#9 Getting through the next week

Or maybe through the next three months? Also: caffeinated lighting, a show to binge, early aughts nostalgia meets Gen Z, and the only cornbread recipe you'll ever need.

⭕️ Happy Light Therapy Lamp I’ve been spending 20 minutes first thing in the morning with this sun lamp and it feels like drinking several espressos in rapid succession.¹

⭕️ Rivals Based on a novel by Dame Jilly Cooper, Rivals is a new bawdy drama dripping with 80s excess set in the world of independent television in southwestern England. Watch it (rapidly — you won’t want to stop) on Hulu.²

⭕️ What a Girl Wants A soft, beautifully blended cover celebrating the 25th anniversary of Christina Aguilera’s self-titled debut, featuring Sabrina Carpenter. 💞³

⭕️ Perfect, Forever Cornbread Made with whole corn kernels, this recipe from Smitten Kitchen has just the right amount of sweetness and texture.⁴

Obviously, we must get through the next week. But how?

I’ve been on a future trip the past couple of months.

It’s a cycle that has swallowed me up and sapped much of the joy out of being alive and present, here and now.

A lot of it is specific to me, as I approach a moment of huge transition: I’ve been an active parent for all of my adult life (I graduated from college pregnant with Pan) and I am deeply anxious about who and what I’ll be when I’m no longer that.

And a lot of it, I know, is shared by just about everyone in our country as we crawl on our knees towards the presidential election happening this week.

The uncertainty of this election — and what it means for our country (and others) — has impacted everything: our relationships, our mental wellbeing, our human rights, the economy. I work in a staffing and recruiting agency, and employers have been sitting tight on hiring for months as we wait to see what will happen this week. Which, of course, has impacted our business.

The anxiety isn’t going to go away this week. After what happened with the last election, and the voting chaos Donald Trump is now whipping up by refusing to acknowledge a result that doesn’t place him in the White House, I don’t think we’re going to feel any sort of stability in this transfer of presidential power until after the inauguration at the end of January.

So, really, we have three more months to get through.

To be clear: the election isn’t going to answer anything except the question of who is president. No necessary change or action is guaranteed after that. A win for one may deter a slide into fascism, but it doesn’t solve for suffering or harm or injustice.

I keep swinging between “do what you can” and “it’s entirely beyond my control.”

Here’s how I’m sitting with the discomfort of this week, and the next many:

☀️ See the light: Actually get my face and bare eyes (no sunglasses) in the sunshine, when it’s out. Turn on the happy lamp (>10K LUX + 18 inches + 20 minutes) first thing in the morning.

🧶 Keep hands busy: Making something tangible is a counterbalance to all the things out of my control. Chop vegetables and stir a soup. Make pumpkin muffins and share them with the neighbors. Dust books and think about all the lives lived beyond my own. Knit something.

📞 Say it out loud: Have an actual conversation with someone about my worries. Remember I’m not alone in them.

📝 Remember what’s good: There are still things to be grateful for. List them out, on paper or in my head. Think especially of the tiniest ones: the moments of pink sky before the day turns gray. My cat’s softest belly. All the ways I keep warm when the cold creeps in.

🔌 Leave the phone in the other room: At least a few times a day.

🌤️ Sit with the hard stuff AND limit input: Drive without the radio on, go for a walk without headphones in, charge phone in another room (or at least not right next to the bed) at night. Maintaining some physical distance from my phone is so important right now.

The real pain and dread that we’re feeling right now shouldn’t be tuned out. We’re all responsible to our communities and also to all of humanity for bringing the realities we know, as well as the ones beyond our immediate experience, into our awareness and making choices in response to these truths.

But we are so limited if we try to function entirely from a place of fear and anxiety.

1. My psychiatrist recommended it for the wash of anxiety I’ve been feeling; I’ll have to report back on how it impacts my mood longterm, but in the meantime it’s a very good wake-up stimulant for my 5am morning writing practice. Look for one with at least 10,000 LUX and the largest surface area you can afford. Your eyes need to be within 18 inches of the lamp for 20 minutes to really feel a therapeutic effect.

2. Sebastian only caught parts of like 2.5 episodes of this and was totally engrossed. I love a grumpy, stormy-souled Aidan Turner (this time with an Irish accent).

3. You can listen to the whole anniversary EP on Spotify; Come on Over, Genie in a Bottle, and What a Girl Wants were the standouts for me, but I also only really knew the radio hits when this album came out 25 years ago.

4. We served it with her quick-cooking skillet turkey chili, doubled for a crowd of teenage boys who slept over in our living room on Halloween night. We all ate candy and watched The Babadook (Seb and I watched Suspiria while they were out trick-or-treating — very weird and wonderfully aesthetic) and they slept like a pile of large, almost-men puppies.