It's Going To Take You Longer To Get To Work
Plus: My First-Ever Zoom Art Class Sign-Ups Are Live!
A Note For You, If You’re Having A Bad Day
Hello My Friend,
How is the change from summer to autumn treating those of you in the Western Hemisphere? Not to be too dramatic, but I mourn it. I had a fire with Luke and the person who’s living with us for a while (let’s call him Leonard), and we listened to sad music, and I cried. Leonard said summer was his least favorite season, and I’m always glad when that’s true for people. I like knowing that if I have to be miserable, at least there are other, sweater-obsessed citizens who thrill at the onset of a cold snap.
Anyway, I decided to have the fire because I suspect that I require accommodations around transitions. This is something I really didn’t know about until I taught first grade. For a while, I thought a lot of kids were very torn about the recess issue. I mean, we’d be doing centers, and then I’d be like, “Time for recess,” and they’d get droopy and upset and not want to go. But then once they’d gotten on their jackets and finally gone outside it was so obvious that they loved recess.
“What the hell is up with the kids who groan about recess?” I said to another teacher, irritated that there wasn’t even one single thing I could do that the children universally liked.
“Transitions,” the teacher said, without blinking.
And what she meant was, “Time for recess” is a huge transition when you’re six. As a teacher, you must make the transitions Much. Smaller. Like this:
In one minute, I’m going to ask you to put anything that’s in your hands into a bin.
The minute has arrived. Put the things in your hands into a bin.
Put all errant bins onto shelves. (“WHAT’S ‘ERRANT?!’” “Use context clues to figure it out.” “WHAT’S CONTEXT CLUES?” “Just do the thing Lia is doing.”)
Once the bins are on the shelves, walk to your desks and sit down so you can have a little breath.
Breathe in and out a few times. Try to find four blue things in this room, but never say them out loud.
When you hear me say the word “duck,” stand up and tuck in your chairs.
“Duck.”
Walk to the coat rack and stand in front of your coat.
Consider your coat and try to guess what’s in your pockets WITHOUT TOUCHING YOUR COAT.
Take your coat off the hook and put it on your body. Were you right about what was in your pockets?
Stand as still as you can stand. I’m about to open this door, and when I do, you get to move outside at whatever pace you want, and I’m going to come out there, too. And we’re going to stay out there for thirty minutes!
Here we go.
If “time for recess” takes all twelve of these steps, every child will love recess. “Time for recess” without lubrication is simply too advanced. Learning this was a revelation — not just for me as a teacher, but for me as a person whose life is filled with transitions.
And your life is filled with transitions, too.
Every day, probably, you have to transition out of your bed and into the world; you have to transition into and out of meals; you have to transition into and out of social situations; into and out of activities; into and out of cars and buildings and shoes and clothing and chairs. And these are only a few of the small things.
Any time you have to do something new — like go to a bagel shop that’s just opened, or venture into a stranger’s home, or take a class, or go on a first date — those are big transitions. Even bigger ones: losses, like deaths, divorces, disasters.
And basically, my gripe is, we collectively generally treat every transition the way I used to treat “time for recess”: This is just going to happen, so let’s not focus on how it’s going to happen, or whether the getting there is hard. Let’s just get from here to there, OK? And then we can be there and forget about here.
Here is an experiment to try for a few days (or even a week!), and just see how it changes the way you live your life. However long you think it will take you to arrive somewhere: double it. If you normally give yourself 30 minutes to get from your house to work, give yourself an hour. If you normally give yourself 15 minutes to get ready for work — from your bed to the car — give yourself 30. If you normally leave five minutes between activities, make that break 10 minutes. Take all the in between spaces that you factor in — all the transitions, and double them. This will mean you will need to shorten or cut out some of the activities themselves, because we do not have infinite time.
The first time I tried this, it meant I had to cut a vacation short an entire day, because I needed to give myself six hours to get to the airport rather than three; which made me realize that what I actually wanted was a whole day to prepare for my trip; not a few hours. I wanted time for the transition from my regular life to my traveling life. Rather than have an extra day of stressed out travel, I took a day to clean, pack, unplug appliances, meditate, take a long shower, and make sure all my documents were in order. Now I try to factor this into as many trips as I can, even though it means fewer travel days. (I don’t really like traveling, so this is probably easier for me than it is for most people.)
What are you going to do with a whole hour to get somewhere that’s half an hour away? You can amble. You can find out what it’s like to get there early, and you can find out what it’s like to not rush out the door. You can take the long way. And most importantly, you can allow your brain and body to fully adjust to the new thing you’re about to do. Maybe there will be less time for productivity, but that the quality of the activities you choose might be be richer and fuller.
Maybe you need a fire for the end of the season, too. I needed a way to mark the end of the summer, because the summer matters to me. When something matters to you, you should give it your time, I think. You should sit still with it and reflect on what it was, before you hurry off into whatever it is that is coming.
Now. How to transition out of this letter? I never know. I usually say I love you.
I love you.
This is true.
Love,
Sophie
Housekeeping
This newsletter has entered Season Four! What makes a season? There are a lot of answers to this question, but This-Newsletter-Wise, I’ve settled on “six months, roughly.” Autumn and Spring.
With the new season comes a structural change, per tradition. There are two new sections. The one you’re reading now, housekeeping, will include information about the newsletter, and about my work. The one below, “loose thoughts,” will have anything that used to be in the Parenting Paragraph, plus any other loose thoughts. I’ll try not to have too many, but no promises.
I’m teaching a four-part bird drawing / painting class over Zoom. It shall be on Tuesdays at lunch, and the live version of the class (which I am keeping very small) costs $120. But I’m recording the classes, and I’m releasing them all to anyone who is in the paid tier of the newsletter. So! Details about the class, including how to sign up, are linked here. If you want to sign up for the paid tier and get access to all four videos, so you can take the class on your own time, click here. Yes, I will host this class again on a different day and at a different time! So if your heart is set on taking it in person, don’t fret.
Full disclosure: I’m in a time of financial strain, and I do want to continue to make this newsletter something that I can give my time to. Paid subscriptions allow me do that, plain and simple. Passing the newsletter on to your friends and encouraging free subscriptions helps a lot, too! Please spread the word. Growth this quarter was much slower than I’d hoped. (Sad face.)
HAPPY FACE: paid subscribers get two more emails per week, including my favorite email, the Monday email, which hosts a fabulous community of people who answer a new question I ask on a week-to-week basis. We give advice, recommendations, thoughts, ideas, etc. We have a book club. We share recipes. It is very supportive and fun.
Loose Thoughts
Having less light in the Western Hemisphere really does affect people. I don’t have anyone in my life right now who isn’t suffering a little more than usual, and wondering why. IT’S BECAUSE THERE IS LESS LIGHT THAN USUAL, and we are all working harder than usual, because the academic year insists on making us ramp everything up as the sun goes down. This is SO BACKWARD.
My two-year-old daughter, T, has started screaming about things. The main thing that makes her mad is small boats. I am including anything that can hold anything else, and some things are boats that I didn’t know would be boats, like shallow boxes. She wants her items to fit exactly in the boats exactly the way she wants them to and they never do, and she will REALLY throw a tantrum about it. It’s very heartbreaking and only a little bit funny in hindsight.
We dipped ourselves in Lake Michigan for the last time in the warm season yesterday. The water was cold already from the LESS LIGHT. I looked for fish, but there weren’t any. T looked for rocks and was pleased to find a ton. These are lessons about where to set one’s sights.
In Chicago, it’s time for aster. A friend of a friend’s had a baby this year and named them Aster — something that, when I heard about it, felt like a sign. Do you believe in signs? What is meant when someone says something is a sign?
My students asked me about places to avoid because they are dangerous. I told them that danger is a difficult concept to wrap one’s mind around. Danger has to do with access to resources; perception; luck; proximity. I tried to explain myself more, and when I do this — particularly when I try to also talk about privilege, race, gender, and the City of Chicago — I try to look into everyone’s eyes to see how everyone is feeling, as though eyes might say something about that. The truth is, it’s hard to know how you felt about something until later. I stopped myself and said, “It depends.”
Today I wrote in my notebook, “Against consistency,” as in, maybe you don’t always have to be consistent; as in, forgive yourself a lack of a morning routine; walk a different path to the train often; notice the things that grow because you didn’t get around to mowing the lawn.
The insight about transitions — and the idea of doubling it — is so useful and wise. Thank you, Sophie. And the bird drawing class sounds AMAZING. I am unfortunately working at a Midwestern lunch hour, but I am excited about the recordings. I hope it sells out and there are more to come!
i am excited & nervous! i just signed up for the live class, have never taken a painting class before, can’t wait to explore a new fun thing!