I flaked.
I said I’d publish here weekly, I polled y’all for a preferred day of the week, I wrote about an epic 6.5-mile run, and then… I just stopped. Stopped running. Stopped writing. Most importantly: I stopped sleeping.
For the first three weeks of July, I was awake nearly every night from 3a–5a. It became clear, in my haze, that no (good/bad/cliché) words were going to emerge in my condition.
In the fleeting moments where I could focus, I outlined a story about the value of sleep, how my mother told me growing up she never slept the same after I was born, and how Arianna Huffington was right! I even sketched a whole series of paintings based on my sleep graphs to illustrate the alarming orange bars that were appearing where blues and purples should be. I didn’t paint them. Because I still wasn’t sleeping. Eventually, I just gave up and stopped wearing the watch to bed. The solution to over-analyzing my upside-down sleep graph was to simply stop generating one. Take that, quantified life.
Feels like a legit lifetime ago, but wind back to Taos in May where I took copious notes while listening to the godmother-of-newsletters Ann Friedman enumerate her lessons learned to an eager audience of wannabe dispatchers. Her #1 piece of advice to grow a newsletter audience: BE CONSISTENT.
Oops. I flaked, Ann.
Throughout the retreat, Ann regularly quoted art guidance counselor Beth Pickens on how to stay motivated. Beth runs the accountability group Homework Club for artists and writers; she literally wrote the book-manifesto Make Your Art No Matter What. Beth inadvertently threw me a personal lifeline in mid-July, by way of a mass email to her list, declaring July “the flakiest month of the year”.
I’m not alone! Thank you, Beth.
But still… the words. I owe them to you myself. They are swimming in my head, dancing in my heart, gnawing at my soul. And merely scribbles and scratches in my notebook.
So to clear the air and make way for the change of season…
What I did this summer*
*while not writing this newsletter
I worked! A lot. At odd/all hours. Adjusting to an independent consulting rhythm demands producing myself to the same degree that I feel skilled in producing others. Easier typed than executed. The professional highlight of the summer was shooting new key art for the LinkedIn News podcast team. I love being on set, especially with people I love. Thank you Jessi Hempel for introducing me to the team. (And such a joy to reunite with friend and former colleague Leah Smart!) We’re all very excited to share the work with you in September.
I good talked! My buds Biz Ghormley and Joelle Berman cultivated another heart-filling session of seasonal conversation centered on finding opportunity in the liminal space summer creates.1 We gathered in Prospect Park to share memories of summers past in order to make the most of summer present. Toward the end of the session, we sat in pairs and interviewed each other from a list of prompts. My counterpart’s opening question was uninformed and yet cosmically spot-on: Who do you want to connect to this summer? Is my energy that transparent?!
We concluded by writing out our summer intention on an index card. This week they emailed out as a reminder:
I painted! A first for me: this summer I packed watercolors along with my swimsuit. I painted pancakes after reading a particularly good sentence in a friend’s story. I painted a piece of corporate art spotted during a location scout. During the second hour sitting on an Amtrak Acela stuck 30 mins south of Boston, I painted a tie-dye CELINE shirt just to make myself laugh.2 This week, while surrounded by trees in upstate New York I painted my father’s necklace on my scarred chest.
I read! Can’t stop thinking about Kathryn Shulz’s book “Lost & Found”—a meditation on moving through grief and falling in love—rec’d to me by another writer attending the Taos retreat. I am not a frequent fiction reader but am enjoying slowly rereading Andrew Sean Greer’s “Less” before diving into the sequel and savoring Jade Chang’s delicious road trip meets economic crit “The Wangs vs. The World”.
Also! Two very important people in my life launched new books in July! It was a gift to experience Wendy MacNaughton’s little book “How to Say Goodbye” while sitting on the same Provincetown beach my late father used to walk along. And, Liz Tran’s “The Karma of Success” is giving me useful frameworks for transitioning into this next stage of my career. Buy them both! Buy them all!
I flew! Back-and-forth to SFO twice in fifteen days due to a series of unbelievable events that unfolded this summer in a manner you would definitely describe as too contrived were they to appear in a well-written rom-com. And yet, over many negronis, I’d be happy to recount to you every bloody detail leading up to me getting stopped from clearing airport security because—while I indeed had a confirmed seat on the flight taking off in 45 minutes—I did not actually have a ticket. Smash cut to me running through the airport carrying 50lbs of luggage desperately trying to reach my already-boarded-child and passing by a 30-something sporting a man bun and a light blue shirt with iron-on letters spelling out: “WORLD’S SLUTTIEST DAD.” And, scene.
I beached! I quite literally, blissfully dipped my own two feet into both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans in July. More notably, channeling my inner waxed Ryan Gosling, I granted myself permission to lean into being distracted, delighted, and dumb. It was brilliant. Maybe even life-altering.
I celebrated! Yesterday, my kid turned 8! No one is more surprised by this news than me. We spent it exactly as she desired, lakeside.
Thanks for sticking with me—more to come.
Until next time…
xx Kyle
Note: Only after publishing did I realize that every time I said “June” in the above I meant July. Now corrected, but also… exactly.
Sounds like hyperbole, but these conversations with Biz and Joelle have transformed my life. I’ll keep promoting them in the hopes they’ll create a proper site/newsletter for you to follow. Until then, watch this URL:
And yes, I fixed the typo.
Yaaaaay for starting again. Maybe this is just your VERSION of consistent. ;) You could even be a biweekly newsletterer. 💁🏼♀️also glad you enjoyed lost and found!
Congratulations, again, precious one!!
Moma