You’ll eat it and you’ll like it! - said nobody in the twenty-first century. Times have changed. If you’re planning any gathering that includes food, you’re going to hear all about it. Everyone wants or needs to eat something custom-tailored to a highly specific diet. Having been both the beleaguered hostess and the sad, hungry dinner guest, I’d like to offer some thoughts on how to plan a party where everyone can have fun, or at least pretend to for a few hours. First off, what’s your goal for the gathering? People tend to lean toward certain beliefs about hospitality. On one extreme is that it is the host’s duty and pleasure to roll out the red carpet for guests, making them feel like the most splendid people who ever lived. On the other extreme is that guests must earn their keep and sing for their supper, helping clean up and trying to disguise any and all needs or preferences. I remember staying at a friend’s house in my late twenties and battling his mom as we both insisted on washing up after dinner. I couldn’t bear for her to do all the work alone, and she couldn’t bear to allow me to help. The only right answer that night was to defer to my gracious hostess. So what’s it going to be? Who’s right? Nobody! Culturally we’re in a weird place, where individual preferences come before group harmony. That’s because we haven’t figured out a way to reconfigure how food works now. In the Star Trek future, we can each dial up whatever we like on the food replicator. For today, we’re stuck. There are no restaurants where all of us are going to find something to our taste, and we certainly can’t expect any individual home cook to manage it all. The obvious answer is to have a potluck, where everyone brings a dish. This could work beautifully, except that people will still insist on making snarky remarks about one another’s choices. As a cook, I enjoy learning my friends’ tastes and preferences. I know who refuses to eat tomato, onion, gluten, canola oil, potatoes, fructose, garlic, eggplant, squash, cauliflower, sweet potato, pumpkin, green pepper, curry, and all sorts of other foods. (Almost 100% vegetables). It truly doesn’t matter to me WHY my friend won’t eat a food. It is a pleasure to me to solve the puzzle and provide something that follows all the rules. Welcome to my table, where nobody walks away hungry. It can be pretty annoying when someone claims to have a “food allergy” and then, after eating a full meal carefully designed around that issue, goes on to have a helping of any carefully labeled unacceptable dish made for the other guests. Only two percent of the population has an allergy to anything, whether bees or shellfish or whatever. The rest of us have diagnosed ourselves or discovered the secret code to make restaurant kitchens pay attention to our requests. It’s okay, though. My goal is gracious behavior, and if I want my guests to feel like the treasured friends they are, then I’m going to give them what they asked. Who cares why? As a side note, diagnosing yourself with anything is a wretchedly bad idea. It’s a bad idea because we’re almost always incorrect. I had a friend who delayed seeing a doctor for chronic shoulder pain for several years because she “knew” she would need to go straight to surgery. It turned out she was wrong about the specific problem, and all she needed was an injection. Likewise, none of my friends or clients who have been lab tested for food sensitivities have come away (so far) with a diagnosis of gluten intolerance. They’ve been hearing yeast, fructose, garlic, and other surprises that could masquerade as something else. Go to a doctor and get a printout of your lab work that you can show to people who question you. Question, they will. Everyone believes in freedom and liberty until it’s time to choose dishes at the buffet. Then suddenly someone is a villain for not eating exactly what everyone else is eating. Ask me how I know. Any guesses? I’ve been a vegan for over twenty years, and a vegetarian for nearly twenty-five at this point. People have thrust meat in my face, lied to me, and tried to trick me into eating things. They think it’s funny to hassle me. This is the reason why I will always bend over backwards to accommodate my guests’ idiosyncratic food choices. It’s because, when anyone does it for me, I feel cherished. I feel like someone wanted my company enough to go to extravagant lengths. That’s how I want you to feel when you sit at my table: that you’re beloved and most welcome, that the pleasure of your company is worth any amount of my time. Otherwise I wouldn’t have invited you. As a guest, I’d never ask. I simply assume that there won’t be anything for me to eat. If it’s someone I know, and there’s an informal gathering like a game night or book club, I just bring something like a frozen burrito and ask to use the microwave. If it’s someone I don’t know well, I hide an emergency sandwich in my bag. More than once I’ve been met at the door by a hostess who greets me, in front of everyone: “I didn’t make anything for you.” Oh, well thanks for letting me know! I didn’t ask you to. If you’d asked what I wanted, I would have said I’d prefer to keep a low profile. I’d prefer to be treated like everyone else. I’d prefer if you could have pretended you were glad to see me. So this is how I break it down. If I’m the guest, I take care of myself and try to be as discreet as possible. I do have close friends who cook for me, and I love them and I’d do anything for them. Never, though, would I expect anyone else to cook around my special needs. If I’m the hostess, I go out of my way to learn the preferences of my guests. Even my homemade soup stock and my soy sauce are gluten-free, because it’s such a common issue now. I want to make sure that, whether I’m the guest or the host, my presence is, if not a pure delight, at least not totally obnoxious. I tell people I’m “hard to feed.” It’s only fair. This is also true for children who are picky eaters (read: almost all of them), adults who have medical issues, and amateur foodies who don’t cook but are nonetheless highly demanding. We should just own our complications and set our expectations realistically. There are no requirements of hospitality that force the host to do all the cooking. The host is the organizer, the one who gathers everyone together, the one who sets the tone for the conversation. You don’t have to hold a party in your home, you don’t have to cook, you don’t have to hire a caterer. It’s your responsibility simply to make people feel welcome and try to orchestrate a good time for all. If that means a potluck or a non-food-oriented event of some kind, that’s fair. Whatever it takes so that nobody comes away feeling dissatisfaction or resentment - host included. It’s possible I have a problem. A little one. I’m getting ready to upgrade my electronics, and in the process, I’m realizing that there’s an awful lot to migrate between devices. ...sorry, where was I? I just stopped to download another ebook I had on hold. Oh, yes! Information hoarding! Let’s see some metrics. 6,152 photos and 56 videos at 5.81 GB 14 ebooks checked out and 42 on hold A wish list of 1,693 books between five libraries 20 audio books at 12.16 GB 795 podcast episodes at 35.89 GB (I played through an entire episode while counting) 574 bookmarked articles 69 open tabs The most interesting thing about this list is that it’s all basically imaginary. Well, everything we think we have to do, use, consume, read, or otherwise perform is imaginary. It’s in our heads. I’m not going to cease to exist if I skip a podcast episode. The point is that my information hoarding does not take up any more physical space than the confines of my phone. It doesn’t weigh any more just because I’m using over 100 GB of data. It doesn’t cost any more, either. As far as indulgences go, it’s pretty tame. Information hoarding usually does take up space, and quite a significant amount. I started realizing this when I started digitizing everything. It occurred to me that almost everything I own can be digitized: Books Magazines Recipes Music Movies, TV shows, and workout programs Board games Journals Academic papers School notebooks To-do lists Calendars Business cards and address books Check registers, bank statements, receipts, all other financial info Photos Keepsakes and mementos in photographic form Almost all office supplies All I really need is basic furniture, clothing, housewares, cleansers, and a week’s worth of groceries. Oh, and some power outlets, of course. My chronically disorganized clients struggle with information management more than anything else. It starts with the junk mail. My clients “scoop and stuff” on a regular basis. They’ll have boxes full of plastic grocery bags, and at least 80% of the contents of the bags will be junk mail and those stupid coupon newspapers. This wouldn’t really be a problem, except that about 20% of the contents of those bags consists of truly important, urgent mail and papers. It’s hard to find the important stuff when it’s surrounded by junk that should never have been brought through the door. The junk mail is disinformation, actively detracting from the value of the good stuff. Indecision is a huge part of chronic disorganization and hoarding. My people have a lot of trouble deciding whether or not to go to social functions or accept invitations. Due to this, they’ll keep all the invitations, calendars, flyers, and other papers on their bulletin boards, or scattered on the countertops, until the date has passed. They won’t realize that these notifications can be discarded once they’re obsolete, because those papers will have already been buried under a snowdrift of new paper. The junk mail and pending invitations are unintentional information hoarding. It’s the intentional stuff that’s particularly stubborn. Magazines. If you carry all your old magazines out to the recycling bin and dump them tonight, PM me and I’ll feature you in an article. Photos please! My people refuse to get rid of old magazines, whether they’ve read them or not. For some random reason, old magazines are perceived to be the most valuable type of object. They’re heavy, they’re half-full of advertisements, nobody ever reads them, and they smell like mildew. WHY do you people love them so much?? You can get them at the library or online anyway! That’s especially true of that particular yellow geography magazine, the complete archives of which are available in full color on their website. Books. Lord love a duck. I read at least as much as the next person, but I don’t see why we need to keep so many physical books around. If you haven’t read it, then you don’t get any credit for owning it. If you have read it, then you don’t need it anymore. I say this just to taunt people, because I know how sacrosanct the books are. You don’t have any free shelf space, there are probably books piled all over your bedside table, and yet you’ll never be satisfied and you’ll always think you can fit another sack of books into your house. Have it your way. Old notebooks. People freak out about their old school notes, even if they haven’t touched them since graduation and they’ll never read through them again. I just scanned all mine and recycled them years ago. On the rare occasions when I feel inspired to pop open one of those files, I’m mostly embarrassed at my relative ignorance and poor writing skills. I got my degree in history, and I’ve read far more about history since graduation than I ever did beforehand. Education is the beginning, not the end. It’s just supposed to be training for a life of learning. I think most of us keep our school notes because that’s our identity. When we’re not challenged in our jobs, when we’re not satisfied in our careers, we cling to that time when we felt supported in our intellectual self-image. It’s easy to figure out how to get good grades, but not so easy to figure out how to take initiative and shape a professional career. Recipes. I’m worse about this than most people and I’ll freely admit it. I’ve been digitizing my recipe collection for five years. I just checked, and I have... over 18,000 recipes in my collection. There are still half a dozen cookbooks to go, too. Am I ever going to feel like I have enough? No, I’m sure I won’t. This is true even though I have enough recipes to cook three new meals a day for 92 years. I’ll just clone myself 91 times, and then each of us can cook three new meals a day for a year. How many more recipes will we have collected by the end of the year, if each clone also likes to save recipes? To-do lists. List makers! Why do we add stuff to our lists just to cross it off? If we love crossing things off of lists so much, why do we always wind up with old lists with incomplete tasks on them? Little notes. Buying a smartphone changed my life. I started recording all my random little notes into my phone instead of writing them on paper. Gradually, as I started to trust the system, I started recording more of my old notes and digitizing them, too. My desk used to be constantly covered with stacks of notes, plus several inboxes and sorting mechanisms. Now I don’t have a desk at all; it all lives in my pocket. There’s a manuscript in our fireproof safe. It’s an obsolete version of my novel-in-progress. I think I’ve gone through at least three major plot shakeups since then. I don’t even work on paper anymore! It’s only still in there through entropy. I have over 100 GBs of information hoarded on my phone. If this existed in physical form, I’d be in trouble. Fortunately, through consistent effort, I’ve managed to keep it all down to one file box that measures 11”x15” and three shelves of books measuring 55 inches. I’m trying to reframe my information hoarding in two ways. One: How likely am I to need this information? Do I want it for active reference, for future entertainment, or am I keeping it due to inertia, FoMO, or pure anxiety? Two: How long will it take to consume this information? How many hours of podcasts are these? If I read fifty pages an hour on average, how long will it take me to read through this stack of books? What’s my track record of actually reading through these queues? Does the list stay about the same, or has it consistently been growing longer? The thing about information is that it doesn’t exist until we have it processed into our brains. I mean, just because I have internet access doesn’t mean I’ve memorized the entire internet. It was already humanly impossible to look at every photograph ever taken or click through every page of every website twenty years ago. More is uploaded in a single day than we could ever hope to skim in a lifetime. We have to let go of the idea that we can somehow “keep up” with everything. We can’t watch every video, listen to every song, read every article and every book, or watch every movie. We can’t even do it if we cut out all the other categories completely and focus on just one. Far better would be to see it all as a massive buffet. There is plenty and there will always be plenty more. I’LL NEVER BE BORED! Pay attention now, Future Me, because we’re going to have to chillax about all of this. It’s okay not to read every single thing. It’s okay because every time we finish reading something, there’s something else waiting. Our favorite artists will put out more books and albums and shows in more formats. If we aren’t ever going to get through this playlist or all of these bookmarks, we can at least slow down the rate at which we add more. Consumer pressure is supposed to work the other way. Stores are supposed to respond to our desires and stock the stuff we want. Instead, everything has reindeer and pine trees on it by November First at the latest. Apparently they think that if they can stretch Christmas out to at least two months, we’ll respond by buying twice as many gifts. Make every store look like a red and green casino! I deal with this by holing up at home. Christmas music makes me break out in hives, and every winter, as soon as it kicks in, I start crossing retailers off my map. I don’t go to the movies or the mall or the pharmacy. I completely boycott Starbucks for the four weeks after Thanksgiving. No mercy. This is why it’s easy for me to do what I call a buy-nothing. A buy-nothing means I am on a voluntary moratorium of spending on anything other than true necessities. We pay the rent and utility bills, of course. Otherwise, we plan meals around what’s in the kitchen and hang around at home. No movies, no restaurants, no recreational shopping, not so much as a pair of replacement socks. The point of a buy-nothing is to save money, and that means looking for savings wherever possible. “Savings” is a poorly understood concept. Most people act in such a way that it seems they think “savings” is actually “spending.” Buying something at a different price than normal is not saving. It’s spending! Maybe, just maybe, it’s bargain hunting. Usually it’s just a way that stores trick us into opening our wallets. They inflate prices temporarily so that we think the “sale” price is some kind of deal. This can be really comical when the item in question is so frivolous that nobody would buy it with full retail markings. As an organizer, I almost always find that my clients have a habit of buying things and then setting the bag down somewhere in the house, still packed. Not only are the tags still on, but the bag has never been opened, and often the client can’t even remember what was in it. “Oh, I was going to return that.” I don’t care, honey, it’s your home, not mine. If you want to spend your vacation money on bags of stuff that you never use, that’s your business. It’s such a common practice that I see it as an ordinary part of our consumer culture. The point is to be in a store, churning through consumer goods and engaging in commercial transactions. The point is not our experience of owning these items. The point is not whether they’ll fit in our homes, or whether we can afford them. We go to the temple and we buy. We buy and we buy. We stop for snacks. Then we go home and try to find somewhere to put our shopping bags. It’s not our fault that they aren’t holograms, which they might as well be for all the good they do us. I do it backwards. Rather than respond to advertisements and sales, I start with a plan. I want the experience of living in my home to feel a certain way. I like having all of my flat surfaces free and open for when I want to use them. I like having available space on my closet rods and bookshelves. This is why I only buy and bring home items that I know I will use. I only buy things if I know where I’ll put them and how I’m going to clean them. I want the experience of being me to work out a certain way. That includes Future Self. I want Future Me to have plenty of money, and maybe even be more financially comfortable than I am today. This means I’m always going to make my savings the priority - priority is singular - and plan my finances before I plan my purchases. If any! Most of the time, I don’t need to buy anything at all. I have all the furniture, housewares, clothes, and entertainment I need. I have plenty of food. Prioritizing money instead of stuff means you’re more likely to have the funds when you need groceries, gas, or anything else. I want to spend my time doing what I want to do. In our culture, some of us are out of ideas for how to spend our time other than driving around to stores and restaurants, watching TV, or messing around with our phones. It’s pretty common for someone to get drive-thru fast food rather than stop at a grocery store and then cook. Going shopping as a way to spend time is also a way to work in as many fast food stops a week as possible. I prefer my own cooking, or my husband’s, and this makes going out and shopping on weeknights more of an inconvenience. The less we shop, the less we spend. One secret to a buy-nothing is to avoid knowing that something exists. Since we don’t watch TV, we don’t see TV commercials. Since we listen to playlists instead of the radio, we don’t hear radio commercials. We don’t look at fashion magazines that would mess with our body image. We don’t wander through stores wondering what they might have. We stay out of the naughty aisles at the grocery store. We feel better off not knowing when there’s a new flavor of snack food. A life with less craving is not a life with less passion. The result of the buy-nothing habit is pretty predictable. I’ve had no consumer debt for over a decade. My husband and I both have credit scores over 800. We know where we are on our path toward eventual retirement. Our minimalist apartment is easy to clean, and we don’t squabble over whose turn it is to do chores. Most importantly, we have fun hanging around and talking to each other or doing projects. We don’t feel deprived when we buy nothing, because it’s our natural state. The feeling of deprivation comes from desire for stuff we can’t afford, and we simply choose not to want anything we don’t want. Financial security, yes, domestic contentment, yes. The endless hamster wheel of consumer desires is not for us. Ryan Holiday has done it again. The title of Perennial Seller is almost meta, almost a joke, because this book is guaranteed to be, indeed, a perennial seller. Holiday is an accomplished prose stylist, and this book ranks right up there with classic writing manuals such as How Fiction Works. It’s also a good idea to listen to anything the author has to say about marketing, considering that he has had several best-sellers with hundreds of thousands of copies sold. The main premise of Perennial Seller is that if a work is well-crafted and aimed at a specific audience, it has the potential to sell even better in following years than it did when it was first released. Creatives who begin with the intention of making something that will still be relevant ten years from now will be more successful than those who want instant fame and fortune. Half of the book focuses on what goes into producing a perennial seller; the other half focuses on the importance of marketing. Holiday emphasizes that this does not mean one should spend half of one’s time on marketing. Rather, many authors and other artists want to wave away the necessity of marketing. Isn’t it unfair to your potential audience to deprive them of a chance to hear about your work? Think of your lonely fans, staring at the ceiling and sighing, wishing they had something as cool as your book/album/comic/whatever to entertain them. You can delegate if you don’t want to do it yourself, but you can’t get out of the necessity of marketing, no matter your opinion of that trade. Holiday himself began as a marketing phenom, and this book will educate you and most likely change your mind. Perennial Seller has a broad range of examples of talented people whose works became perennial sellers. This includes everyone from the band Iron Maiden to the movie The Shawshank Redemption. Considering Holiday’s published work on Stoicism, one might almost expect the list to include more of the classics (by which I mean, Classics), so it’s fascinating to see how many obscure corners of pop culture are hiding perennially successful artists. This is a great read, suitable for long-term study, and essential for those who want to produce an artistic legacy. The fact that so many people find love and get married in nursing homes should give us all hope. Love gets easier when we’re older. We’re more mature and settled, more realistic and patient, more accepting, more likely to realize the uniquely delightful qualities of the person before us. We quit asking ourselves if this is really The One and just ask, Can I sit in a room with this person for several evenings in a row? Whoever you are, there’s someone out there for you. Assume that this is true, believe that it is a certainty, and start getting ready. There are some thoughtful things you can do while you’re waiting. If I’d known I wouldn’t get married to Mr. Awesome Pants until I was thirty-four, it would have been great. I would have skipped several young gentlemen entirely. I could have avoided a couple of humiliating blind dates and just stayed home and read a book. I would have relaxed. There are a few people I could have kept as platonic friends if we hadn’t ruined it by trying to date each other. Yeah, I have sweet memories from a few old flames. I probably would have enjoyed them even more if I’d been able to take them as they were, without constantly querying whether this was “going anywhere.” It’s so much better to just appreciate someone’s company and let the moment be what it is. What would I have done differently? I’m actually pretty proud of myself for doing a lot of the things that I did to prepare for marriage. Some of them I did with that goal explicitly in mind. Others were just a natural result of my proclivities. Everything I ever did to take care of myself, to give myself a better life, also led directly to becoming more marriageable. I saved money and learned to live comfortably within my (limited) financial means. I paid off my consumer debt; in fact, I paid for my share of our wedding in cash. I learned to keep house and follow a recipe. I tried to be a good roommate to various people. I’ve always been a bit of a homebody, in spite of my love of travel, and I was already pretty good at domestic contentment when I met my husband. Welcome to my comfy nest. I hope you like it as much as I do. There are definitely things I would have done differently, though. I would have avoided my first marriage, failure that it was, and that would have been a favor to my ex-husband. Can we agree that if we ever find a wormhole back to 1997, that we both step through it and unmarry each other? Sold. What else? I would have learned to cook sooner! I would have changed my eating habits (especially soda) and I would have been more assertive about my health. If I knew then what I know now, I would have focused the hardest on managing my parasomnia disorder. I would have worked on lowering my stress level. I would have tried to do more about my punctuality issues. Marriage has been good to me. My hubby has taught me so much about so many things that it’s all I can do to keep up. He taught me his athletic mindset. He taught me his mutant-like ability to focus and switch into System II thinking on demand. He’s helped me figure out how to be punctual and get ready quickly. He taught me how to go paperless. He taught me how to play offense in finance, to focus more on earning than on saving. In return, I’ve taught him everything I know about nutrition, minimalism, and all the non-STEM subjects he never had time to study. I also do all the translating when we go overseas. We’re formidable as a team in ways we never could be as singles. Two people together can live more comfortably because we split the labor and the expenses while doubling our skill set. Two people can live on 140% of what it costs for a single person: One rent, one electric bill, one bed, etc. Two people can each do half the cooking and half the housework. Two people can approach a problem in completely different ways. It’s so much easier to tackle life as a team that it’s simply unfair. This is why it really pays off to master your flaws as much as you can; you’ll make yourself that much more appealing to a mate who will then magnify everything good in your life. While you’re waiting to meet the person you’re going to meet, get ready. Think of it as prepping for a party. This person is going to make you laugh, cheer you up, surprise you in pleasant and funny ways, understand you, listen to you, hug you, and pick up the slack when you’re having a hard time. What are you willing to do for a great person like that? When I was single, I made a cozy nest. I wanted my place to feel great to come home to, for me, and also one day for a lovely sweet man. Whoever he might be, I figured he would want a little space. I set up a nightstand on the other side of the bed and left it empty. Just a lamp and an empty drawer. Nobody was sleeping over, and I certainly had a lamp on my side. It was a symbolic gesture. Two pillows. Two teacups. Two towel racks. Man of the future, whoever he was, he should be able to come over and sit at my dining table with me. He should be able to take a nap on my couch. He should be glad to be there with me. I was fine with being single. In most ways, I still am. I still read what I want, listen to the music I like, smooch my pet parrot, visit my family whenever I want, talk to my friends, go on all-girl hiking trips, even have lunch with old boyfriends from time to time. I always liked going to movies by myself (because I like to sit in the front), going out to eat alone (with a book), and generally doing what I want. I felt ready to remarry because I had already traveled alone, taken ballroom dance lessons, lived alone, and gotten my yayas out. I knew who I was and what I wanted in life. I was comfortable being by myself, and I could have gone on doing so for as long as it took. I had a jar pop. I got married again because it was an improvement, because my husband is a cool guy and I like talking to him. While you’re waiting, make sure you enjoy your life. Do everything you ever thought would be fun and everything you think would be a good idea. Get your house in order. Fix your finances. Find a career that fascinates you. Make your body into the body that you want to live in. Eliminate anything you’re not proud of. Deepen your friendships. Like your life for what it is. If you can’t love it, change it - change it quickly and change it radically. Work on your character flaws. It couldn’t hurt to also improve your cooking and get your personal space ready. Make a cozy nest, and be ready with a smile when it’s time to open your door. Running is my dog Spike’s favorite thing ever. He likes it even more than BALL. One day, he went for a six-mile run with my husband while I was at a baby shower. I got ready for my own run. Spike was eating. I went to slip out the door, visibly wearing running clothes and shoes. Spike saw me, spit his mouthful of dog kibble back into his bowl, and sprinted to the door. He’d rather run than eat, even though he’d already put in significant mileage that day. He’d like to go everywhere we do. I try to remember that while I’m wearing shoes, my dog is barefoot all the time. I get where he’s coming from. I hate wearing shoes. I especially hate running shoes; I almost always think they’re hideous. Inevitably, when I go to replace my last worn-out pair, I think the new ones are even uglier than the ones I already have. The pair that fit me best and feel the best on my feet are usually my least favorite colorway out of the whole range. I buy one brand that has colors I like okay, but they’re something of a discount brand and aren’t really good for actually running. Just comfy walking shoes. If I’m not going outside for some reason, I’m barefoot at home. I’m even barefoot when it’s cold outside, which drives my mom nuts. “Aren’t you cold?” Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to do something so foolish as to wear shoes! The thing about being barefoot all the time is that it leads to certain choices instead of others. When I’m barefoot all the time, it doesn’t make as much of a difference whether I get dressed or just hang around in my pajamas. Obviously I’m not going anywhere outside. If I’m not going anywhere, why should I get dressed? This can lead to a blending of morning into late afternoon. If you have the luxury of setting your own schedule, it’s more common for huge chunks of the day to somehow disappear than to suddenly start getting important tasks done at 5:30 AM. When I’m barefoot all the time, I’m going to put off doing certain things until it’s shoe time. This means stuff like taking out the trash, dropping off donation bags, running errands, or even buying groceries is going to wait until later. In fall and winter, daylight can disappear before you even realize that most of the day is gone. Sometimes today turns into tomorrow, or the next day, or never. Without shoes, I’m unlikely to do yard work, replace outdoor lightbulbs, or even so much as sweep the porch. Months can pass this way. When I’m barefoot all the time, how simple it is to tuck my feet up under me and snuggle into a blanket. Putting my shoes on entails bathing and getting dressed first. That has this whole domino effect of officially starting my day, doesn’t it? Doesn’t that trigger my to-do list? Can’t I just wait another hour and do it later? It’s true that I hate shoes. I hate wearing anything on my feet if I don’t have to. It’s also true that going barefoot all the time means I can’t do other things that I love. I’m not backpacking barefoot, I’m not running barefoot, I’m not even going to the library or a bookstore barefoot. My comfort level with hanging around barefoot is a tendency that I don’t feel great indulging. Wearing shoes doesn’t come naturally to me - or to anyone. They’re artificial instruments of civilization, not body parts. Wearing shoes does, though, assist me in my bias toward action. Wearing shoes makes me more active in every way. Wearing shoes helps me get more done and leads me to use my body more. I think about my dog Spike and his feet when we run together. One night, he picked up three goat head thorns. They were rammed into the fleshy pads of one paw. Did he cry out? No. Did he ask to stop? No. He just limped a bit until my husband noticed and picked him up. Spike loves running so much that he’ll do it on hot asphalt, on gravel, in mud, and even when he has spiny thorns stabbing between his little toes. We built up Spike’s feet gradually. When we started running as a pack, I could barely do a third of a mile. We added a tenth of a mile every couple of days. It was three weeks before we were running a mile at a stretch, and I think it took two years before we got to the six-mile mark. Our little 23-pound dog was there for almost every step. Running is his passion. It’s the time he feels most like himself. Because we started out with such short distances, and because we added time and distance so slowly, Spike’s footpads got tough and thick. It helps his nails to stay naturally short and he doesn’t have to go through the trauma of having the groomer trim them. He can run in his full glory, barefoot all the time. Thinking about my little doggy helps to make me more action-oriented. I need to pause a few times a day to take him out. I would never want him to suffer, not with thorns in his paw and not with unanswered biological needs. I’m sure that if we ever put him in shoes, he’d hate wearing them as much as I hate shoes myself. For him, I wear them more often. At least one of us gets to run wild and free, barefoot all the time. Thanksgiving is coming, in case you forgot. It’s easy to miss. Where I live, Christmas decorations overlapped with Halloween, a puny pumpkin showing up underneath a fully decorated Christmas tree. Hey! What happened to Thanksgiving? Where’s my pumpkin pie? It’s my personal mission to make sure that we continue to have at least one holiday completely dedicated to the cooking and consumption of food. Sixteen days and it’s on. Thanksgiving is the holiday of adulting. The better you are at cooking, event planning, logistics, cleaning, ironing, decorating, menu planning, and entertaining, the more fun you can have. Thanksgiving is a time when you can really go all out. It’s sort of like a marathon for domestic demigods, except that I’ve run a marathon and I can tell you that doing Thanksgiving properly actually takes a lot longer. When my husband and I first got married, I hosted our family’s Thanksgiving for the first time. It felt like being crowned Mrs. America. I just reached out and grabbed the ladle, and everybody let me! My parents, my brother and his girlfriend drove all day to come and stay for the weekend. I spent about three weeks getting ready. It was great, because the more people you have over, the more dishes you can make. Go ahead and try to cook twelve dishes for two people and then find room in the fridge for the leftovers. Better just to invite more friends. Now, we live in a tiny little shoebox of an apartment. Our ten-top dining table (plus backup table) went away. Now we have a little bistro table that barely fits four chairs, and then only if it’s hauled into the middle of the living room. We don’t host anymore. That doesn’t mean I’m not cooking! It just means I have to wait to get started until after I get to my parents’ house. In a lot of ways, this means more planning. I’ll have to do all my menu planning in advance but all of my shopping has to happen in one trip. I also have to fit myself into a kitchen where at least three other people will be trying to prep their contributions. Iron Chef, here we come. These are the things I would start doing now, if I lived in a house and I was hosting and cooking the Thanksgiving meal. Do a perimeter check of the house and see what needs decluttering and cleaning Start eating up everything in the fridge to make room for the party food Start eating up everything in the freezer as well Clear out the dining room and find homes for everything on the dining table Clear off the kitchen counters and deep-clean Wipe down the stovetop, inside of the microwave, and fridge shelves Plan my menu Rehearse intervention strategies for awkward conversations and family squabbles Clean the bathrooms Track down the tablecloths, themed napkins, serving platters, et cetera Dust them Avoid desserts and snacks, because I know I’m going to gain three pounds anyway Figure out what I’m going to wear As a more seasoned hostess, I’ve become more pragmatic in my planning. The truth is that everybody just wants to have an enjoyable day off. Your guests want to feel welcomed and they want an edible meal. While they might feel annoyed by a cluttered, dirty house and burnt food, they’re not going out of their way to look for things to criticize. They won’t notice half of what you do, perhaps not even ten percent. Guess what? You’re not statutorily required to cook any of the food yourself. A host provides a meal, not necessarily home cooking. You don’t have to use cloth tablecloths or cloth napkins. You don’t even have to use real plates or cutlery. Okay, granted, I do all of that stuff, but that’s because I enjoy it. I do it for myself. I also do it because it feels like race day, like I’m wearing a race bib and keyed up at the starting line, ready to run a marathon. Can I clean my entire house top to bottom and have it all sparkling on the same day? Can I coordinate all the dishes so they’re ready to eat at the same time? Can I get the food on the table on schedule? Can I orchestrate a conversation that has everyone laughing and nobody throwing the gravy boat through a window? I like planning the Thanksgiving dinner because I want to eat what I want to eat. I hate stuffing, so I never make stuffing. I’ve always thought there should be soup and salad at Thanksgiving, but nobody ever, ever makes soup or salad, so I do it. I like my brother’s cranberry sauce recipe, but I also like mine, and since the whole family eats cranberry sauce we can do both. As a side note, my parents and I are vegan and one brother is vegetarian, so we kind of already do Thanksgiving our way. I love holidays because they give us a chance to elevate ourselves above the everyday. When else are we going to do special things like use cloth tablecloths or eat by candlelight? Why else do we save and store silly things like massive platters or punch bowls? These are the days with the best photo opportunities. Even if the specific memories might involve some troubled conversations or awkward moments, the pictures can make up for it. Planning ahead helps to make the big day run more smoothly. We still have over two weeks to get ready. Let’s make it something to be thankful for. I waited to start investing for several years. Granted, I was flat broke the majority of the time before I started buying into the stock market. I was technically still flat broke afterward too! I lived in half a dorm room! What I mean is that I was reading and learning about investing, I knew I could save 20% of my income if I tried hard, and I felt like I “should” put money into the market. I even had a few picks I would have bought. There were two things holding me back. One, I didn’t really feel like I knew how to set up a brokerage account, and two, I was afraid the market would crash and I’d lose all my money. Now I KNOW the market will crash and I can lose all my money. I shouldn’t have worried about my first concern. If there’s one thing you can easily do, it is to call any finance firm and get them to put your money somewhere. If you have cash in your hand, you’ll find that their customer service is excellent. They will help you to the point that they might physically send someone over to hold your hand if you asked. That all changes when the money disappears. The same account reps who are so lovely when it’s time to make deposits are too busy (and sad) when the Dow plummets. It’s temporary, though. On average, the stock market loses money one year out of every four. It’s stochastic, though, meaning that it has no patterns. What was true in the past may not be true in the future. Nobody can tell. As an historian, I just look back at the time period between now and 1792, when the New York Stock Exchange was founded, and note that it has always gone through fluctuations. That’s enough for me. I assume that periodically, my portfolio will decline drastically in value, and it will take a few years to catch up afterward. (If ever. Come the zombie apocalypse, obviously all bets are off, but at that point all my retirement worries would technically be solved). It’s not like I’m foretelling the future when I say that the market is going to crash. I would be if I said I think it’s coming in first quarter of 2018. That would be a prediction. Making specific predictions is always a terrible idea because they’re virtually always wrong. Most people like to wait until after the fact to claim that they saw something coming. Putting it in print sets you up for failure. In reality, I am planning for such an event. What’s the worst case scenario? The worst case scenario is that I wait to buy stocks, thinking the price will fall, and instead it goes up. When that happens, it means I paid more than I needed to for something and that I then missed out on the gains I could have claimed. It’s annoying, but I can live with it. If I’m right, the upside is that I can buy the same stocks on my wishlist at a lower price. Knowing what I know now, after roughly fifteen years in the market, I feel really sad and foolish for waiting so long to dip my toe in. Remember how I said that I had stocks in mind that I would have bought? The first time I ever thought “this company would be a good investment,” it was when the iMac came out. I saw those five bright colors and I just had this strong feeling that Apple was coming back and would be a stronger brand in the future. My husband helped me do the research and math on that one. If I’d put in what I could have afforded at the time (ten shares), it would have been worth about $14,000 now. Really nice! Really nice but not make-or-break for my eventual retirement. I try not to think of it the way so many people do about the comics or baseball cards that their moms threw out. It’s not like I was an unrecognized genius or like I would have made a billion dollars. It is interesting to think, though, that if I’d bought an iMac, it would be an obsolete collector’s item today. The same money put into Apple shares would still be worth something. Take that thought and transfer it to the concept of buying Starbucks stock instead of buying Starbucks coffee. (Although if everyone did that, the company would either have to sell something else or it would cease to be). The thing is, anyone who lives an average American lifestyle has a fair idea of how consumer brands are faring from year to year. If you commute, shop, watch TV, use a computer, and talk to other Americans, you’re exposed to a lot of products and services. You know a certain amount about what they do. You know your own preferences, the brands you trust, the trends that excite you versus the trends you think are dumb and annoying. You can trust that trend awareness. It’s not nothing. That’s basically how I started picking stocks, as opposed to funds (which are groups of a bunch of different stocks). I read a bunch of investment books at the public library. I came away with the idea that if I understood what a company does, I could make as good a guess as anyone else whether they’d be worth more in the future. My strategic question is: “Do I think this company will still exist in ten years?” If so, I try to imagine whether I think they’ll still be awesome or whether they’ll be a little cobwebby. I’m starting to think it’s about time to reevaluate this strategy, because I think newer companies will be more likely to start fast, make a lot of money in a few years, and then become irrelevant shortly afterward. There will still be companies in that sector, but they’ll come and go. It’ll be harder to make a long-term investment strategy, just like old 1980s investment books always said to buy Coca-Cola, Sears, McDonald’s, and Levi’s. Then the 21st century happened. The world is changing fast. There aren’t really that many rules. Humans have been investing in some form of stock market since medieval times, though, and I think it’s reasonable to assume we’ll keep doing it. Whatever rich people like to do, especially if it involves money, will probably sustain itself. When I got into the market, I had a quarter-time job. I bought my clothes at the thrift store. I didn’t own a car and in fact didn’t know how to drive yet. There were still times when I wasn’t exactly sure where my next meal was coming from. The only thing that got me to put that money aside was that I KNEW it would be harder for me to get a job and earn money as an elderly, frail little old lady. Old Me deserved for me to save something for her. I believed that the economy would continue to expand and be worth more at some distant future point than it was in 2002. I haven’t actually lost any money in the stock market. After the crash of 2008, I made .25% interest. Despite that, I’m smart enough to know that anything can happen. My portfolio could basically vanish. That would be quite a lesson! Even if that happened, though, I’d still plan to put in new money and buy shares of something. I’m pessimistic about the next couple of years of market returns. Ultimately, though, my faith in the market leads me to look at it as an opportunity to buy stocks of strong companies on sale. I’ll almost be too excited to be mad. My basic advice is that if you feel too broke to invest, you should work to learn more about how money works. Read up on it. There’s no risk in reading a book, right? Then get out a calculator and figure out what one percent of your income is, and save it. If you’re already saving a little, save one percent more. If you feel as brave as I think you are deep inside, wait until the day you read in the news that the market has dropped by 20% or 30%, and then buy yourself some stocks. Everyone has a dirty secret. Jessie Sholl’s Dirty Secret is that her mother is a compulsive hoarder. This memoir shares an inside look at what it’s like to deal with a parent’s hoarding as an adult, as well as recollections from childhood. Sholl is a professional writer with a background in health articles, and she artfully weaves the occasional tidbit from her research into the narrative. This book is a must-read for children of hoarders. It would be a particularly fantastic read for those who struggle with attachment to stuff, because of the insight it gives into how it affects family members. Sholl begins by quoting her mom, who asked that this book be written with radical honesty. She says that her mother read most of it before publication and enjoyed it. This is important to know going in, because many people feel intense shame around hoarding and squalor. Sensitive readers might worry about guiltily consuming an “unauthorized biography” type of book. This was written with love and respect. Also annoyance, frustration, and the full range of emotions anyone experiences in a complicated, challenging relationship with a parent. I work with hoarders, and Sholl’s description of her mom’s hoarded house sounds pitch-perfect to me. The enthusiasm with which my people acquire craft supplies, books, clothes, and random treasures shows here, as well as the chronic inability to keep any of it organized or complete the projects that had been initiated. There’s the same fixation with buying “gifts” for various people, gifts that rarely manage to be sent. Compulsive accumulators poignantly interpret their feelings of affectionate regard through purchases. The warmth I feel toward this object is a feeling I associate with you, so I’ll get it for you, even though you probably won’t understand why when you see it (if ever). Hoarding is a really lonely issue to have. It shouldn’t be, though; it’s a lot more common than people seem to realize. Sholl herself may not have known this yet when she wrote the book. She was very surprised to learn that a couple of her friends also had hoarders in the family. Based on my gut instinct and experience, I think it affects about one in five households in the US to some degree. Hoarding is so prevalent that there must be literally millions of people who grew up in a hoarded home. Many of my people are buried in clutter basically because that’s how they were raised, and it never occurred to them that there was any other way. Sholl rebels against her childhood by moving frequently as an adult. She’s also a compulsive minimalist. She describes purging objects so ruthlessly and so frequently that she may have thrown away her grad school diploma. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat while reading this; Sholl and I are the same age, have the same first name, and yeah, we both tend to move our furniture around a lot and feel allergic to clutter. My interest in minimalism has renewed and deepened every time I’ve done a photo consult, much less a home visit. Just reading this book made me grab a donation bag and start chucking things into it. Our restless desire for clear surfaces and white space is probably similar to a hoarder’s preference for a crowded nest. Sholl asks her mother what it feels like when she buys something new. She describes it as feeling like this particular object might change her life. I call it ‘swirly eyes.’ Maybe that’s the same feeling many of us chase as we strive for a pure minimalist aesthetic: the feeling that if we can get the space designed just right, it might change our life, too. Ultimately, we can only change ourselves. I found this book gripping, disquieting, provocative, and sometimes pretty funny. It was particularly funny when I read through certain scenes and started scratching at myself, feeling like my skin was crawling! It’s a good read, one that would make a solid introduction to hoarding for the uninitiated. There’s an extensive bibliography, as well as a reader’s guide. Dirty Secret may well be the definitive guide to having a parent who hoards. Drama Neighbor lives on the third floor. She’ll probably wind up with a more specific nickname at some point. That’s part of the neighborhood intel that my husband and I have shared everywhere we’ve lived. There was Crazy Megaphone Guy and Corvette Guy, Cougar Lady, Mr. Crabapple, Raspy, Whistler, and oh so many more. We know intimate details about all of these people because THEY ARE LOUD. They all shared a tendency to conduct their personal business in plain air, on the porch, on the lawn, in the driveway, in the street, or anywhere they happened to be when the mood struck. It’s surprising how people seem to forget that their private conversations are audible to others who are only a few feet away. There’s no easy way to close your earlids. I first became aware of Drama Neighbor at 8:20 AM on a Thursday morning. I was working. Usually our building is pretty quiet in the morning, because everyone is either at the office, or busy being a quietly grown adult person. Our complex appears to be about 80% Millennial and 15% retiree, with very few tenants in their forties like us. It’s kind of like a dorm, if all the RA’s were grandparents. There’s the occasional late-night giggling foray down the hall, and our dog delights in finding stray bits of popcorn, mixed nuts, and other spilled snacks. {SCHLORF} I could have assumed that Drama Neighbor is in her twenties, but the content of the conversation more or less confirmed it. To sum up: She’s upset at him because they were supposed to move to the West Coast together, and now that she’s relocated he’s backing out. She refuses to accept that he has any valid reasons to want to break up. I was able to piece this together pretty solidly after the two-day, multi-hour telephonic sobfest that Drama Neighbor conducted on her porch, about 20 feet above my head. Swearing, wailing, shouting. (Our complex lacks air conditioning, so most of us leave our sliding doors open day and night. This explains the eventual intervention of Sensible Third-Floor Neighbor Lady, who finally asked, after about ninety minutes: “Could you take that in the house? Please?”) Choice quotes: “I *sob* am a strong *sob* and powerful woman!” “I don’t even surf, I just sit in the water and cry!” I was sure they were going to break up after the sudden break into the part of the conversation that went: “You know what? I wish you the best.” Shift into compliments. But then it went on for another hour, and continued into the next day. Still on the patio, despite her next-door neighbor’s plea for a little dignity. Then it continued into tipsy late-night rants to visiting confidantes. This is the other way you know Drama Neighbor is so young: She has the stamina to be swearing and crying on the phone at eight in the morning, and then stay up swearing with her girlfriends on the balcony until midnight. End exposition. Now we explain exactly what is meant by ‘drama.’ Drama is a pattern that is instantly obvious to those who have learned to see it, yet somehow it is invisible to those who suffer from it. Well, those who suffer first-hand. Second-hand drama still has pernicious effects. Drama is any unnecessary social transaction that was initiated, consciously or subconsciously, with a desire for conflict. Drama might include giving someone a piece of one’s mind, a desire for closure, revenge-seeking, spreading gossip, or the simple inability to walk away from an unsuitable relationship. That’s the root cause here. A sadder but wiser person will know from the beginning that a cross-country move is one of the classic transition points that calls for a breakup. It falls under the category of the Game Changer. The situation under which the relationship was developed has now changed. The contract must be renegotiated or closed. All parties involved have to assume that the relationship is not sufficient to survive that transition, because the alternative would be long-term partnership. Marriage or reasonable facsimile thereof. If the couple were so well matched that marriage or facsimile was inevitable, they would already know. Any sense of uncertainty or indecision around the long-term commitment is an automatic sign that it ain’t there. Like, are you indecisive about cilantro? No, you are not. How about chocolate? Again, not indecisive. You know what you like, and so does the other person. Drama Neighbor is still so young and inexperienced that she didn’t see her upcoming Long-Distance Breakup as predictable. The other thing that’s predictable about breakups is that they have to be scheduled. No fair breaking up with someone in the weeks surrounding major holidays, vacations, or other events that require travel, meeting families, gift exchange, etc. If the gentleman wanted to be kind and respectful, he’d have to expedite this unfortunate business of the breakup well before Thanksgiving. He thoughtfully gave her enough time to meet someone else, maybe even be available for a quick rebound flirtation at a Halloween party. Maybe he isn’t a gentleman at all. Maybe he’s a selfish, inconsiderate narcissist or serial heartbreaker. In that case, no loss! Good riddance, bud. Another predictable feature of the breakups of the young and impressionable is that they don’t realize how it looks to demonize your ex. If she’s so terrible and you’re so great, why were you together in the first place? Whatever happened to the “star-crossed lovers, never meant to be” trope? One day in my late twenties, I realized that I had a pattern of always being in a long-distance relationship. It struck me that I had a lot to gain from this. I got to be with someone who was always glad to hear from me, always in a romantic mood, and always on his best behavior when we got together. At the same time, he was usually out of my hair and I was free to lounge around reading and indulging in my bachelorette habits, like eating cereal for dinner and cake for breakfast. I started to wonder what it would be like to love someone and live with him in the same zip code on a daily basis. Boom, remarried at age thirty-four. There’ll be plenty of time for Drama Neighbor. Time for her to meet and date various other people. Time for her to discover that none of them are going to have much patience with her habit of shouting, swearing, hurling insults, sobbing loudly, and generally being willing to make a big embarrassing scene in public. We speculate that she must be very beautiful and talented, or the price of talking to her would simply be too high. I mean, we don’t really want to be in a conversation with her, either; it just keeps happening. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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