Things I Loved in May 2023

Humans are best when we help each other out. So, each month I offer you a handful of small but wonderful things I’ve recently experienced or encountered. May you find something here that touches you in some way!

Item 1: The Song That Absolutely Nails How to Stay Together

Dan and I’ve been in relationship for thirty-five years, and married for thirty. When we first put hand to thigh and lip to lip we were a nineteen and twenty-year-old defying convention to center our love. We’re now fifty-four and fifty-five, still defying convention to be the kind of partners and lovers we want to be.

To say we’ve grown and changed a ton since 1988 is both obvious and a massive understatement. Children, jobs, moods, needs, fears, and circumstance threatened to unravel our knot. But we’ve done the work and continue to do the work to commit to a partnership that is passionate, devoted, expansive, life-sustaining, and different than almost anything we see around us.

I was stunned to glean from the lyrics of Ben Platt’s haunting and captivating song “Grow as We Go,” that, as unique a relationship as Dan and I have, we are not alone in being on a growth journey where it’s possible and necessary and even beautiful that we grow alongside each other rather than grow apart. “Grow as We Go” has become an anthem for me, which is why I want to share it with you. The music video is here.

If you’re like me, you’ll be wiping your cheeks as you listen to Ben Platt! If you end up loving his music as much as I do, I recommend you next listen to “Older,” which chronicles identity and loss and regret and acceptance and the capacity of all of us at any age to accept the self, embrace the self, and connect more deeply with others. The music video for “Older” is here.

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My monthly listicles are for paid subscribers, but this month I’m sharing the list with everyone. If you’re not already a paid subscriber, you can change that here:

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Item 2: The Book You Must Absolutely Read to Understand America

America has the largest economy in the world and a poverty rate vastly exceeding that of any other developed nation. What gives? Why can’t we untangle and solve this dilemma and build a better system? Are we blaming the wrong factors? Supporting folks the wrong way? Is someone actually benefitting from poverty and is that why it persists?

This is the subject of Poverty, By America, the latest work from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond. Don’t worry, it isn’t a snore-inducing treatise on a deeply complicated subject - it’s a beautifully written compelling narrative on a deeply complicated subject, and at 189 pages it’s entirely readable. You’ll learn a ton and feel motivated to “tear down the walls” as Desmond puts it. Highly recommended for you, your progressive friends, and your book club! You can buy it here.

Item 3: The Note-Taking Tools That Keep Me On My Toes

In a typical week, I’ll have a dozen conversations on completely different subjects with completely different people, and I want to take good notes. Thankfully, I’ve honed in on a system that works for me, and I want to share it with you.

I’m a visual learner, so how things appear on the page (e.g. color, size, emphasis, and even doodles) makes a difference. This is why I vastly prefer paper and pen over laptop and software. I use a diary/journal format - record as you go - rather than organizing notes by subject, as my memory of when things happened (with my Google Calendar as a backup reminder on the ‘when’) further serves to help me index/locate prior stuff. I adore the notebooks from Leuchtturm1917 which come in a bunch of different sizes, dozens of colors, three major layouts (blank, lined, or “bullet” style), and the option of either soft- or hard-bound. Because my city council work is a huge chunk of my life, but not my entire life, I use green notebooks for any meetings related to the city (cuz green is the city’s logo color), and I use black notebooks for my regular work (everything else!). A visually differentiable exterior helps me retrieve the right notebook from my messy desk or bag. You can learn more about Leuchtturm1917 products here.

As you can see in the picture above, my notes range from as short as a few lines on the page to many pages long. Each gets a boxed header with the date and the person/topic. And I use a different colored marker for each new note, which helps me visually distinguish where new notes begin as I’m searching for something. My choice on pens is the Paper Mate Flair which comes in tons of colors and I keep a mugful of them near me at all times! Aren’t they beautiful to look at?

Item 4: The Weird Instagram Post That Gives Happiness

At first, I was all Why are these parrots in my Instagram feed? Seconds later, I was captivated. You have to see them to believe it. Check out this video and this one too.

I wish I knew precisely why Wolfie and Sharky’s relationship moves me. Maybe it’s the knowing and caring look in their eyes, which I recognize as very human. (I guess I see them as evidence of what’s possible. I guess they give me hope?)

(And hats off to the human who presents Wolfie and Sharky to the world. Her instagram account @littlewolfiebird goes on for days, so if you like what I shared with you, there’s plenty more!)

Item 5: The Small Neatening Ritual That Became a Parenting Hack With a Twist

My twenty-three year old son Sawyer still lives with us, which is a function of both the pandemic and of the fact that the income from his full-time job isn’t enough to cover rent in our area. He wanted to upgrade the decor of his childhood bedroom, so we invested in some new IKEA furniture, a new color of paint, and different lighting.

As part of the upgrade, Soy said he wants to be able to keep his room clean on a more regular basis. And yet he has ADHD (which he allows me to talk about with you) which means it can be next to impossible for him to focus on the boring and confusing task of what goes where.

As it happens, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. (I’m also challenged when it comes to organizing my stuff, and think I probably have ADHD too.) In the past few years, though, I’ve become super deliberate about making Dan’s and my bed and picking my clothes up off the floor each morning before going downstairs. It takes mere minutes to neaten things up, but it brings me a small portion of peace when I do so. As in, Our democracy may be disintegrating, but at least my sacred space is clean.

So, a few months back I decide to tell Sawyer about how I neaten things up in the mornings, and I suggest that if he wants to keep his room clean on a more regular basis, perhaps we could do my morning ritual together. He looks skeptical. I suggest he could pick a song to play as we do it, and we’ll just clean for the duration of the song. His eyes light up and says he’ll give it a go.

At the appointed time the next morning, I rap on Soy’s door and shout, “Song Time!”’ He replies, “Sondheim!” I reply, “Send in the Clowns!” (We like word play in our family!) Fifteen seconds later, Soy bounds out of his room, hugs me good morning, tees up his portable speaker, chooses a song from his playlist, and we both go into neatening & straightening mode until the song ends. This becomes a thing we do most days, and over the months to come the ritual will morph from one song to two. More cleaning time! Progress!

The reason this whole thing makes this month’s listicle, however, is that the last week of May was a tough one for me for reasons I can’t really get into but just… yeah… hard stuff. I slept really poorly Tuesday night including a bad dreams or two during which I managed to turn off my alarm clock, all of which led to me oversleeping the following morning. I woke with a start to the sounds of Soy’s music playing in the hallway. And then to him rapping on our door and his voice yelling “Song Time!”

What I mean is, I invited my son to join me in my morning neatening and straightening ritual in order to help him develop better habits. Then when he noticed I was no longer with him he circled back like a sheep dog to make sure I wasn’t left behind. Two songs with my son turns out to be an opportunity not just to neaten our bedrooms, not just to connect, but to look after each other. It proves to me that when we invest in the small things we can be reassured that in all the chaos, we can still count on something. 🤎

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