Why I need this newsletter.

....and maybe you do, too.

I recently wailed to my new therapist that when it comes to the book I’m writing — a collection of personal essays that chronicle the crumbling of my life’s many fantasies (and how I’m constantly waging peace with reality) — the words aren’t exactly spilling onto the page.

“I’m all bound up,” I said, fat tears brimming, ready to spill into my lap. “I don’t know what to do. I just sit there staring at the computer screen, writing and rewriting the same two paragraphs for days at a time.”

Now, I haven’t been seeing this therapist for very long, maybe two or three visits, but it doesn’t take Carl Jung to see that I struggle with self-sabotage. Sometimes it feels more comfortable to tilt at windmills and invent reasons to suffer than it does to work hard and enjoy a job well done. After all, if you’re not grinding against life, are you even living?

“Flow,” said my therapist matter-of-factly, shattering my self-pitying daydream. “You need flow.”

It took a moment before I could see that yes, she was right. I’d been putting all my energy into moving the boulders downstream when the current was too weak even to move the pebbles. Flow! I needed flow! She nailed it.

I’ve had a couple blogs over the last two decades. I wrote one about quitting my job and traveling with my husband across the world for a year, and the other covered my emergence as a new mother. I always saw them as something on the side, a way to have fun and communicate with people when I was oceans away from home or trapped in the isolation of early parenthood. They offered a sandbox to play in, and surprised me by creating a community, too. (In fact, during my year abroad, a reader offered me her place in Milan after I wrote about escaping from a goat farm in the Dolomite Mountains. Long story, but she treated me like a princess for a week and I’ll never, ever forget it.)

Me waiting for a bus in France during The Odyssey. Look at that tan. And that scowl! Immersion learning at its finest.

Our amazing Murphy, the 16-lb rescue terrier-chihuahua that ate our son’s umbilical cord when it fell off. So gross. So funny.

So that’s what this is: a place to surface the small stories in service of the bigger ones, with less hand-wringing and, hopefully maybe even some joy. Because I am a middle-aged Californian mother who is interested in art, travel, books, fashion, music, and food, you can bet I’ll be covering those subjects. 

Not into those things? You might enjoy the writing anyway. Either way, thank you for being here. (My book thanks you, too.)

XO

Jaime