Try Try Again
Drowning in emails, eggs down your shirt, the endless project.
There’s no season like the holiday season for emails. On top of the normal firehose of daily email, most online purchases these days trigger a Matryoshka doll of near-constant communication. Order received > Order being prepared for shipment > Order has shipped > Out for delivery > Your order was delivered > How was your experience? Now multiply this insanity by all the items you bought online this season.
When we talk about dealing with email, we tend to talk about two groups: the inbox zero heroes and the one-too-many zeroes red badge of shame crew. There’s no way email management styles can be this binary in practice. I know, because I don’t fit in either category. I have learned to live with the red flag on my mail app, as permanent as a beauty mark. And yet, the number it houses is never that outrageous; right this minute, it reads 226, which is high due to the holidays. Time has proven there’s no danger of my drifting into the 30k+ crowd, and yet, there seems to be equally no chance of ever mastering inbox zero either.
Honestly, who cares? How does the state of my inbox impact the world in any significant way? Well, it doesn’t, of course. I know that. But that hasn’t stopped me from feeling like it’s deficient. Like I’m deficient. Hasn’t stopped me from trying to be better.
For better or for worse, trying is my permanent state of being. And Christmas—with its mountain of effort—is a natural time to think about trying. The work of Christmas grows as you become an adult and then again as a parent, especially if you’re a mother. The messages around the seasonal workload are chaotic. It’s an annoying seesaw of loud calls to ditch anything that feels slightly like work and an even louder chorus suggesting more ways to make a more magical Christmas. (Side note: I knew we had all gone astray when I spotted a post in my local FB moms’ resale group advertising “elf on a shelf idea kits” for the discounted price of $75. Basically, pay some enterprising woman to think up all the stupid cutesy things for your naughty elf to do because Lord knows you don’t have time to!!!)
Anyway, making Christmas special for the people you love takes work. I really felt this for the first time last year and wrote about it. I still believe making the effort is worth it. At Christmas—and all the other 364 days of the year. If it’s good, it usually takes work to have it. I am okay with this. What I don’t understand is why we have to pretend we aren’t.
Effortless is the goal. Trying is the opposite of cool. Collectively, we all perpetuate and perform this fiction, act as if we haven’t put the hours in, done the work, thought long and hard, practiced in the dark. We act as if we woke up like this, like it all came together in a snap because we are so cool, and if we can’t manage that, we just don’t try at all. Trying can have the very distinct whiff of desperate. Why is it embarrassing to be honest about the effort you’re putting toward something you want? Why do we valorize visible effort in a few arenas—passing the bar, sports of all kinds, mastering cello—and pity it in any kind of personal expression?
Every year, my husband and I watch The Family Stone at Christmas. The plot revolves around Meredith going home with her boyfriend for Christmas to meet his family. Realizing she’s bombing despite her very best efforts, she—bravely, awkwardly—decides to make a casserole for Christmas the next morning in an attempt to contribute. More tension, conflict, and drama eventually ensue, climaxing in an emotional Christmas morning rejection where Meredith, instead of fleeing like any normal person would, goes to the kitchen to…bake the strata. She’s balancing two casserole dishes swimming with raw egg mixture when the family bursts in and accidentally bump her, dumping the casseroles and all their eggy contents right down Meredith’s shirt, splattering on the floor. She cracks, finally, with a wail.
This year, I related to her like I never have before (yikes). Like Meredith, trying harder is what I do when I don’t know what to do. Trying can make me rigid when I need to be soft. And like her, the effort always flows from good intentions. The problem is that if I run into an obstacle, my first instinct is to apply more force, throw my shoulder against it—and sometimes the obstacle is me, trying.
I love a project, and I am forever and always my biggest one. Which brings us back to my inbox. My frustration with my email management stems from a deep sense that there is a right way, a better way (inbox zero obviously), and more critically, that I could get there if I just put the right plan of action in place. I know this open tab in my brain (and more importantly, the many like it) sucks my energy, but the engine behind it—persistence, work ethic, optimism—powers some of the work that matters most in my life.
I don’t know what the next decade holds, but so far, my thirties have included a lot of sorting my strengths from my weaknesses. Often they’re the same thing. It’s nearly the end of the year, almost time to take stock. A lot of trying, a lot of failing. A lot of trying to figure it out. Will I ever be able to turn off the part of my brain that won’t stop trying? Do I even want to? Sending this newsletter right now exactly as it stands is maybe one way to do so. After all—egg on your face isn’t the worst.
current status
cooking :: Dan Pelosi’s fall salad // Friendsgiving is fun because freed from the bonds of family tradition, you can cook whatever you want to eat. In our case, it was this spicy-savory-sweet kale salad that provided a perfect blast of freshness and flavor. Contrast — it’s what every holiday plate needs. Pair this hefty salad with roast chicken and crusty bread or throw some crispy thick-cut bacon in there and call it dinner.
reading :: “The Petulant King” (The Atlantic) // I always love to read Caitlin Flanagan, especially when she focuses her acidic insight on the royals. This quick study of Charles and the late Queen sharpens the contrast between them while underscoring just how much the world has changed during Elizabeth’s reign—and how unprepared weak, self-indulgent Charles and his ~mOoDs~ are to take her place.
reading :: “Why Is Everything So Ugly?" (n+1 Magazine) // So many excellent lines in this funny yet brutal essay exploring a phenomenon you’ve likely sensed, even if you couldn’t have put words to it. Why is the stuff of our lives so ugly, so cheap, so short-lived, so uninspired? It’s the kind of piece you read and think yes, exactly, and then feel a little depressed about it. On the awful LED lighting of urgent care clinics: “It’s giving gates of heaven...” On cars: “…the monolith cars (the Cadillac Escalade, the Infiniti QX80) possess a militaristic cast, as if to get to Costco one must first stop off at the local black site.” On branding: “Everywhere we look there are little pool noodle–shaped squiggles, and where the squiggles end, there is muted flash photography that makes even otherworldly models look matter-of-fact.” Anyway, I can’t quote the whole thing, so read this one.
reading :: “There I Almost Am” (The Yale Review) // I loved this beautiful, piercing exploration of identity, twinship, and envy. The author traces the meandering tributary of life with her twin sister—an ebb and flow, back and forth sort of dynamic that plays out in sibling relationships, but also with close friends—and how envy has woven itself in and out of her relation to others and understanding of her own identity. Envy isn’t an emotion talked about as often as others, but it is part of life, the cold shadow you feel and pretend you don’t.
listening :: I’ve been deeeeeep into movie scores and piano compositions lately. The ones on repeat for me include The Hours, Little Women (1995), Memoirs of a Geisha, and Luke Howard’s work. / On the opposite side of the spectrum, SZA finally released an album after five years. It’s also on repeat, including most often (and to my dismay) the same song Alison Roman loves. / In between, it’s been choral music for five am alone by the Christmas tree, this Christmas mix for hanging out with our kids, and this one song up loud for driving around.
loving :: yarn for Christmas wrapping // I love to make presents pretty, but could blow my whole Christmas budget on ribbon etc. if I allowed myself. Buying a bundle or two of good yarn to mix in with your ribbons goes so far with such good effect. Wrap it around the package a million times, crisscrossing the strands. Make a bow with a bunch of loops and cut them open, creating a cute little tassel or pom situation. Pick a color that will last you beyond Christmas and you’ll have something ready next time you have to wrap a present on your way out the door to a birthday party.
drinking :: Buffalo Gal // The first time I made this simple bourbon-orange-ginger cocktail, Jivan and I had a baby and not much extra money and our refrigerator went out just before Christmas, requiring an $800 repair. We used slushy ice from the coolers where we were stashing our cold things and sat in the dark together in the front of the glowy Christmas tree. I know that $800 was stressful then, but I don’t remember the stress—I remember this bright drink and that bright moment, and the drink never fails to stir up Christmassy feelings ever since.
contemplating :: “What the Living Do” (Marie Howe) // December is better with poetry. Take a minute and read this poem; then take a deep, full breath after.
reading :: “the parade” (Helena Fitzgerald) // This long, sprawling essay manages to illuminate exactly how I feel about holding on to holiday tradition, parties, hosting. I love to read writing that gives voice to something you felt but hadn’t found the words for yet. For example: “Throwing a party is always a little nerve-wracking,” she writes, “but throwing a party that you’ve claimed is a tradition is terrifying, like drawing a boat on a piece of paper and then having to row that boat across an ocean.”
the real feel
The dominant cultural narrative about teenage boys is that they’re something to be tolerated at best, toxic at worst. When I kept getting pregnant with boys, my mind did hop-skip ahead to the dark unknown of male adolescence with a mix of dread and apprehension. Then I started paying attention. There’s a 14-year-old who lives a few houses down from us. Every day, we hear the screech of his school bus braking to a stop and my boys go running to the front yard. “The teenager is coming! Max the teenager!” they shout, and stand eagerly in the yard to talk to him when he saunters by, staring into his phone. And he does saunter. It’s an I am absolutely too cool to care kind of shuffle with a hint of shoulder swagger mixed in, plus—most crucially—a hair flip every couple hundred feet.
The hair flip kills me. Boys this age all do it. A gesture of bravado and worldliness that achieves exactly the opposite of its intent; instead, every hair toss reveals the tender baby they still are under their weird, cocky shell. Teen boys are tender. And so while I don’t want to rush a second of this time when I can still tumble my boys, all knobby knees and dimpled baby cheeks, into my lap, I am now anticipating their teen years with joy and curiosity. Dread and pessimism have never been the glasses I wear to view the world, so why would I put them on now? Unsubscribe me from all doomsday dispatches from a future that doesn’t exist yet.
Until next time — say what you want to say at your Christmas dinner table, let yourself lie in bed luxuriously and a little longer than normal at least once, drink a peppermint mocha.