THE BLOG

Apparently, enjoying autumn now requires a wardrobe change, three seasonal beverages, a trip to an orchard, and photographic evidence that you participated. You can do all of that, and I won’t judge. I make my own pumpkin spice latte and I’m not above a good photo of a leaf. But somewhere along the way every season picked up an unofficial list of things we’re supposed to have experienced, and I’d like to put that down for a minute.

I think the trouble is that "what do you feel like doing?" is a hard question at the end of a long day. Most of us can't answer it. But "how do you feel?" is easier, and the answer to that tends to point somewhere. So this isn't a plan. It's a menu. Figure out which of these describes you tonight, and pick something from that section. There's no productivity requirement, and nobody needs the evening to be memorable. We're just trying to have an evening instead of accidenta

So this isn't a list about using your phone less for the sake of using it less. I don't have a problem with the phone. I have a problem with how little else there is to reach for. If the rest of your day is interesting enough, you tend to put it down without being told to. Start tiny. Almost everything here takes less than twenty minutes, and a lot of it takes less than five. Skip around, ignore the ones that don't fit, and do the one that made you say "oh, I could do that

The dishes are done, or just enough to become tomorrow’s problem. You sit down on the couch with the clear intention of relaxing, and your hand has picked up your phone before you’ve made any decision at all. Forty minutes later you’ve watched a stranger reorganize a pantry she clearly didn’t need to reorganize, and you know something about the history of a sandwich. Most of us wouldn’t call that enjoyment. It’s more like the evening happened near us. I’ve been thinking

So here are some word searches and cross words, made for adults and completely free. Each one is a PDF you can download directly. There’s no email signup, no account, and no pop-up asking if you’re sure you want to leave.

I like technology. I like texting my family, looking up an obscure historical question at 10 p.m., listening to nearly any song ever recorded, getting directions somewhere I've never been, and ordering toilet paper without leaving the house. I've also taken about 400 pictures of the same autumn tree, and I'd do it again. I do not want to go back to 1994. What I want is some say in how much of my attention, availability, and mental space technology gets to take.

Somewhere right now, a graph is being shared that came from a screenshot of a tweet summarizing an article about a study that nobody in the chain actually read. It has a confident caption. It has forty thousand shares. It might be completely accurate, and nobody sharing it could tell you. I've done this. I've repeated something at dinner that I picked up from a post, and then been unable to answer the one follow-up question anyone asked, which was "where did you read that?

Some days you have energy. You cook dinner, answer the messages, wipe down a counter, and maybe even locate the mysterious motivation required to fold the laundry the moment it comes out of the dryer. I've heard this happens. I've seen it from a distance. And some days you absolutely do not have time or energy for much of anything. The frustrating part is that the to-do list doesn't know that. Everyone still needs to eat, the sink is still there, and somebody still exp

You get home and sit down "for a minute." Your phone ends up in your hand by means nobody has ever fully explained, and the next time you look up, it's 8:14. Dinner is a vague idea. Your evening has been quietly spent on strangers' kitchen renovations and a video of a man restoring a rusty pan. I don't think this is a discipline problem. I think it's a leftover-hours problem. Work ends, everything that needed doing gets done or abandoned, and there's a strange stretch o

There's a particular kind of silence that happens right after someone asks you for something. Your coworker wants an answer now. Your aunt wants to know why you're not coming. A stranger on the internet wants you to justify your entire position. You know what you want to say. It's fully formed and completely clear. Then your mouth opens and out comes six unnecessary paragraphs, an apology for existing, and somehow a yes to something you absolutely did not want to do.

I've been thinking about how many good things in my life started in conversations I almost skipped. A stranger in line who said something that turned small talk into an actual exchange. A quiet dinner where someone asked how I was actually doing, meant it, and I let myself answer honestly. None of it was planned, and none of it announced itself as important. We tend to picture connection as a grand reunion or a perfectly organized girls' night. Mostly it's a question asked

There's a particular kind of list that gets written at the start of a year. It has eleven items on it. One of them is "get healthier," one is "learn Italian," and somewhere near the bottom, in slightly smaller handwriting, is "be a calmer person." By February the list is a small piece of paper that knows exactly how you feel about yourself. I think the trouble with the list is arithmetic. Every item on it asks for attention, and attention doesn't multiply just because you'

Rest used to mean, simply, "I'm not doing anything today." That was the whole sentence. No further explanation required, no supporting materials, no caption. Now it's a "Sunday reset," it's "self-care," it's "a slow morning," typed out in a specific font over a photo of the tea beside the untouched novel. We have somehow, collectively, managed to brand lying down. Here's the actual tell, if you want one. If you're thinking about how the morning looks. Whether you're do

Snow day. No school. The kids, somewhere upstairs, at a volume usually reserved for actual emergencies: NO SCHOOL. The adult, standing at the window with a cup of coffee, already mentally halfway into the pantry: oh, excellent. I can finally reorganize the spice rack. What happened to us? Somewhere between childhood and now, adults quietly ruined the snow day. An unexpected free day shows up out of nowhere, delivered by weather, no strings attached, and the first

My world gets smaller in winter. Not worse. Not empty, and not lonely, either. Just smaller in a way I've stopped fighting. Home. A few familiar places. The grocery store. A favorite café where the person behind the counter has started making my order before I finish asking. A walk most days. Back home again. We've built an entire vocabulary around expansion as though it's the only direction a good life is allowed to move in. More friends. More travel. More experiences

New Year. New You. Except. I've met the current me. And she's fine. Genuinely. She's got some paperwork to organize and really, truly needs to remember where she filed the tax documents, but on the whole, we're keeping her. Which raises a question: why are we all, collectively, every January, encouraged to conduct what amounts to a hostile takeover of our own personalities. New body. New habits. New wardrobe. New morning routine. New finances. New hobbies. New productivity sy

Welcome to winter. Over the next twelve weeks you will rest. Reflect. Heal. Journal. Reconnect. Process. Set intentions. Practice gratitude. Learn to be still. Reconnect with your body. Discover what this season is trying to teach you, specifically, as though the season has a message for you and has been waiting since October to deliver it. Final project due March 20th: emerge transformed. Or. Alternatively: January could just be January. There's something lovely underneath a

People require surprisingly little, when you actually get down to it. Food. A beverage. A chair. A working bathroom. Possibly heat, depending on your climate and how honest your thermostat's been with you lately. That's it. That's hospitality, in its complete original form, before anyone got involved with a tablescape. Because somewhere along the way, hosting stopped meaning "have people over" and started meaning something closer to event production. A signature cocktail, nam

It's 11:38 p.m. There's flour on the floor, in a radius that suggests violence rather than baking. The crust has somehow gone wet and dry at the same time, which shouldn't be physically possible and yet, here it is, mocking you from the counter. You've googled "why is my pie crust shrinking" and gotten no real answer, only forums full of other people at their own counters asking the same doomed question. Your family is asleep. Thanksgiving starts in nine hours. And nearby, cl

"Want to come over?" There was a time when that sentence meant exactly what it said. Come inside my house. Sit somewhere. Would you like something to drink. That was the whole offer, and it was enough. Somewhere along the way, it started meaning something closer to: I have accepted full responsibility for producing an immersive hospitality experience, and you are now my guest of honor at an event I did not technically announce. I'd like to know when hanging out started requir