I got to announce the IP project on Instagram (if you’re reading this nuance-letter, know you’re my very favorite—my audience there is just still larger) and stamp final thank-you cards and send preorder links to those who’d been asking.

And although it’s feeling much more real, I’m still in a mild state of disbelief. I had set the summer aside for my PAWS AND REFLECT manuscript—my dream-of-all-dreams hybrid memoir of emotional realizations, training insights, and core values from seven years helping fearful Scout enjoy our shared life—and into my lap fell a different but wonderful and related opportunity.

What are the odds?

After working to complete the first draft of THE DOG LOVER’S BUCKET LIST in less than two months—and learning so much from my editorial team along the way—I look forward to getting to don the title “published author”. To holding in my hands a real, tangible book with my name on the cover. To most of all reaching more fellow pet lovers with the message to “go play with your dog, if you’re able.”

If you’re so inclined (and please don’t feel pressured) you can preorder from Bookshop (which supports indie bookstores), Barnes & Noble, Indigo, Amazon (if you must), or your other favorite bookseller.

If you missed my first announcement, I shared more details in my last post!

And as always, I’m here for any questions you have. Go play with your dog! 😉

I’m a little embarrassed to admit that my first thought was this is fake. Anyone who’s spent a couple hours around me knows my greatest dream is to publish a book—specifically one about dogs. It wasn’t until I realized the editor had followed me on Instagram that I accepted this possibly-very-exciting reality.

The next morning we hopped on a call. Nicole pitched me an idea, I liked the idea, we worked out the logistics—and now, not quite six months later, we’ve wrapped up final manuscript and design revisions. Which means I’m going to be a published author!

By next spring, my name will be on a book. A tangible, physical book. A book you can buy from a major store. A book you can give to a friend. A BOOK!

It’s called The Dog Lover’s Bucket List (I got to give a lil’ input on the title) and is part inspiration-education and part journal. Pub day is set for May 19th. That’s less than six months away. Pinch me!

This book is what’s called an IP project. The publisher owns the idea and contracts me to execute it, with similar terms to my other freelance writing work (a flat fee for a clear deliverable). Although it’s not a traditional book deal—I do not have a literary agent or paved path to publish my hybrid memoir—I am thrilled. The Dog Lover’s Bucket List is all about encouraging fellow guardians to do more with their companions. (Heck yeah!) The Quarto team is lovely and professional, plus they let me infuse the project with my own voice. (Heck yeah times two!) And a thoughtful inspiration-education-journal is both different and similar enough to my Paws and Reflect manuscript to feel like a great complement.

I’ve only gotten more excited.

Naturally, The Dog Lover’s Bucket List has taken over my recent schedule and brain space. I’m still working on my dream book—before we left Portland I finished a multi-week writing workshop hosted by Emma Reynolds where my top goal was to finalize a chapter organization I’m happy with, and I’ve since kept revising the manuscript/proposal ad nauseam—but I’ve shifted my target timeline. Such is life. (“Change is the only constant,” they say. To which I respond: “change… and pushing back deadlines.”)

I will have plenty more to say about The Dog Lover’s Bucket List up until—and let’s be honest, long after—pub day next spring. Looking forward to sharing it with you!! The final cover and preorder links are coming soon.

Now that I’ve announced the jump-up-and-down-yay thing, I want to be honest that I’ve still felt plenty discouraged about my writing and traditional publication hopes and *gestures broadly*.

I overthink my skills and work ethic and plans. I get jealous seeing other people living what I imagine as my dream. (I then feel guilty for feeling jealous because I do not want to lug around a scarcity mindset—but dammit I am a human with such messy edges.) I sit in front of a blank white page and beg the words to come and then give up and make a second mug of coffee to sip while reading other writers’ work and asking myself why I didn’t write their perfect sentences myself.

This fall has fulfilled its promise to be busy—my second niece was born in September, we’ve since been on the road full time again, we keep running into van issues—and protecting time to write for myself, beyond the work that pays the bills, has been harder than I expected.

It’s left me feeling insecure.

But I am realizing, over and over again, that I am the only one who can ever 1) affirm that I am a Real Writer with valuable things to say and the necessary talent/effort to say them, and 2) give myself permission to move through life as such.

None of this is novel, I know. The world is full of artists doubting their work, struggling with jealousy, buckling under rejection, telling the same story. But although it’s not a remotely unique feeling, it is a present one—currently (and maybe forever) part of my life. It’s mine and I’m trying to face it.

And I can hold space for the doubt while celebrating the affirmation.

Mostly, though, today I am celebrating. Maybe go play with your dog to join in? 😉

In case you missed it

November’s monthly recap is full of good books (and some cute Scout photos).

Every time we walk into a new store, I disappear to the creature / nature / pets section. I smile when I see my “friends” on the shelves—books I’ve already read and enjoyed. (For example, I instantly loved Point Reyes when they had several copies of The Darkness Manifesto prominently displayed outside... and then The Arrogant Ape in the first big table.)

I read every word of every staff pick suggestion card.

I always, always, always leave with at least a few new titles added to my TBR.

And sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly confident, I imagine where my future book will live on a bookstore shelf. What related titles might sit next to it. Which talented authors might share the aisle with my own name. I look at all the books—all the beautiful, tangible, someone-spent-YEARS-on-this-and-now-it’s-in-your-hands?! books—and feel simultaneously insignificant (there are already so many great works out there) and empowered (but there’s still room for the story I think only I can tell).

Maybe bookstores are a little bit like church, for me. The same way a long hike or coastal breeze or wildlife sighting feels sacred. (It’s not lost on me that through books we can experience all those things, viscerally, without ever leaving the couch.)

But if one of the best parts of van life is getting to visit so many bookshops... one of the worst is not having the physical space to store all the books I’d love to keep. I try to support local spots by buying other things like notecards (I’m trying to make snail mail a thing again!) and to support authors by purchasing ebook versions (though physical sales matter more for some bestseller lists, which is an unsurprising shame in a rather convoluted industry).

And then I daydream, incessantly, about a huge shelf of my own someday. When the road’s done calling, I will have a corner or a wall or maybe, if we are very lucky, a whole room overflowing with biology and memoir and wonder and awe. (Plus plenty of spooky thrillers and sci-fi adventures and dragon tales, for good measure.)

What a delight to look forward to. What a delight to get my fix at little watering reading holes across the country until that someday comes.

Update: Shortly after I wrote and scheduled this post, I stumbled upon one of my favorite “pet” sections of all time at Green Apple Books in San Francisco.

The unassuming shelf featured Good Grief by the lovely E.B., Dog Smart by Jennifer Holland and Rethinking Rescue by Carol Mithers (both authors I was lucky enough to interview last year), The Happiest Dog on the Block by my longtime Dogstagram connection Taylor Finton, and Poets Square by Courtney Gustafson all in one place.

Talk about smiling when I see my friends—in this case, very literally my friends—on the shelves!

Related posts

Speaking of books…

• Maya Williams, the wonderful host of the weekly writing workshop I attended during our time in Portland this summer, just published her latest poetry chapbook!

• In case you missed it, Good Grief by E.B. Bartels is now out in paperback! The books are gorgeous and E.B. is lovely. (She also just published a piece about Dog Mountain.)

• Isabel Klee’s memoir, Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I’ve Cried About, is available for preorder. Isabel may be a social media powerhouse, but she is also generous and kind and so deserving of this milestone!

• I am still obsessed with The Arrogant Ape by Christine Webb. At some point I will finally organize a massive mind-map post of reflections. (And if you didn’t catch it in my last post, I sent Webb the longest email ever and she replied so kindly and now I love her/this book even more.)

• Also still cheering hard for Speaking for Spot’s Nancy Kay’s first work of fiction: A Dog Named 647.

• And I keep thinking about (and noticing) feral cats more than ever after reading Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend.

When I was a kid, I dreamed of becoming a marine biologist.1 I wanted to swim with dolphins and belugas and sea lions. I wanted to cooperate with—bond with—these fellow yet disparate creatures.

Here’s the other thing: I wanted to simply dream this career into existence.

My parents, confident I could be anything I wanted to be, encouraged me to pursue a range of interests. Perhaps they were too confident. I remember my mom once telling me that in order to truly work with marine mammals I’d have to swim and dive and hold my breath for long periods. Despite not being close to performing any of those skills, I brushed off her words. The work required sounded dull. It was effort I’d have to put in toward something that wasn’t even a guarantee—and I traded almost exclusively in guarantees.

I followed rubrics. I asked my teachers for feedback. I listened when they told me what to do. I liked living in the most predictable of worlds.

A few years after my beluga phase, I circled back to my dream o…

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Here’s March!

I use a 5-point scale such that a 3 is satisfying (not bad) and a 5 is over-the-top wonderful. I know that’s not how everyone does it, so it feels worth flagging!

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I can let people enjoy things—let myself enjoy things!—while still thinking critically about how my consumption habits affect who I am.

This morning I told a friend I think one of his favorite movies is boring.

“I don’t care,” he declared. And we moved right on.

My past self would have worried this interaction was callous, but trust me: It wasn’t. My friend was not saying “I don’t care about you” or even “I don’t care about your opinions overall”. He was simply saying he did not care if I was a fan of this specific film he loved, because his love for it exists independently of other people’s takes. No defensiveness, no justification, no only-one-of-us-can-be-right1 tension.

It took me decades to grow comfortable with this response to low-stakes2 opinions. I’m reminded of CJ Hauser’s “Hepburn Qua Hepburn” essay in The Crane Wife: “the reality is that I was threatened by men’s tastes because I assumed they would have to become mine.” They go on to say “I find other people contagious. … I am p…

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This morning I find myself saying to Sean, not for the first time: “You know, whenever I build a task up in my head and then actually sit down to do it, it’s easier than I imagined? Not sure why I put things off.”

I am not proud of this recurring declaration.

I’ve long been a bit of a procrastinator—usually motivated by perfectionism—who manages to rarely miss deadlines but consistently doubt the quality of what she turns in. I often feel like I don’t have the resources or focus or ability to do something perfectly right now… but maybe I will tomorrow. Or the next day. Or, you know, when rubbing right up against the due date.

This tendency got worse the first year we lived in our converted van. We were so busy with the logistics of a life on the road (and, admittedly, the associated joys) that I grew accustomed to putting tasks off before knocking them out in a late-night haze. I once set an alarm for …

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As always, let me know if you have questions! And in case you missed it, I asked for your feedback a couple weeks ago. It’s looking like I’ll stick with a monthly cadence for these—but please make your voice heard. It means a lot that you’re here.

New cute Scout photo as a thank you ↓

✏️ What I’ve published lately

On the Paws and Reflect blog

I have been writing “for myself” a lot in the last weeks. This might be because 1) I am properly leaning into Substack sharing over Instagram, which means 2) I’m less worried about essays here needing to meet a specific length or format, and also 3) we spent a lot of time in inspiring nature. Many links below!

• The best things I’ve bought lately (personal essay, lifestyle-ish)
  I think I’m developing a motto that goes something like “don’t buy much, but what you do buy, make sure you deeply enjoy”.

• Nomad Haley and Wisconsin Haley (personal, family)
  Reflections on feeling like I sometimes live two lives: carefree(ish) traveler and always-worried daughter/sister/aunt.

• Some things I believe (personal list)
  I felt inspired to profess some opinions.

• Ways we’ve gone increasingly feral (van life)
  Cliché: We moved into a van... and Sean started making his own granola.

• A brief record of parking lot peace (van life)
  Freedom from “will anyone bother us?” concerns and from “we are in the most gorgeous natural environment imaginable and it would basically be the eighth deadly sin if we didn’t explore it to our maximum capacity” pressure.

• Thank you for not treating her like a retriever (dog training and reactivity)
  Expressions of gratitude after meeting up with loved ones.

• Carpe noctem: Notes on The Darkness Manifesto by Johan Eklöf (book reflection)
  “Henceforth if you want me after sunset you will find me only by candlelight.”

• One of the realest things to stir my chest (nature, inspiration)
  On getting to know the night sky.

• Judging without judging (relationships)
  On the messiness of making—and talking—about different choices.

• I miss Scout, and Sean, and me (nostalgia, grief)
  There are so many moments I'd forgotten. There are so many more I'll never remember.

• Things that make Scout an excellent campground dog (dog training, van life)
  And that I hope writing down will help me stop taking for granted!

• Notes on my recent internet searches (personal tidbits)
  Experimenting a little with how online history captures (and misses) life's little moments.

• Brief notes on Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert (book reflection)
  Copied directly from my personal Google Doc and shared here, because—in the spirit of the book—it’s okay to just toss stuff out there sometimes!

• What’s the value of a fox-kit moon? (nature, van life, book reflection)
  One of my favorite pieces this month! About sacrifices and joys.

• The pile on of pets where they’re prohibited (responsible dog handling)
  I can’t stop caring about this. I don’t want to stop caring about this.

• There is no finish line (personal essay)
  I want to be done so I can be loved. Maybe the ultimate checklist task is separating the two.

• Well-behaved and composed and good (dog training)
  Because Scout is fulfilled and trusted and understood.

• Vignettes from the Florida keys (personal narratives)
  Moments I just want to remember, as is, instead of shaping into some larger whole.

• I meet my younger self for coffee (poetry)
  Inspired by the trend based on Jennae Cecelia’s original poem.

• On post-vacation overwhelm (personal emotions)
  And emotional complexity and internet authenticity and etc etc etc.

• I’m always on vacation; I’m never on vacation (van life)
  Reflections on living, working, and relaxing in a converted van and our recent holiday in the Florida keys.

• You know, hedging my communication can be, well, prosocial? (book reflection)
  On talking more assertively, leaving room for nuance, and deeply enjoying Wordslut by Amanda Montell.

• What I get out of Instagram (social media)
  And ways I might find these things elsewhere.

Featured elsewhere

• Should You Include Your Dog in Your Wedding? for Kinship
  A big thank you to the dog and wedding professionals who gave me some of their time for this piece. And to the Kinship editors for welcoming me back to write again!

• Busting enrichment myths, part two for Juniper
  Do puzzle toys make it harder for modern dogs to relax? I’d written about this here on my own blog before (multiple years ago) but cleaned up my thoughts for a wider pet parent audience.

• The 3/3/3 Rule in Rescuing a Dog for Wilderdog
  This final piece is quite different from my initial pitch. One reason I love publishing things on my own blog is that I have full control over every word that goes out (and hell, I can come back to them whenever I want to make tweaks)—but I enjoy the chance to practice my editing abilities/comfort in other contexts!

Plus a podcast!

• If you were around last fall, you might remember that I had the privilege of interviewing journalist Carol Mithers about her newest book: Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and The Story of America’s Forgotten People and Pets. This week our conversation went live for the world to hear! I am thrilled and excited and proud and really, really hope you’re able to give it a listen.

📚 What I read last month

I decided to break this section out into its own post for more space. Take a gander here: four quick fiction books plus nonfiction reads about light pollution, therapy, endangered animals, creativity, and internet scams.

I’ve been listing my recent reading at the end of larger monthly recaps and in my “Books” story highlights on Instagram—but both those places have started to feel cramped (and my social media sharing is especially inconsistent nowadays).

So, enter a new way to talk about the books I’ve had my nose in: A dedicated monthly post! Sometimes I have so much to say about a particular title that it gets its own full reflection, of course, but for all the others… this monthly shindig is their place to shine.

Here’s February!

I use a 5-point scale such that a 3 is satisfying (not bad) and a 5 is over-the-top wonderful. I know that’s not how everyone does it, so it feels worth flagging!

Nonfiction reads

• The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life by Johan Eklöf
  Finished 2/2, read mostly in a yellow lawn chair on our second day camping in the Florida Keys, then in the bed watching sunset with Scout.
  I loved loved loved this one. (Of course reading…

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At barely 200 pages with short chapters, The Darkness Manifesto is a quick read with a powerful message—and one of my new favorite books. Eklöf’s reflections on light pollution have officially made my “recommend to everyone” list. (Especially people who have disagreed with me about daylight saving versus standard time… hey hey, the dark isn’t always so bad! 😉)

Of course, I was predisposed to like this book because I agreed with the argument going in. Living in a van has pushed me further in the direction of “crunchy environmentalist”, and I’ve experienced firsthand the joys of a truly dark night: staring at the Milky Way in Utah’s desert, catching falling stars with Sean in the Badlands, spotting bats with our naked eyes around the country. I’ve even grown unsettled (in a cool way) beneath Alaska’s midnight sun where it never really got dark at all. These moments have cemented in me a deeper love for the natural rhythms of our world.

But even if I didn’t already appreciate those things, I like to think Eklöf would have convinced me. He is gentle in his communication. His love for creatures, for the natural world, for the wonder of experiences beyond typical human focus, seems obvious. I told Sean parts of the book read as almost tender (and that’s even through a language translation).

My favorite Goodreads review of The Darkness Manifesto is simple: “Henceforth if you want me after sunset you will only find me by candlelight.”

Things I loved in this book

Some surface-level fun

• He mentions Thomas Nagel, of course (who is the reason I have a little bat tattoo on my arm!)

• He knew Donald Griffin personally

• He references The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Deeper joys

• Eklöf acknowledges that it’s natural for us humans to want to light up the night—he isn’t preachy or self-righteous—but offers plenty of scientific evidence and emotional resonance for us to try getting comfortable with darkness

• So. Many. Cool. Creature. Stories. Mammals, birds, deep sea animals…

• Many references to other books and research; my TBR has grown as a result

• Eklöf inspired me to think of things I simply never had before—like that the day/night cycle has been the most constant variable on our planet through so many other climate and geographical changes, and that lighting up a sliver of darkness really serves to make anything outside that beam even harder to see

Things we’re changing as a result of this book

Since moving into Hermes—and, admittedly, first being exposed to some of the effects of artificial light on humans years ago via The Huberman Lab podcast (one I rarely listen to anymore)—Sean and I have been inching our way towards nighttime harmony. The Darkness Manifesto inspired us to take further changes more seriously.

• Once the sun sets, we’re using as little light as physically possible. I used to love plugging in my “cozy lights” (a strand of black string lights in our bed) when it got dark—my middle-ground solution is to turn them on just before sunset and shut them off around nautical twilight.

• If we do need to have brighter light on after dark, we’re making sure our window covers are up so we aren’t disrupting insects, birds, or mammals outside the van.

• We’re keeping our computer brightness and warmth at the bare minimum in the evening. Same with our Kindle backlights.

• When venturing out of the van at night, we’re avoiding flashlights unless truly necessary for safety (like if we’re walking along a road and need cars to see us).

• No more bedtime snacks, unless I really messed up my eating schedule during the day and know I’ll wake up hungry.

• More stargazing!!

Highlighted passages

My top favorite quotes

(Bolded emphasis my own.)

• Page 16: The loss of the experience of night can possibly seem nostalgic and tangential. But there’s a lot of research showing that the human being in the Anthropocene experiences strongly negative effects from too much artificial light. The light disturbs our biological clock, causing sleeping difficulties, depression, and obesity.

• Page 30: Much more research has been done on how to kill insects than on how to save them, which is fairly telling about how we humans operate.

• Page 33: The more the attention on the impact of ecological systems and our own wellbeing, the closer we’ll get to reconciling society’s need for light with nature’s need for darkness.

• Page 212: Many of the animals that live under the protection of darkness are on the verge of extinction and with them their invaluable services—pollination and pest hunting. And we humans have ever-worsening sleep and plants are aging prematurely when the night is absent.

• Page 210: Light pollution is the easiest of all environmental problems to solve, at least technically.

Setting the book’s purpose

• Page XI: Half of the insects on this planet are nocturnal, and for the last couple of years we have been drowning in alarming reports regarding their disappearance. Forestry, environmental toxins, large-scale farming, and climate change—many causes are mentioned but little is said about light, even though the light-sensitive moth is one of those most disappearing.

• Page XII: It is no longer just a question of stars and insects. It is about all living things, including we humans. Ever since the birth of our planet, day has been followed by night, and every cell in every living organism has built-in machinery working in harmony with that rhythm. The natural light calibrates our inner circadian rhythm and controls hormones and bodily processes.

• Page XIII: I hope that this book will inspire others, function as a reminder of the importance of letting the night be a part of our lives, and give insight into how much damage artificial light can do—be a challenge and a manifesto for the natural darkness.

On why darkness has been important… forever

• Page 3: Through billions of years—Earth is 4.5 billion years old—our planet has changed form, slowly or in sudden events. … But one thing has remained more or less constant: the alternation between day and night, between light and darkness. The sun has always gone down in the west and risen again in the east, and in between those moments it has been night.

• Page 5: The biological clock, our circadian rhythm, is ancient, shared, and completely fundamental. Everything living today has developed in a world where the conditions are changed over the day and over the year.

• Page 6: It’s light and darkness that calibrate the biological clock. … The artificial light from lamps, headlights, and floodlights is not in this equation and risks, to put it mildly, creating disorder in the system.

• Page 58: Life has evolved in accordance with the day’s alternating light and darkness, and the more animals we study, the more we realize that both day and night are equally important for their ecology.

• Page 110: The more you look, the more marine organisms you’ll find that rely on signals from the lunar cycle, often in combination with other clues such as sunlight levels or water temperature.

On humans chasing out darkness

• Page 13: We humans are in many ways completely dependent on visual sensory impressions, so therefore light means safety for us. So it isn’t strange that we tend to want to light up our existence.

• Page 14: Human beings have extended their day while forcing out the night’s inhabitants.

• Page 14: Despite the much good that technological developments have done for humans—with their concrete as well as symbolic illuminations—in their tracks plainly follow energy wastefulness, rampant consumerism, and ecological degradation.

• Page 62: light without a shade radiates more light and energy into the atmosphere than down to the walkway it was intended to illuminate.

• Page 98: Artificial light isn’t only one of mankind’s most amazing inventions, but can also without a doubt be detrimental to life itself. It can mislead 200 million years of instinct in an instant.

• Page 142: The king’s light installations were a demonstration of power, and lighting is used in a similar way to this day. The previously mentioned giant spotlight, the Luxor Sky Beam in Las Vegas, is a clear example of that.

• Page 168: [August] Strindberg was partially correct that lighting was political. It was a way to increase efficiency, but also a demonstration of strength, in the same way as were the striking installations and the presentations of candles in the eighteenth century. The light could project an image of wealth and power.

• Page 187: One single light or spotlight in a block causes the eye to adjust to that level of illumination. … The surroundings around the strong light turn black, and we experience a deeper darkness than we would have without the strong light. That means one single bright point can completely trick the eye.

• Page 191: For security we increasingly illuminate things, but the illumination makes us dazzled and blind and—it may well be argued—less secure rather than more.

• Page 192: The phrase less is more was coined by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1186-1969), referring to clean forms in architecture, but could just as easily refer to lighting. Well-balanced lighting makes it easier for the eye to focus in the twilight.

On how light pollution affects other animals and plants

• Page 9: As humans—with our senses’ limitations—though we know about these animals’ visual faculties, we can never understand the real experience. Filters in cameras or visual enhancement through other machines let us have an inkling, but we can never completely see with the eyes of insects or cats.

• Page 10: No less than a third of all vertebrates and almost two-thirds of all invertebrates are nocturnal, and so most of nature’s activity—mating, hunting, decomposing, and pollinating—occurs after we humans fall asleep at night.

• Page 82: As skyscrapers have grown high on the America contingent, the problem of light-confused birds has only increased.

• Page 82: Given how the world’s big cities are expanding and spreading their light farther and farther into the countryside, and higher up in the atmosphere, nights are increasingly rarely starry enough and suitable for navigation.

• Page 90: Global warming and artificial light reset the internal clocks of plants, risking destroying the delicate balance between plant and pollinator, between plant and herbivore, between prey and predators. If the temperature rises just a few degrees or twilight is shifted only by a few moments, the timing between flowering and the creatures who take advantage of that flowering can be disrupted. [Made me think of Thor Hansen’s Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid book too]

On how artificial light impacts humans

• Page XII: Beneath the illuminated sky in the lit-up cities we have created, we can no longer see any stars, and many of us don’t remember what the Milky Way looks like. We are missing out on one of nature’s grand treasures.

• Page 130: We experience a cycle of light that is alternately dominated by blue and red depending on whether it’s morning, noon, or evening.

• Page 151: Today we’re uncovering more and more of the secrets of the universe, and it’s now been more than fifty years since humanity took its first small steps on the surface of the moon and with them the giant step into the space age. Yet at the same time more and more astronomical experiences and phenomena are being wiped out for ordinary people.

• Page 171: As soon as our retinas are hit by the morning’s sun, photon swarms signal the nerves to the suprachiasmatic nucleus—the node of the brain for the circadian rhythm.

• Page 171: Humans, just like other animals and plants, react differently to different types of light. The blue light means it’s day, the red means it’s evening. … more than anything else the bluish daylight resets our internal clock, through the cryptochromes, the light-sensitive proteins, and indicates that the day can begin again.

• Page 172: Among fifteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds, more than 80 percent have their phones with them in bed. The last thing we do in the evening is set an alarm, check social media, read emails, or just scroll. Before that we might have spent a couple of hours in front of the TV or the computer, followed by a few minutes in a bright white-tiled bathroom. Maybe we had an evening snack because the leptin, the hormone that makes us feel full, hadn’t yet kicked in. … No matter what light we expose ourselves to in the evening, we’re disturbing the natural wave of melatonin, which is meant to wash over us at dusk, eventually ebbing out in time for the morning. The worst is blue light, what is most similar to daylight, but other light affects us, too.

• Page 174: We may not be able to cure or prevent depression all at once by cutting down on electric lighting, but we definitely increase the chances of a good sleep in the long run.

• Page 176: We still don’t know everything about how light affects us humans and the extent to which a disturbed sleep cycle causes different kinds of health issues. But night-shift workers are clearly more at risk than other people.

• Page 205: When we are dazzled by a light, it turns of four entire peripheral field of view, and darkness creeps in on us from all sides. A row of lanterns along a walkway ensures that we see where we are going, but outside that space lurks a dense nothingness. … security and darkness can be experienced together.

First drafted on January 30th.

A college friend and I have long disagreed about the best way to communicate. (Sean, who is close with both of us, often finds himself in the middle of our contention. The fact that his two favorite people have such vastly different personalities—not to mention ways of verbally expressing those personalities—still amazes me a little.)

Brett believes the right way to talk is simply, honestly, and bluntly. I believe he’s too blunt. If I’m not sure of something? I will not speak with authority about it. I will add words like “possibly” and “maybe” and “usually”. I will drop in “I mean” and “just” and “of course, there could be exceptions”.

To Brett, that sounds weak and timid: I dilute my argument and make myself harder to take seriously. I feel the same about his preferred conversational style: There’s no way every claim he makes is true and backed by data (or even wholly believed himself), so isn’t acting otherwise what’s actually weak? Isn’t asserting every outlandish sentence as Obviously True diluting his argument? (You can see why we have difficulty talking to each other about anything more involved than cute dogs and good television shows.)

Things got pretty heated when Sean and I visited him in Denver last November. I’m not proud to admit that I ended our shitshow of a daylight saving time conversation by retreating to the bathroom when I did not, in fact, have to pee. I just needed to take a deep breath (and cry a lil’) without anyone watching.

Almost three months later, in the middle of my morning reading, I feel differently. “I’m ready for Brett to argue with me about my communication style again!” I shout to Sean. “I. Am. So. Ready!”

I just wrapped up the third chapter (called “Mm-hmm, Girl, You’re Right: How Women Talk to Each Other When Dudes Aren’t Around”) of Amanda Montell’s 2019 Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. She begins my favorite section on page 90: “[Linguist Jennifer] Coates busts a slew of commonly believed myths about a verbal tactic called hedging. When linguists talk about hedges, they’re referring to “filler” phrases like just, you know, well, so, I mean, and I feel like.”

As I flew through the passages, I ranted with increasing speed, yelling to Sean while he attempted to work on his engineering diagrams. (It is very fun to be married to me, especially living in a tiny van. My enthusiasm is contagious and never ill-timed.) Here’s the written version of where my head is at.

First, the idea that women communicate differently than men is an old one. Often the implication is that “different” is worse: We’re less clear, less thoughtful, or even less motivated than our masculine counterparts. And while English-speaking society has made a lot of progress toward gender equality, women are still told to talk like guys.

Robin Lakoff, scholar at UC Berkeley, encouraged women to avoid hedging their speech: “[Her] issue with women succumbing to this expectation was that inserting too many justs or you knows in order to come off as sweet and self-doubting won’t help women’s overall station in society; instead, it will reinforce the stereotype that women are naturally docile and insecure. As a result, they should stop themselves from using these phrases at every turn,” summarizes Montell. “If you’re a woman, you might have heard a teacher or parent offer similar criticisms at some point in an attempt to help you sound more “authoritative” and “self-confident” for a job interview or presentation,” she continues before offering reasons we might not actually need to listen to that advice. (Top ones: Hedging can serve an important purpose in communication—and why should we assume the default male speech style, anyway? More on that later.)

I audibly cheered while reading that passage. I felt seen. No matter how much I listened to messages from college professors and work mentors that I should strike qualifiers from my emails, it’s never felt natural to communicate that assertively. Still, I made attempts, at least in my professional life—only last week I purposefully edited “just” out of an email to a client. (Except this client and I have a pretty casual relationship. She would not have blinked twice at “just”—I didn’t need to make the change. It was muscle memory from years in the business school.)

I’ve experienced “be more assertive” feedback on the internet, too. My natural communication style—I usually call it “soft”—has built many genuine connections. It’s also caused issues. I’ve been told to be less timid. I’ve been accused of perpetuating the idea that women must be submissive and “nice” in conversation. Once, a middle-aged male dog trainer dismissed my response to his unsolicited message (without ever having met us, he reached out to say Scout looked “anxious” in all our photos—I told him it didn’t feel like the start of a good-faith discussion) by writing “communication doesn’t have to be saccharine to be acceptable”.

At times I’ve worried these voices have a point. Am I perpetuating unreasonable expectations of women? (I certainly can be too sensitive—the people who love me best will readily say so.) But I’ve never been able, even after intentional reading and writing and real-time editing, to feel good about communicating bluntly. I can go halfway, maybe. My comfort varies context to context—but I always trip over a lack of nuance eventually.

So my greatest validation came on page 91 of Montell’s sociolinguistics book. “People confuse women's use of certain softening hedges like just, I mean, and I feel like as signs of uncertainty”—this is exactly my college friend’s argument about why I should talk with less justification; “just say things!” he often cajoles—“but research shows that these words accomplish something different: instead, they’re used to help create trust and empathy in a conversation. As Coates explains, hedges like these ‘are used to respect the face needs of all participants, to negotiate sensitive topics, and to encourage the participation of others.’”

This is how I’ve always felt. It’s personally easier for me to open up in a “gentle” conversation—and I want others to experience that same softness and warmth from me. It seems more authentic to openly admit that I don’t have all the answers (or even some of them) while discussing sensitive ideas, and to leave plenty of space for other people’s lived experiences to differ from my own.

That’s valuable. Especially on the internet (I share most of my writing online) where we lack tone, inflection, and other nonverbal cues that convey our intentions.

So why did I blindly take advice to scan my communication for hedges I could rip out—just and it seems fair to say and well, I mean—instead of questioning the underlying system that advice was built on? Why should “professional” communication match the way men often talk instead of how women do? Why should even “casual” writing?

I’m finally able to name one of my fundamental issues with Brett’s suggestion to change the way I speak. Why, in a conversation between the two of us—both equal participants, both with our own natural communication styles—should I be the one to adjust my approach? I’m not saying it should automatically be him, either. In my perfect world we’d attain a middle ground, or consider for whom the lift would be least, or find some other way of working together toward a shared goal. But the implication that I—and yes, as the woman is part of this—should be the one to make myself different irks me. Beyond irks, actually.

As I rambled to Sean this morning, I alluded to the dog training space in which I’ve spent so much of the last decade. (I should add this skill to my resume. Top aptitude: Connecting everything back to dogs.) I’ve long believed it’s rather silly—downright stupid, actually, if I speak bluntly like Brett suggests—to compare what two people do in their daily dog training routines if they don’t have the same end goals. If I want Scout to share our van lifestyle with us, rarely needing to interact with other people or pets, but you want your dog to be a social butterfly in a crowded city environment, you should probably not copy exactly what I do. If you’re an accomplished dog sports competitor but I don’t really care about a flashy heel command, I should probably not copy exactly what you do. I fully internalized this in my first or second year as a “dedicated dog person”, and the mantra of “we all have different goals” transformed my approach to dog ownership (and, just as importantly, the way various social media posts made me feel).

The same principle goes for conversation. We can’t throw around productive opinions about the “best” or “worst” way to communicate unless we’re aligned on what the goal of the interaction actually is. Montell illustrates this point with a story about one of my own favorite journalists. On page 93, she writes about the hate mail Ann Friedman has received for perceived overuse of hedges on her podcast. “In 2015 Friedman defended her language in a piece for The Cut that gets to the heart of what linguists know about hedges but that some of Friedman’s critics seem to have missed: ‘Language is not always about making an argument or conveying information in the cleanest, simplest way possible. It’s often about building relationships. It’s about making yourself understood and trying to understand someone else.’”

Of course, effective communication is not a simple “this or that”. We should be aware of our audience whenever we talk, write, sing, whatever. Linguistic differences do not always fall along gender lines (and gender lines are, themselves, blurred spectrums more than binary distinctions). But cooperative styles of communication often seen in women-to-women conversations serve important purposes—and instead of always avoiding them (and feeling vaguely shameful when I just can’t) it makes total sense for me to continue employing them when it feels right.

Right it often feels.

From January 2nd to January 5th—before I returned to the real world’s regular cadence after New Year’s—I finished a book a day. Three of these reads were “grief memoirs” for lack of a less cringe distinction:

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad about her leukemia diagnosis in her early twenties, the collapse of her long-term relationship as she entered remission, and an emotional-atop-physical journey to find herself traveling the country. (Dog in tow, of course.)

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by poet Maggie Smith about her divorce—or less about her divorce, I should say, and more about how she responded to it, armed with (cushioned by?) words.

And My Wife Said You May Want to Marry Me by Jason Rosenthal, a chronological reflection on life with his late partner Amy Krouse Rosenthal and his growth since she died from ovarian cancer.

I should say right away that my own mom is sick. Not imminently-terminal-diagnosis sick or we-now-live-at-the-hospital sick (and for that I’m grateful; I know we’re lucky). But nearly fifteen years ago she was diagnosed with rheumatoid disease, and it is not going well.

Aside from a poem here or there, I have not known how to write meaningfully about my mother’s illness. It is her story, above all—and in recent years I’ve spent more time apart from my immediate family than with them in central Wisconsin. My mom is the one, I keep saying, who ought to write a book. She is the one inside the body that resists. She is the one who has lived it.

But I guess I’ve lived it, my own experience of it, with her. My parents shielded me and my sister from rheumatoid disease’s worst until we grew up (have I really grown up? can we ever grow up?) yet it overwhelms me when I’m in a doctor’s office waiting room, when I’m getting my blood drawn, when I feel a particular soreness in my left knee. I’m afraid I will get my mother’s disease. (It is my grandmother’s disease, too, and her mother’s before her: a family heirloom no one wanted passed down.) I’m afraid my sister will get my mother’s disease. I’m afraid my niece will get my mother’s disease.

But before all that, I’m afraid we will lose my mother to her disease.

“Rheumatoid disease” was first named (and is still most often called) “rheumatoid arthritis” because it often starts with the joints. My family has come to hate this title. We resent everything it leaves out. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office in my early twenties—my first primary care appointment after moving to Florida at the start of COVID-19—relaying family history and former test results. “Rheumatoid disease?” Dr. F asked somewhat incredulously. “You mean rheumatoid arthritis, bad joints?” (She never did affirm the endocrinology referral my medical team in Wisconsin wanted, the one that got lost in the pandemic shuffle. Later she put me through two months of scans and unanswered follow-up calls before a surgeon finally told me the “lump” on my left side was nothing more than a slightly skewed rib.)

I bristle at the idea of comparing diseases. Suffering is suffering is suffering, and beyond healthy moments of perspective—the kind that enable us to feel more grounded and grateful in our own corners of the world—little good comes from ranking the worst that can happen to the human body. Of course cancer is the emperor of all maladies. More than a few scares later (her medication puts her at increased risk of several cancers) I am happy my mother does not carry that specific malignancy. But I also wonder, in the worst midnight moments—when I am miles away from my childhood bedroom across the hall from where she is struggling to get out of the king bed we once snuggled in—if the doctors and coworkers and churchgoers and family members and friends would take her more seriously if she did. What a terrible thing to think, I reprimand my own brain. But shame doesn’t banish the question.

My mom’s suffering is silent, most of the time. Her head is not bald. She does not yet need a permanent cane or walker or wheelchair. You could look at her in a restaurant or at the office and probably breeze right by; if anything, you’d think she was just tired, just middle aged, just living through a Wisconsin winter. Her appearance does not scream I am sick. Her first impression does not betray my body fights me.

But my mom’s suffering is loud to us. Before she was diagnosed, she was running 5Ks. Now her right foot has collapsed—yes, collapsed—and surgery isn’t an option with a wrecked immune system. The “best” solution is an unwieldy brace. She’s developed frightening muscle weakness as a side effect of prednisone, which means she needs to wean off the steroid—but that med is one of the only things enabling her to wake up and do tasks as simple as touching toes to the floor, as buttoning her own shirt, as drying her thinning hair.

Rheumatoid disease is not quick, and yet it’s all too fast. My mom’s diagnosis was a death sentence far on the horizon—with the right support, her body should be able to carry years and years more. Decades, if I get my way. So we keep whispering to each other “it could be worse” while thinking privately “but it’s already so bad”. Every time I talk to my mother-in-law she asks me how my family is, and I am the bearer of bad news. Too often my voice breaks. Tears fall onto the phone. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell you she’s any better,” I said a few weeks ago. “I’m afraid it’s only ever going to get worse.”

My own medical fears started before my mom was diagnosed. (At a routine physical before fifth grade, the doctor pulled my dad aside to ask if I struggled with anxiety.) I do not blame my mother or the acute condition attacking her soft tissues for the fact that I’ll never have a normal blood pressure reading in a clinical environment. But her experience with rheumatoid disease—our family’s collective exposure to chronic illness—has scarred me. I hate writing that because I hate imagining her reading it, confirmation of her fears come true. But she already knows. Whether we say it or not, we all already know. There is no going back.

It was both burn and balm to read other people’s experiences with loss. It heightened the anticipatory grief I’ve befriended all these years. It deepened my gratitude that my own loved ones are still here. My mom is different than “before”—she is struggling more than she deserves—but she is here.

In a few weeks I will see her and squeeze her and tell her how lucky I am.

I track my reading in a homemade spreadsheet. (This might stem from control freakiness. I don’t trust Goodreads or Story Graph to organize my data precisely the way I want. 😅)

My pretty typical five-star scale to rate books:

• Three is perfectly adequate: I’m not unhappy I finished. I enjoyed the work, it was worth reading, just not jump-up-and-down great.

• Five is excellent: There’s no such thing as perfect, but these books exceeded expectations.

• I never really have ones because if a text is that disagreeable, I just DNF.

Five-star fiction books I read in 2024

That context laid: Here are my five-star fiction reads of 2024! (Listed in chronological order, not ranked by favorites. There’s no use comparing a five star to another five star.)

• The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, historical-ish fiction, finished February 28th

• Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky, evolutionary science fiction, finished March 8th (reread)

• The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler, science fiction, finished June 11th

• A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik, fantasy, finished September 1st

• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, children’s, finished September 2nd (reread)

Four-star fiction books I read in 2024

Aaand here are my four stars for good measure.

• Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer, children’s, finished January 15th (reread)

• In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware, thriller, finished January 16th

• The Lying Game by Ruth Ware, thriller, finished January 20th

• One by One by Ruth Ware, thriller, finished February 5th

• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, fantasy, finished February 11th

• Argylle by Elly Conway, spy thriller, finished February 25th

• Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, science fiction stories, finished February 29th

• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, science fiction, finished April 8th (reread)

• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu, science fiction, finished April 16th

• The Outsider by Stephen King, crime, finished May 12th (audiobook)

• The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, historical fiction, finished May 17th

• House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, experimental horror, finished May 27th

• Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, science fiction, finished June 13th

• All's Well by Mona Awad, dark academia ish, finished June 19th

• None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell, thriller, finished June 21st

• Erasure by Percival Everett, finished August 6th

• Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, finished August 14th

• The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey by Trenton Lee Stewart, children’s, finished September 3rd

• The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart, children’s, finished September 4th

• The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik, fantasy, finished September 5th

• The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik, fantasy, finished September 6th

• The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages by Trenton Lee Stewart, children’s, finished September 11th

• You Like it Darker by Stephen King, horror short stories, finished October 3rd

• The Measure by Nikki Erlick, dystopian/domestic-ish, finished October 7th

• I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai, mystery, finished October 23rd (reread)

• Babel by R. F. Kuang, historical fantasy, finished October 28th

• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, dystopian, finished October 30th

• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, fantasy, finished December 27th

I track my reading in a homemade spreadsheet. (This might stem from control freakiness. I don’t trust Goodreads or Story Graph to organize my data precisely the way I want. 😅)

My five-star scale to rate books:

• Three is perfectly adequate: I’m not unhappy I finished. I enjoyed the work, it was worth reading, just not jump-up-and-down great.

• Five is excellent: There’s no such thing as perfect, but these books exceeded expectations.

• I never really have ones because if a text is that disagreeable, I just DNF.

Five-star nonfiction books I read in 2024

That context laid: Here are my five-star nonfiction reads of 2024! (Listed in chronological order, not ranked by favorites. There’s no use comparing a five star to another five star.)

• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, memoir, finished January 20th

• The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser, memoir, finished January 28th

• Calypso by David Sedaris, humorous essays, finished February 18th

• The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality by Amanda Montell, cultural criticism/personal essays, finished May 19th

• 7 1/2 Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett, neuroscience, finished May 24th

• Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America's Forgotten People and Pets by Carol Mithers, animal welfare, finished October 15th

• Says Who? A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words by Anne Curzan, linguistics/grammar, finished December 22nd

Four-star nonfiction books I read in 2024

Aaand here are my four stars for good measure.

• Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less by James Hamblin, health, finished February 1st

• Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie, climate change/environment, finished February 2nd

• Hurricane Lizards and Plastic Squid: The Fraught and Fascinating Biology of Climate Change by Thor Hansen, climate change/environment, finished February 10th

• Psych: The Story of the Human Mind by Paul Bloom, psychology, finished February 14th

• Moonwalking with Einstein by Josh Foer, memory, finished March 28th

• On Writing by Stephen King, writing, finished April 11th

• Know My Name by Chanel Miller, memoir, finished April 30th

• Cultish by Amanda Montell, language/psychology, finished June 25th

• The Vital Question by Nick Lane, evolution, finished July 1st

• No Judgment by Lauren Oyler, cultural criticism, finished July 11th

• Dogland: Passion, Glory, and Lots of Slobber at the Westminster Dog Show by Tommy Tomlinson, dog shows, finished July 30th

• A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains by Max Bennett, evolution/artificial intelligence, finished August 27th

• Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant, psychology, finished October 6th

• This Ordinary Stardust: A Scientist's Path from Grief to Wonder by Alan Townsend, grief memoir, finished October 21st

• Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, outdoors, finished November 1st

• Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma by Claire Dederer, social/philosophy, finished November 7th

• Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong, memoir, finished November 16th

• Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me) by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, psychology, finished November 19th

• The Ugly History of Beautiful Things by Katy Kelleher, history/culture, finished December 17th

• Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans de Waal, biology, finished December 26th

• The Modern Bestiary by Joanna Bagniewska, animals/zoology, finished December 29th

Three days ago I got a rejection email. It’s not important what it was for. When I first pitched, I remember telling Sean I didn’t even care much about the specific opportunity anyway. (“Why not try?” was the extent of my excitement. “Why not try!” he agreed.)

But the rejection came after I spent a lethargic day at a public park, feeling simultaneously lonely and observed, and either “I didn’t care much” was a plain lie or reading another canned “our apologies, but…” was one disappointment too many. Regardless, I sputtered inside a rip current of what am I doing and am I any good and do I contribute enough (to my relationship, to my friends, to society) and I’m wasting time spiraling, aren’t I.

So, naturally, I went to the beach.

On my way to pick Sean up from his office, I replayed the opening line of Noah Kahan’s “False Confidence” a dozen times. (I imagined the van’s stereo system was irritated with my constant rewinding. I imagined the whole world was irritated with my existence.)

Don’t take yourself so seriously, sang one of my favorite artists, over and over and over. I started to believe him just a little.

As I waited for Sean to appear in the parking lot, I posted a video talking directly to the camera. This is still uncomfortable for me—I recorded two takes, actually—but I knew I couldn’t be the only one feeling confused and low and in need of connection.

Scout, forever sensitive to my voice’s timbre, nuzzled her head against my chest.

“It’s going to rain soon,” Sean said when we arrived at the beach. “We can make it,” I replied. The storm’s first front had just blown through. Clumps of seagrass littered the shore, adorned not only with man o’ wars and broken shells but hordes of plastic: bottle caps and wrappers and jagged pieces of once-admired sand toys.

We turned around, disgusted. From the van I grabbed two oversized garbage bags.

The work was washed with shame and wonder. I held an old hairbrush with two fingers. I saw the tiniest ghost crab. We discovered not one, not two, but three discarded shoes. I cried both for the havoc my species is wreaking on this ocean I love so much and for the simple joy of walking with toes in the sand, clearing a miniscule stretch of beach on which the pipers might safely scavenge.

The skies opened up as soon as we filled the second garbage bag. We were soaked through and laughing by the time we got back inside.

“Is it cake?!” Mikey Day shouted with entirely too much enthusiasm. Sean and I sat in the van’s cab chairs, finally dry; Scout lounged on the bed. I organized a few emails and shared ramen noodles with my begging dog and most of all laughed at my husband’s enjoyment of the silly Netflix show. He loved it so much more than I thought he would.

I love him so much more than I thought I could.

The next day I watched sunrise over the water amidst a round of tug with Scout. I considered how lucky we were to have a dog-friendly beach. I considered how lucky I was to be there: by the ocean, in the sand, alive at all.

We walked next to the waves three more times before dark. I read a collection of essays start to finish. We fell asleep early, three creatures on one bed, no room to spare, not even for doubt.

I write better on a laptop than real paper. I’ve been insecure about this for as long as I can remember. As a kid I made desperate attempts to keep journals—I collected physical notebooks, had convinced my family I was a “writer” and so received them as frequent gifts—and was distraught by each inevitable fizzle. I’d mark a few pages before stepping back to admire the shape of the paper and typeface of the date field and then continue my “real” writing (whatever nonsense that constituted) on a computer.

The only time I successfully kept an analog journal was in Thailand. One day at base camp a guide asked “what are you always doing in that notebook?” and I blushed with hesitant pride: I am a writer. Even then, my handwritten success was mostly because lugging my laptop around was impractical, and I’d have had to worry about the battery, and most of all it would have been easier for people to read over my shoulder. (I purposefully wrote in messy cursive that is to this day hard for me to decipher.)

The thing I know logically: Writing is writing, whether on an old laptop or in a beautiful notebook or simply my head. (Verlyn Klinkenborg, author of my favorite book on writing, says above all the job of a writer is creating sentences in their head.) I believe this. I still feel I’m somehow doing it wrong.

The tool to move words into the physical world is not my only writing insecurity. I am full of them, and most are silly because they have so little to do with the quality of a piece and so much to do with my weird internalized impressions of romance.

For years before I actually enjoyed coffee, I liked the idea of it. Today I pound decaf in part because it makes me feel like a writer, like an artist. I love the ring of brown on the counter when I pick up my mug to cradle in one hand, using the other to scroll a document of words that fills empty space not just on a digital page but somehow inside myself.

I used to stay up late writing because it made me feel like I belonged. I thought all the best writers must be struck with inspiration at odd hours. They’re compelled to run from parties and errands and funerals to jot something down, lest they forget it. Lest the forgetting makes them unravel.

Thankfully I never tightly embraced alcohol, but I did consider the advice so many erroneously attribute to Hemingway: Write drunk, edit sober. I felt more authorly while sipping wine or scotch (I don’t even like scotch) with a performative chin stroke.

Meanwhile doing practical things for my writing felt unromantic. I focused on the accouterments of writing more than the actual craft. I wanted to accessorize my work rather than lose myself in it.

Eventually I realized I was thinking of writing the way I used to think of relationships: They had to be spontaneous—they had to flow—for them to be worthwhile.

But my marriage with Sean is wonderful in large part because we’ve focused on logistics. We’ve had extremely unromantic conversations. We’ve stacked boring moments to build a foundation for the feel-great ones, because spontaneous joy visits more often in the right atmosphere.

I did the same thing with Scout. I preoccupied myself with what leash and collar she’d wear, what treats we’d use, how we’d look together walking down the street. I placed more weight on appearances—how to quickly inform everyone around me that I am a “dog nerd”—than our shared experience, the reality of her living with me and me living with her.

I wanted a dog who just got me, a dog like the main character of the first novel I ever tried to write, a creature who automatically fit right in. I convinced myself that was the only meaningful way to connect with another creature. Don’t we need to be destined for each other? Don’t we need to feel it instantly?

No. We don’t.

The effort I’ve put in to grow with Scout has not only given us more amazing moments—by letting us live in harmony, with less conflict—it’s also allowed me to more deeply appreciate the times it does just work.

And our relationship means more because I’m choosing it. Something without effort can never be quite as satisfying as something you feel you’ve earned. This is why it’s so overwhelmingly special that Scout trusts me and Sean the way she does: She doesn’t feel comfortable around all people, but she’ll sprawl to sleep on my lap, she’ll seek us out in times of distress, she’ll do anything for us. And not by accident. Not by coincidence. Not because her heart recognized my heart and our souls were meant to be.

Because we’ve worked for it. We’ve taken our baseline compatibility, our initial attraction, those inklings of affection, and we’ve built it into something strong. Solid. Deep.

Once I accepted that practicality is not inherently unromantic, I started experiencing more magic. This applies to my entire life. I once thought romance was surface gestures and grand displays, love at first sight, showy musical numbers… now I see it is something you invite, day in and day out, by considering logistics and embracing mess and throwing your clumsy arms wide.

What’s strangest is that I conflated “real” and “romantic” when, if pressed, I’d say the two are closer to opposites. Not mutually exclusive, no. But certainly not synonyms. What’s real is the work. The effort. The love, too—but the practical kind as much as the delirious version. The Velveteen Rabbit is made real through imperfect, smoldering, sometimes-harmful love. Not through Instagram moments.

I might do the same thing with my words. “My first draft is set for revisions” I announce with excitement then months later still haven’t refined it into a manuscript I’m comfortable with other people reading; I’ve compiled a spreadsheet of possible literary agents but always find a reason to put off contacting any of them (“I’m just not ready” starts to sound like “I’ll never be ready”); I spend more time overthinking if I’m qualified to write a book than actually attempting to complete said book.

The thing is, I do love writing. I write every day and don’t remember a time where I was free of the compulsion. I’d have been single-digits years old, I suppose—before I read the Warriors series by Erin Hunter, before I got sucked into roleplaying on Neopets, before I had my own “blog” (self-coded! aren’t I so cool?) in middle school.

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By that point Dederer’s discussion had lit in me an impulse to watch Rosemary’s Baby. I’d never seen it. Like many popular works, I’d heard enough from others to sort of feel like I had—the way I kind of know Game of Thrones, or Breaking Bad, or The Office—but now I wanted to experience it firsthand. (This, despite Polanski’s monstrousness, a core theme in the book. Should I not have streamed the film? Was my desire to do so some warped, inappropriate response to a work specifically about terrible people, specifically about terrible men?)

So, convinced it might be days before we knew who’d be president, Sean and I…

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Hidden Potential first made it on my “to be read” list thanks to a recommendation from John Green last December. It’s not the style of book he usually promotes—social psych veering into self-help—and I was intrigued.

After literal months of waiting (I started as 400–something on my library’s wait list) I downloaded and read Adam Grant’s 4th solo book last month. My cursor hesitated over the “rating” column in my reading tracker spreadsheet when I finished. Grant is earnest and clear—plus he showed enough of his personality I couldn’t help but like the guy. I also thought this book could have been significantly shorter and less repetitive… though sometimes reiterating ideas is exactly what an audience needs to make them stick. If I did half-points, it’d be an easy 3.5.

My overall takeaway from Hidden Potential was one of loose inspiration. Past success does not always translate into future achievement; we can try to improve ourselves from a range of starting points; we need to embrace mi…

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Overall impression

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I wasn’t sure about the artificial intelligence connections in the beginning—that’s not my area of passion, and I hold some negative biases towards folks (especially white men) involved in those tech spaces—but it ended up being a great AI introduction for a creature-obsessed. My preexisting knowledge of animal evolution carried me to the edge of the precipice. It was easy to take a little step off and feel a fresh understanding of the intelligences we are trying to make in our own image.

So the AI stuff ended up being okay. Pretty interesting, actually.

Should we “stay in our lane”?

Then I came to love that Max Bennett is not a neuroscientist. At first this put me off—his introduction attempted to address the fact (and did so probably as well as any preface could attempt) but the thought lingered in the back of my mind that maybe he shouldn’t be the one writing this book. I’m thrilled I dismissed that idea over time.

Benn…

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