And Also! Extras | Vol. 3
Practicing slow productivity, being a “cringy beginner”, reading recs to support your identity shifts, and so much more!
Thank you for reading And Also, a weekly newsletter featuring personal stories and lesson plans to help you navigate life ✨!
Hi, hello, and welcome back to the third edition of And Also! Extras, a monthly newsletter full of personal updates, reads I recommend, and things that have made me think lately.
(If you missed the last one, you can read it here ⬇️)
Are these And Also! Extras my favorite newsletters to write every month? No, of course not, how dare you, I love all my “children” equally. (But they do come close.)
On that note, let’s dive right in.
Reassessing My Productivity Pace
The first three months of the year have been super productive for me. I’ve felt especially so in the last couple of weeks as I’ve worked to wrap up a few creative loose ends ahead of a week and half of travel for fun (visiting my brother in Nashville for his birthday!) and work (attending an event with my team in Miami!).
And while I’ve really enjoyed working on and felt proud of my different personal and professional projects — my current pace feels unsustainable. I won’t be able to keep up with the work I’m so enjoying for much longer if I don’t also allow myself to slow down and enjoy more idle periods of existence.
On a recent podcast episode I listened to, author and entrepreneur, Kate Northrup, said something that rang through my body with resonance: "Anyone who's ever planted a plant, planted a garden, grown something, knows that there are seasons for everything. There's a planting season, there's a sprouting season, there's a harvest season, and there's a fallow season. But we work in our culture as though we are meant to be in perpetual harvest. It makes no sense. We are seasonal creatures; we are cyclical creatures. We too are designed to have a season for planting, a season for blossoming, a season for harvest, and a season for rest. And when we work in that way with our projects, with our months — around our menstrual cycle or the moon — with the year; when we work in that way, we're actually aligning with the truth of who we are, and the truth of who we are is nature which is the most inherently abundant system we could possibly model."
“We are seasonal creatures; we are cyclical creatures. We too are designed to have a season for planting, a season for blossoming, a season for harvest, and a season for rest.” - Kate Northrup
Without realizing I’d been doing it, I also noticed recently that I’ve started collecting a series of books focused on a different perspective of productivity: I Didn’t Do the Thing Today by Madeleine Dore, Women Who Work Too Much by Tamu Thomas, and Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. I’m still in the middle of reading each of them, but the basic premise seems the same — as Dore says: “. . . each of us is entangled in a culture that measures our value through productivity”, and in order to actually do great work, we need to find our way out.
This is not exactly a surprise to me — I’ve heard of capitalism. And the thing is, I’m not even saying that I don’t want to be productive. Most days, crossing off to-dos, making progress on different projects, and falling into bed contentedly spent by my creative projects feels like a high to me. I have big ambitions and I genuinely enjoy moving toward them. And also, I recognize that I sometimes (often?) operate under the unsaid expectations of the aforementioned capitalism; that maybe sometimes that “feel good feeling” comes from meeting the requirements of a system much bigger than me and tying my worth to what I was able to get done in service of that system is untenable and, honestly, fucked.
I dunno — it’s a tangled web to unweave (and maybe a topic for a future series of posts here?), but it’s been top of mind for me lately, and I’m exploring the idea of “seeing overload as an obstacle to producing results that matter, not a badge of pride” as Newport posits. How can I honor my own ambitions — allowing productivity to be a “conduit for our imagination, helping us to dream ourselves into new possibilities that once felt impossible” (Thomas) — while leaving space for the thinking, learning, and just existing that makes every new idea and experience I want to pursue possible?
“I want to rescue knowledge work from its increasingly untenable freneticism and rebuild it into something more sustainable and humane, enabling you to create things you’re proud of without requiring you to grind yourself down along the way.” - Cal Newport, Slow Productivity
Reconnecting with My Inner Child
I mentioned in a previous letter that I’m doing The Artist’s Way (TAW) program with
’s community, and I’m currently writing a guest essay for Ali’s newsletter on Week 9 of the program — which is all about the topic we’ve been exploring here on And Also this month: Mindset.That week’s TAW content also focuses a lot on the concept of one’s inner child, which is another topic that’s been top of mind for me for a while now. As part of my own TAW curriculum for the week (and for my guest essay), I went on an Artist Date inspired by my inner child (rewatching childhood favorite, Harriet the Spy, and doing my own “spy work” afterward), and I took myself through To Be Magnetic’s Unblocked Inner Child program.
There was more that came up than I want to cover here — but look out for my essay on Ali’s publication, Little Things, and, likely, further writing on the topic here — but it was interesting to explore the ways I’ve felt resistance to being “childlike” for a long time, even when I was still a kid!
For a variety of reasons, I grew up pretty quickly, and I’ve long wanted to be seen as someone who is smart, who is “mature for her age” (even still, at nearly 40!), who is reliable and can be taken seriously. And all of these are good things; quality characteristics that I think I can embody while still allowing myself to be playful, to be silly, to have fun for no other reason than to have fun.
“Our artist child can best be enticed to work by treating work as play.” - Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
Being a “Cringy Beginner”
One of the things that came up during my recent inner child work was this idea of how I present to other people; how a more “magnetic” version of my inner kiddo was silly and playful and not at all concerned with how other people perceived her.
So, one of the other practices I’ve been considering lately is how I can lean into being more “cringe-y” — not for the sake of being “cringe-y”, of course, but in the sense that I’m willing to do things where I look imperfect in public or where I’m willing to be bad at something as a beginner or where I’m willing to risk the embarrassment of people misperceiving me (or worse, perceiving me correctly and just not liking what they see - gasp!).
Haley Hoffman Smith recently posted this reel, and I said “YES!” out loud as I watched it. It was just a few days earlier that I had published a few of my recent poems from my 100-Day Project on Instagram, and had specifically asked Jordan “are these too cringe-y?” before pressing “Share”. To his credit, he said no — and to mine, I didn’t believe him (I still felt the cringe). But I also didn’t care enough to not share.
I want more of that in my life. I want to be more of a “cringe-y beginner” as Haley advises. I want to be more like the little kid who just doesn’t care what you think and is going to pursue what feels fun and imaginative and carefree. I want to show other people — but mostly myself! — that it’s okay to share the process and our imperfect parts and just generally be playful in the ways that we approach life, even as adults.
As Michelle Pellizzon Lipsitz once wrote, I want to free myself from “the tyranny of coolness” and just live, cringe and all.
Inspired by this month’s focus on mindset and identity, I revisited a few of my favorite reads on the topic (there are so many more than I could reasonably list here, but this is a strong start!):
The Way of Integrity by Martha Beck: I read this book back in 2021 and it was a bit of a wake-up call around my own personal definition and practice of integrity. As Beck sees it, personal integrity is a sort of radical honesty with yourself. It’s about saying and owning what is true for you in every instance, even if that might make other people uncomfortable. The book outlines a four-step process to “find the path to your true self” as the book’s subtitle suggests, and it definitely gave me a new way to think about not only who I am authentically, but about how and when I allow that version of myself to inhabit my own life. Martha’s books are some of the best in the self-help genre, in my opinion, and I’m feeling called to reread this one!
How to Change by Katy Milkman: In a world of James Clears and Charles Duhiggs and BJ Foggs, be a Katy Milkman! I’m slightly kidding (I enjoyed and gained a lot from the books written by each of the aforementioned men), but Katy Milkman’s How to Change is by far my favorite book on habit change. I first read it back in the summer of 2022 and I’ve returned to it more than a few times since then because it has such relatable stories and tangible practices for actually being who you say you want to be and doing the things you say you want to do. Milkman’s tips offer a science-based way to overcome your natural resistance to big change and create a mindset, identity, and lifestyle that better suits you.
The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman: This book is a fun one, because essentially it just encourages you to create your own version of Sasha Fierce, Beyonce’s on-stage alter ego. Herman posits that every one of us has a “Heroic Self” inside of us (I refer to this as my “Higher Self” personally) who can show up to make our personal success inevitable. He argues that, because our natural creativity is “slowly squeezed out of us” as we age and are told it’s “time to grow up”, we lose our ability to tap into our natural human imagination to create and unleash new versions of ourselves that can show up in the ways we want to. Basically, this is a great book for learning more about and practicing the identity work that entertainers, athletes, executives, entrepreneurs, and so many more have used to show up when the stakes are high and transform their lives.
“Believing things that aren’t true for us at the deepest level is the commonest way in which we lose our integrity. Then suffering arises—not as punishment, but as a signal that we’re being torn apart. The purpose of suffering is to help us locate our internal divisions, reclaim our reality, and heal these inner rifts.” - Martha Beck, The Way of Integrity
Jacqueline Novak’s comedy special, “Get On Your Knees”: Jordan and I watched this one last Friday night and, holy hell, I cannot stop thinking about this performance. And that’s what it was — a performance. A tour de force, as the critics say! If the title didn’t give it away, the content is very much for adults only, but despite the seeming salaciousness of the topic, the whole set is so smart and poetic and hilarious. I told Jordan I wish I could just print out the transcript and study it. As you know from the last And Also! Extras, I’ve got an itch to explore comedy myself and Novak just set the highest of bars for how to do it.
Somatic exercises with The Workout Witch: It’s not altogether surprising to me that my Instagram algorithm is serving up ad after ad about somatic healing and exercises — it fits with the spirituality, mind-body healing, IG therapy type of content that generally gets a “heart” from me. But I wasn’t convinced to give it a shot until a few women in a membership community I’m part of recommended The Workout Witch. I purchased a few of her courses, which so far seem to be like very gentle stretching exercises specifically designed to help release emotions stored in the body. If nothing else, so far they’ve been both a reminder to and a respite for paying attention to and moving my body in ways that make me feel good.
A “real reel” from Les of Balanced Black Girl: We all know that Instagram is a highlight reel — my first thought when I have a bad day at work is not generally to post about it for my IG community to see. But I loved that Les, the host of the Balanced Black Girl podcast, intentionally did just that recently. From the outside, Les seems incredibly successful and like someone who has her shit entirely together — and in many ways, I’m sure she is! But this reel really highlighted that even when things look good — even when things are good — there are parts of life that we all struggle with. I’m thinking I may want to create a reel like this for myself. Would you be interested in seeing that?
How to Be a Good Bad American Girl: A fellow Artist’s Way community member suggested this article to me after I mentioned that I rewatched “Harriet the Spy” (and had done my own “spying” at a local coffee shop afterward) as a recent Artist’s Date. The article is 10 years old now, but offers some relevant reflections on identity, girlhood, gender subversion, and more through the lens of both Harriet M. Welsch and Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. The writer ended by saying: “Harper Lee and Louise Fitzhugh taught their readers that difference, nonconformity, and even subversion should be celebrated in young girls. These qualities are the prerequisites for, and not the enemies of, creativity, curiosity, and insight.” No wonder I was so drawn to Harriet as a young girl myself, and even still.
“Grading Your Future Self”: Chris Guillebeau recently shared a fun activity that’s perfect for the topic we’ve been exploring this month. A play on the “letter from your future self” activity, he suggests highlighting (and celebrating!) the specific actions that will get you to where you are one year from today. Check out Chris’ post for some helpful guidelines and suggestions — and join me in celebrating all of our accomplishments over the next year!
Loved this one, as always. So many great nuggets and suggestions I’ve gobbled up.
Also, Get On Your Knees. I meannnnnnn. Nothing will ever be the same, for me. I’ve watched it multiple times with subtitles so I don’t miss a damn thing.