remind me: we survived.)
Extras.
I started watching “The Other Two” and also “Abbott Elementary.” The former is two seasons in and on HBO; it is very funny and has made me LOL. The latter is only two episodes in and is on ABC, with new episodes weekly. It is harder to describe — it’s meant to be funny like “The Office,” but it’s about an underfunded elementary school, and let me tell you: it is pretty real. Like… the joke in the first episode is about all the toilets being broken so kids pee on the rugs, so the teachers have to get rid of the rugs, but there is no money for new rugs. This is so close to real life that it’s hard to laugh about it, and also the stakes are a lot higher than they are at, say, a paper company. But I’m sticking with it. The actors are great.
For Christmas I received “Vegan, At Times,” and can recommend it for people who are true beginners at veganism and vegan cooking. HOWEVER, I did design a fun game, which has made my life infinitely better, and it is this: I put 20 recipes that sounded good to me on a numbered list. Then, whenever I need to cook, I roll a D-20 on the list and cook whoever the die tells me to cook. None of the recipes in this book take more than an hour, and they’re easy to improvise on.
On this flight I am eating Kirkland dried mangoes and some almonds and this is a literally perfect snack .
Luke is listening to the podcast “Blank Check” a lot, and they really like Nancy Meyers movies. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I like Nancy Meyers movies, but I will go so far as to say that I have definitely seen all of them. But the podcast also recommended a movie she made with her daughter called “Home Again” that I had not yet seen, and so Luke and I watched it and WOW is it ever a winner. It is fluffy and happy and nothing bad really happens and it is basically just a fantasy for a 40-year-old woman and it’s perfect and A+. Rotten Tomatoes it wrong.
Beautiful birds, beautiful octopus, beautiful ideas.