Sunday Edition: Getting Closer To That 'Seat Belt Click'

And living room progress (!)

The Sunday Edition is Tuesday’s little sister—off-the-cuff updates I’d bring up over a coffee catch-up with a friend.

Living room progress: I’m in love with my new lamp (see a “before” here!)

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the “seat belt click” counselor and writer Katherine Morgan Schafler considers in her book, The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control. She writes, “Our contemporary view of a balance is based on the notion that your life could ever fit on a to-do list in the first place, and that once you finish the to-do list and match your problems to their adjacent solutions, you can expect to feel a satisfying click, like a seat belt snapping into place.” I know that chasing the click is a Sisyphean task, but it really does feel like I’m getting closer to some version of it—or at least a momentary pause after some recent seismic shifts.

Issue #82: Why Balance is Impossible (And What to Seek Instead)

Although you wouldn’t know it from my iPhone photos or the progress in my inbox (there’s a good chance I owe you an email), some major to-dos and anxieties came to an end this week. Among smaller accomplishments, I attended a long-awaited doctor’s appointment, finished taxes, ordered patio furniture (this sounds small, but was surprisingly stress-inducing??), finalized a huge Morning Person update going live Tuesday (there are early signs of it around the site!), and signed my divorce papers. It was far from graceful—picture me: eating a slice of pizza at 10 PM on my couch after a back-to-back day and typing this post before sunrise the next day—but I got through it with ample self-compassion and a promise to take care of myself at the end of each challenging day…